Mark Shivas

Born: 24 April, 1938, in Surrey. Died: 11 October, 2008, in London, aged 70.

MARK Shivas was a television producer of rare insight and distinction. In 1970 he brought to the screen The Six Wives of Henry VIII, the BBC's first major historical drama, and something of a pioneering project. Shivas was greatly respected by actors and directors and had an unerring ability to bring drama to life on the small screen. But he also built up a trust with senior executives of the corporation that led to him being commissioned to supervise many large projects.

Shivas won many awards, but at ceremonies he invariably acted with great modesty and praised others. The fact that he nurtured some of the most talented writers and directors (Anthony Minghella, Alan Bennett, Adam Raphael, Dennis Potter and Tom Stoppard among them) is a reflection of the quality and variety of his output. In the studio Shivas was diplomatic, calm and a man of impeccable taste.

On several occasions Shivas came north to film. The 1966 film Small Faces (written by Gilles MacKinnon) starred Iain Robertson and Joe McFadden and told of the unrelenting gang warfare in 1960s Glasgow. In 1997 Shivas filmed Pat Barker's novel Regeneration (again adapted by MacKinnon) about First World War soldiers in Craiglockhart asylum. The poignant tale of the emotionally damaged men (particularly Jonathan Pryce's Captain Rivers) also subtly captured a sense of life in Edinburgh during the war.

The film makes many local references: to parades in nearby churches; lunch at "a club on Princes Street"; and walks at Cramond. Much of the filming took place in and around the capital, although the battle scenes were filmed outside Airdrie.

Shivas also made Jude, a film adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (with Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet) which used central Edinburgh for scenes set in Oxford.

Mark Shivas attended a local school in Croydon, then read law at Merton College, Oxford. In 1961 he went to work on Movie magazine, where an early assignment was to interview French director Claude Chabrol. Shivas tentatively asked: "Did your last film cost a lot?" The director replied in a flash: "No, it cost very little, but it lost a lot."

In 1964, Shivas joined Granada TV and worked on What The Papers Say. He was then head-hunted by the BBC, where his first production was The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

The drama was first seen in 1971 and was an instant hit. It broke fresh ground at the BBC, not only as the first venture into serious costume drama – with expansive outdoor scenes – but in its attempt to present Tudor history as real-life drama.

The cast, led by Keith Michell, were all excellent and the series established Shivas as a producer of genuine originality who delivered high-quality programmes within budget. The series won awards at Bafta and Prix Italia.

Shivas then worked on successful series such as Casanova (with Frank Finlay), Jack Rosenthal's memories of his wartime childhood Evacuees (directed by Alan Parker) and the hugely acclaimed Glittering Prizes, by Frederick Raphael and starring Tom Conti.

From 1980, Shivas worked as a freelance producer and gave the young Anthony Minghella his first big break, commissioning him to write and then direct plays such as What If It's Raining?, Truly, Madly Deeply and The Storyteller. Shivas did meet with a disappointing flop on BBC2 when he produced the ill-received The Borgias in 1981. By then, Shivas had been appointed head of drama at the BBC and won acclaim for his eight-part series on Winston Churchill, The Wilderness Years, starring Robert Hardy and Sian Philips.

He was also in charge of one of the BBC's most celebrated series, Talking Heads 2. Solo performances from some great actors were brought to television (and made to come alive) thanks to Alan Bennett's penetrating scripts and Shivas's incisive producing. Eileen Atkins, Julie Walters, Maggie Smith and a host of other stars delivered tours de force which marked a high water mark in television drama.

Thereafter Shivas concentrated on films, notably Bennett's A Private Function (with Maggie Smith), although he returned to television in 2003 for the independent production The Cambridge Spies, which retold in graphic detail the saga of Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt.

The filming of A Private Function was far from easy as money was extremely tight and cuts were being made even during filming. It required all Shivas's tact and professionalism to see the project through. As Bennett has written: "Mark had to salvage the film from the financier's cuts. Had we had someone less diplomatic, the film would never have been finished. Watching it, one sees the scars, but without Mark there would have been no film to watch."

Shivas is survived by his civil partner, Karun Thakar.