Cyril Frankel

Who is Cyril Frankel?

Cyril Frankel is a retired British film and television director. His career in television began in 1953 and he directed for over 30 TV programmes until 1990. He was born in Stoke Newington, London.

He directed many episodes of popular British TV shows, such as The Avengers, and the pilot episodes of the ITC Entertainment shows Randall and Hopkirk and Department S in 1969. In 1970, he directed "Timelash", an episode of UFO, which he described as a very interesting script and one of his personal favourites.

Frankel also directed many documentaries and feature films, including Never Take Sweets from a Stranger and School for Scoundrels. One of his films, Man of Africa - the first film to feature a cast made up of relatively unknown black actors - was not released and was apparently lost. A complete copy has since been discovered and has been screened at a number of international film festivals.

In terms of documentaries, Frankel supervised some of the films that were broadcast for the BBC arts series Monitor, among which was the first ballet programme to be filmed and edited to the choreography.