Michael Feeney Callan

**Michael Feeney Callan** is an Irish novelist and poet. An award winner for his short fiction, he joined BBC television drama as a story editor, and wrote screenplays for *The Professionals*, and for American television.

He wrote the template Irish police drama series, *The Burke Enigma*, starring Donal McCann, and *Love Is*, starring Gabriel Byrne, and went on to write and direct a number of television programmes, among them *The Beach Boys Today*, a film that marked the band's 30th anniversary. He has published several novels and has written biographies of Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins and Richard Harris. His biography of Robert Redford (*Robert Redford: The Biography*; Knopf, 2011) was chosen by the *Sunday Times* as one of its recommended Best Books of 2011. In 2013, he published his second volume of poetry, *An Argument for Sin*.

## Biography

### Prior to Doctor Who

Callan was born to Michael Callan, an engineer, and Margaret (née Feeney) in Drumcondra, Dublin.

Callan won the Hennessy Literary Award for his short story, *Baccy*, and was anthologised in *Best Irish Short Stories* (Elek, London, 1978). Thereafter he diversified widely, publishing fiction and non-fiction.

Callan wrote a series of British television adaptation novels of differing genres, including *Capital City* (ITV), *Target: The Bronze Heist*(Target), *Sweet Sixteen* and *Jockey School* (all BBC), and the novel *Lovers and Dancers*, set in Ireland during the famine. *Lovers and Dancers* was inspired by Anthony Trollope's early writing and was reissued by Random House in the mid-1990s. In 2002, Callan published *Did You Miss Me?*, a novel exploring difficult female themes which was issued in a revised version in 2014.

Callan has written biographies of Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins, and longtime friend Richard Harris. The Connery book was referred to as "a necessity for Connery and Bond fans" by the *Los Angeles Times* and is the sole reference work on Connery quoted in Albert "Cubby" Broccoli's autobiography.

Callan began writing for radio at the outset of his career. He adapted *The Dead Secret* by Wilkie Collins and *Scales of Justice* by Dame Ngaio Marsh for RTÉ Radio, and wrote the original plays *The Train* and *Tripp*. He contributed more than 20 plays to the Dan Treston-produced series Treasure House, dramatising the lives of scientists and artists from Johannes Kepler to Edgar Allan Poe and H.G. Wells.

Callan's first screenplay was the crime series *The Burke Enigma*, a six-hour film production for RTÉ, which starred Ray McAnally and Donal McCann, and went forward as RTÉ's drama entry for the 1979 Prix Italia. According to Callan, this work was "influenced by the film noir I loved as a kid, and by Robert Altman's (filming) style." Subsequently, Callan joined BBC television drama in London, where he story-edited the detective series *Shoestring*. Simultaneously, at ITV, he wrote for the action series *The Professionals*. In the 1980s, Callan collaborated with Frederick Forsyth on Public Broadcasting Service-aired adaptations of Forsyth's stories *Privilege* and *A Careful Man* (Mobil Showcase.

### Work on Doctor Who

Callan was commissioned to write a story for Season 23 of Doctor Who. He penned *The Children of January*.

### After Doctor Who

Collaborating with Anthony Shaffer, Callan was commissioned in 1987 by HBO to write *The Negotiator*, based on a treatment by Forsyth. The series was announced but never filmed and Forsyth later redeveloped the outline into a novel.

For fifteen years from the mid-nineties, Callan travelled throughout the United States interviewing more than 300 sources for *Robert Redford: The Biography* (Knopf, 2011). The book was written with the co-operation of Redford, who traveled to Ireland to work with Callan and provided access to his diaries, scripts and personal records. In the course of its preparation, Callan spent extensive time with many of Redford's key collaborators. *Entertainment Weekly* selected *Robert Redford: The Biography* as one of its 10 Best Movie Books of 2011. *Robert Redford: The Biography* was published in mass market paperback by Vintage Books in 2012.

## Personal Life

After living in London, Callan resettled in Dublin with his wife Ree and their two children. He frequently spends time at Châteauneuf de Grasse, where he paints and sculpts.