Irene Shubik

Irene Shubik (26 December 1929 – 26 September 2019) was a British television producer and story editor, known for her contribution to the development of the single play in British television drama. Beginning her career in television at ABC Weekend TV, she worked on Armchair Theatre as a story editor, where she devised the science fiction anthology series Out of this World.

Moving to the BBC, she briefly worked as a story editor before being promoted to producer, creating the science fiction anthology television series Out of the Unknown. Leaving Out of the Unknown after two seasons, Shubik co-produced The Wednesday Play, overseeing its transition into Play for Today in 1970. She left the BBC in 1976, and subsequently produced the first season of Rumpole of the Bailey for Thames Television before joining Granada Television where she produced Staying On and devised The Jewel in the Crown. She also wrote film scripts and a novel, The War Guest.

Early life and career Irene Shubik was born in 1929 in Hampstead, London to a Russian-born Jewish father Joseph Shubik, who worked for a Scottish textile company and a French Jewish mother, Sara (née Soloveychik). When World War II broke out in 1939, she was evacuated to Canada with her mother and Martin, her brother. She read English literature at University College London, Uninterested in a career in academia, she applied to join the BBC but was turned down. Shubik was subsequently offered a twelve-month contract with the National Film Board of Canada but was unable to take up the position as both of her parents had become seriously ill.

Television career With ABC Weekend TV By 1960, now back in England, Shubik's career was back at square one. She contributed occasional scripts to documentary series such as Associated-Rediffusion's This Week before securing employment at ABC Weekend TV. At ABC, she worked as a story editor for producer Sydney Newman on the anthology series Armchair Theatre, overseeing such plays as Where I Live by Clive Exton, A Night Out by Harold Pinter and After The Funeral by Alun Owen. An enthusiast of science fiction, while working on Armchair Theatre she oversaw Murder Club, an adaptation of Robert Sheckley’s novel Seventh Victim. Its success enabled her to persuade Newman to develop a science fiction version of Armchair Theatre – this became Out of This World, a thirteen part anthology series, hosted by Boris Karloff, that aired between 30 June 1962 and 22 September 1962. Many of the stories featured in Out of this World were adaptations of stories by science fiction authors including Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and Clifford D. Simak.

At the BBC When Sydney Newman was poached by the BBC to head up their drama department in late 1962, he invited Shubik to join him. Accepting the offer, on the condition that she be promoted to producer within a year, Shubik joined the BBC in 1963 and became the story editor for Story Parade, an anthology series of adaptations of modern novels that was intended to be the main drama strand for the new channel BBC2 due to be launched in 1964. One of the best-received installments of Story Parade that Shubik worked was an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's 1954 novel The Caves of Steel starring Peter Cushing. Just as the success of “Murder Club” had enabled Shubik to persuade Newman to commission Out of this World, so The Caves of Steel’s positive reception opened the door for Shubik to devise a similar anthology series for BBC2 called Out of the Unknown, on which Shubik acted as story editor and producer. Like Out of this World, under Shubik's stewardship Out of the Unknown concentrated mainly on adaptations of science fiction stories including works by Frederik Pohl, Ray Bradbury, J. G. Ballard and Isaac Asimov (of whom Shubik was a particular fan, commissioning adaptations of six of his works for Out of the Unknown, once commenting that he was "one of the most interesting and amusing men I have ever met"). Among the most notable productions were adaptations of Kate Wilhelm’s Andover and the Android, John Brunner’s Some Lapse of Time, E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops and Mordecai Roshwald’s Level 7. The adaptation of The Machine Stops won the first prize at the Fifth Festival Internazionale del Film di Fantascienza (International Science Fiction Film Festival) in Trieste on 17 July 1967.

In parallel with producing the second season of Out of the Unknown, Shubik produced Thirteen Against Fate, a series of adaptations of short crime stories by Maigret creator Georges Simenon broadcast between 19 June 1966 and 11 September 1966.

In 1967, as she began work assembling scripts for the third season of Out of the Unknown, Shubik accepted the chance to take over as co-producer (with Graeme MacDonald) of The Wednesday Play, BBC1’s premier drama slot, producing such plays as Tony Parker's “Mrs Lawrence Will Look After It”, William Trevor's “A Night With Mrs Ta Danka” and Peter Terson's “The Last Train Through the Harecastle Tunnel”. In 1970, she oversaw the transition of The Wednesday Play into Play for Today. The most well received play she oversaw for Play for Today was Jeremy Sandford's "Edna, the Inebriate Woman", which was later ranked 57th in the British Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes published in 2000. However, Ednas writer Jeremy Sandford later wrote that Shubik seemed to "sabotage" the effectiveness of the play influencing policy makers in her 1975 book on television drama by questioning the veracity of its content. She left Thames for Granada Television, her professional relationship with Lambert having seriously deteriorated, where she was hired to produce an adaptation of Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet.

When Granada got cold feet about the scale of the project and the cost of filming in India, Shubik suggested that she produce an adaptation of Scott's Staying On as a pilot. Staying On was made in 1980 and put stars Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson together on screen again for the first time since Brief Encounter. Its success led Granada to give the go ahead to the Raj Quartet, which was filmed as The Jewel in the Crown and became one of Granada's most celebrated productions, placed twenty-second in the British Film Institute's 100 Greatest British Television Programmes. The award was presented to Prime Suspect, but following the ceremony four of the other seven members of the jury signed a public statement declaring that they had voted for G.B.H. to win. Jeremy Sandford pointed to Shubik's feud with Verity Lambert (who was the executive producer of G.B.H.) as an explanation for the incident.

Production credits