Graham Williams

Who was Graham Williams?

Graham Williams was a British television producer and script editor, whose best known work was on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.

After working as script editor for The View From Daniel Pike, Sutherland's Law, Z-Cars and Barlow at Large, he was encouraged by his friend Bill Slater, then BBC Head of Serials, to move to producership and was eventually charged with taking over Doctor Who after Philip Hinchcliffe's highly successful but controversial spell in charge of the series.

He was the producer on the show between 1977 and 1980, during the Tom Baker era. Under Hinchcliffe, the series had been at its most popular, with the highest average viewing figures, but had also come under heavy media criticism for the violent content. Upon taking over the reins of the series, Williams was instructed by BBC drama bosses to tone down the violence. Williams later said of his time on Doctor Who: "It all went wrong right from the start, when I was told to make the show more funny, and less violent. Unfortunately, this would have required a lot of money, of which we had practically sod all. Tom Baker, however, thought it was a splendid idea, and kept putting in all these bad puns and terrible jokes, which didn't get any better when I brought Dougie Adams in."