Verity Lambert’s strength was backing unusual programmes without forgetting that people had to want to watch them. We rate her judgement highly, especially on Doctor Who, but a producer’s reputation should leave room for the failures.
Fi1m perspective
The Daleks are a useful place to look for Verity Lambert’s work on screen. As founding producer of Doctor Who (1963), she insisted on their inclusion despite instructions against bug-eyed monsters. That is a producer’s decision with a visible result, and it helps explain why we rate her: she backed the strange idea when it might have been easier to abandon it. Her strength was recognising material that could interest a broad audience without first making it ordinary.
We were frightened by Doctor Who because its actors made the absurd situations matter. The pacing can be stubborn, and our recommendation depends on a willingness to let the programme talk. Lambert’s support for scripts and casting helped establish that actor-led adventure, though our enthusiasm for the series should not become indiscriminate credit for its founding producer. Sydney Newman recruited her to the BBC in 1963; she oversaw the first two seasons and left in 1965. The changing temperament of the Doctor keeps us returning, but the programme’s subsequent achievements cannot all be hers.
The work at Thames makes sense beside that beginning. In The Naked Civil Servant (1975), starring John Hurt as Quentin Crisp, and the musical drama Rock Follies (1976), which she commissioned, the subjects changed but the willingness to back distinctive material remained. Her involvement in the long-running Minder (1979) is worth keeping beside them: popular series were part of the job, not an embarrassment to it. These credits suggest someone who could support different kinds of programme without demanding that they all resemble her first success.
The later record needs more caution. Her move into film production at Thorn EMI brought mixed results, and the critical disappointment of Eldorado (1992) is part of the account too. Those disappointments deserve more than a footnote. Her subsequent producing work included Jonathan Creek (1997), so there is no need to make one disappointment stand for everything that followed. Begin with Doctor Who, and give it time to talk.
Biography
Verity Lambert was an English television and film producer. She was the founding producer of the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who (1963), overseeing its first two seasons and the beginning of the third until 1965.
She began working in television in the 1950s and, at the time of her appointment to Doctor Who, was the BBC's youngest and only female drama producer. After leaving the BBC in 1969, she had a long association with Thames Television and its Euston Films subsidiary. Her credits include The Naked Civil Servant (1975), Rock Follies (1976), Minder, Widows, G.B.H. and Jonathan Creek (1997). From 1985 she ran her own production company, Cinema Verity. She was awarded an OBE in 2002.
