Robert Sidaway, who has died aged 82, spent a decade as a busy actor in popular British television programmes before utilising his entrepreneurial and creative skills to flourish behind the camera.
He had a great mainstream success with the documentary series Best of British (1987-94), which explored UK film from the 1930s to the 1980s. It was co-written and produced with his son Ashley, with whom he enjoyed a fruitful 40-year professional partnership.
Having discovered that the film libraries at the Rank Organisation were free to licence Robert found himself “picking up 30 cans of film, putting them in a supermarket trolley and trundling them down Wardour Street to the post-production studio we were using. I remember thinking: ‘I hope nobody sees me – we should have an assistant doing this’.”
The result, a series of compilations featuring clips from classic films grouped together thematically, narrated first by John Mills and then Anthony Quayle, was broadcast on prime time BBC television over 67 episodes. “The BBC needed a filler against Coronation Street,” he recalled “and it did so well we got five seasons of it.”
A series along similar lines for Channel 4 in 1994 – The World of Hammer – raided that studio’s blood-spattered archive and was narrated by Oliver Reed. Cult-Tastic: Tales from the Trenches (2019), with Roger and Julie Corman, showcased the independent film-maker along similar lines.
The enterprising father and son were also early advocates of digital film-making. They wrote and produced Rainbow (1995), a children’s fantasy with ambitious effects sequences directed by and starring Bob Hoskins. Developed amid an atmosphere of industry scepticism, it became the first all-digital feature production, but suffered distribution woes and was never released theatrically in the US. Sidaway was, nonetheless, satisfied that he had proved the doubters wrong and showed what could be done with technology now commonplace in the industry.
He spent decades in independent international film production and development, and the results included Nouvelle-France (with Gérard Depardieu, 2004), Modigliani (starring Andy Garcia, 2004) and Joy Division (2006). He also co-wrote Into the Rainbow (2017) – a China-New Zealand co-production shot in 3D.
Robert was born in Wolverhampton to Ronald “Bill” Sidaway, the managing director of a large manufacturing firm, Ductile Steels, in Willenhall, and his wife, Beryl (nee Webb). He attended Tettenhall college, Wolverhampton, and then Trent college in Long Eaton, Nottingham.
Having had a taste of professional experience at the Grand theatre, Wolverhampton, in 1958 he trained at Lamda in London (1960-62). His first professional job was at the request of his friend Donald Sutherland, who needed someone to replace him at Chesterfield repertory theatre.
Stints on the regional stage then followed, including playing Algernon to Flora Robson’s Lady Bracknell (Newcastle, 1964). In the West End his credits included A Public Mischief (St Martin’s theatre, 1965), The Magistrate (with Alastair Sim, Cambridge theatre, 1969) and Abelard and Heloise (with Diana Rigg and Keith Michell, Wyndham’s theatre, 1970).
His television credits included No Hiding Place (1963), Sergeant Cork, (1964), Out of the Unknown (1965) and The Avengers (1968). The second of his two roles in Doctor Who – as the cheery, affable and dashing Captain Turner in the Patrick Troughton adventure The Invasion (1968) – involved him going up in a helicopter, being an original member of Unit (the army outfit that would become a mainstay of the series), and announcing one of the series’ most enduring sequences – the Cybermen bursting from the sewers and marching in front of St Paul’s Cathedral.
When he appeared in a few episodes of the Midland soap opera Crossroads in 1973 (as a love interest for Susan Hanson’s Diane Parker) he found himself being asked to join the writing team – alas his humorous style did not find favour with the star Noele Gordon and he was fired after six months.
From the early 70s he had worked in public relations and marketing for London theatre managements and then became a producer for shows including No Sex Please, We’re British (Strand theatre, 1971), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (on tour, 1975) and a West End run of Anastasia (1976).
Moving to television, a silent comedy pilot he wrote and produced – The Optimist (1983-85), partly filmed in LA and starring Enn Reitel as a cross between Mr Bean and Walter Mitty – became one of Channel 4’s first commissions and ran for two series.
Dogged to the last, he had two co-productions in Canada on the go and had been working in Sri Lanka in order to gain funding for a passion project set there – a love story called Rachel’s Song – when he was taken ill in Thailand, where he died.
His marriage to Margaret Don in 1964 (after they met in repertory at Pitlochry) ended in divorce. Ashley, their son, survives him, as does Kate, the daughter from his 1977 marriage to Sandra Miller, which also ended in divorce.
• Robert Sidaway, actor, writer and producer, born 24 January 1942; died 16 August 2024
