Alastair Reid

Alastair Reid was a noted director of some of the most thrilling and innovative television dramas of recent years. In 1989, he directed all six episodes of Simon Moore’s epic drug drama Traffik for Channel 4, which won him a Bafta and an International Emmy. In 1991, he filmed Selling Hitler, the gripping story about the selling of Hitler’s faked diaries. His acclaimed adaptation of Armistead Maupin’s novel Tales of the City – set in San Francisco in the Seventies – captured the life-style of the city’s gay community just before the onslaught of Aids.

Indeed, the US co-producers pulled out of the project when they heard that two men were to kiss on screen. Reid went ahead undeterred and the series was hailed as breaking new grounds and sold worldwide. The actress Olympia Dukakis, who played the central role, said in an interview: “Alastair was the best director I have ever worked with.”

Reid always invested his dramas with an honesty and a keen sense of what best served the storyline. He directed the first and third episodes (and three subsequent) of Morse and, from the outset, gave the programme an identity that it retained throughout its long run.

Reid insisted those early episodes should present the characters credibly and reflect the close-knit community of academic Oxford. Reid ensured the crusty opera-loving inspector was no one-dimensional grumpy copper but gave Morse an endearing quality that made the series one of the most popular on UK television.

Alastair Reid’s father was a school inspector and his mother a well-known antiques dealer. He graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with the intention of becoming a painter. However, he travelled south to study directing at the Bristol Old Vic and, in 1960, joined a trainee director course at Associated Television. In 1964 he got his first job in the studio working on the early soap opera Emergency Ward 10.

Reid steadily built up a good reputation in the industry until in 1971 he directed on his own The Night Digger, written by Roald Dahl and starring Patricia Neal and Graham Crowden. Three years later he was in charge of The Prodigal Daughter starring Alastair Sim and then Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (with David Hemmings and Diana Dors).

He also filmed the cult movie Artemis 81 with Hywel Bennett, Sting and the young Daniel Day-Lewis.

At the end of the decade, Reid was connected with an innovative drama project at BBC’s Pebble Mill in Birmingham. His work included the menacing Gangsters series in 1976 in which Reid introduced handheld cameras, thus concentrating on the action of the film.

In 1989, Traffik, one his most prestigious series, won Reid many awards and acclaim for the intensity he brought to the series. Bill Paterson delivered an exceptional performance as a Home Office minister trying to curtail drug trafficking only to find his own daughter an addict. Reid’s incisive direction made for mesmerising television.

Reid was now one of the most respected directors in television and was offered another major series in 1991. The five-part Selling Hitler had a star cast led by Barry Humphries as Rupert Murdoch and Alan Bennett as Hugh Trevor-Rope. It was based on the book by Robert Harris and told the sensational story of selling Hitler’s alleged diaries (and Mein Kampf Part Two and an opera) to the German press and the Times.

Then Reid filmed Maupin’s Tales of the City in 1993, which again he cast to perfection and filmed with an instinctive understanding of the different strands in gay society. Because of Reid’s conscientious style – allied to his introduction of a laid-back sense of humour – the series achieved worldwide recognition, especially regarding how it dealt with various controversial social subjects.

In 1997, Reid was the director on a much talked about project – to film for the BBC Joseph Conrad’s complex novel Nostromo. It had an excellent cast (Colin Firth, Serena Scott Thomas, Claudia Cardinale and Albert Finney) and much of the filming was done in Colombia. Reid, however, collapsed with exhaustion during the filming and completed the film from his hospital bed.

Reid was a devoted admirer of Alfred Hitchcock and much of the famous director’s understated use of the camera, subtle lighting and a clear-sighted vision of how to let a story unfold was reflected in Reid’s filming.

Reid and his wife Jane opened a vineyard at their house in Stoke St Gregory in Somerset. They enjoyed the annual ritual of picking and fermenting the grapes and many of their famous friends were co-opted for work in the vineyard. Alastair Reid is survived by Jane, his son Alex and two stepdaughters.

ALASDAIR STEVEN