Peter Sykes

Peter Sykes (June 17, 1939 – March 1, 2006) was an Australian television and film director who worked primarily in the United Kingdom. According to FilmInk, "auteurist critics always seem to pass him by."

Career Sykes was born in Melbourne and worked as a dancer, then as an assistant director on documentaries and children's shows on Australian television. He moved to London in 1963.

Sykes wrote to a fellow Australian, Donald Levy, admiring a documentary Levy had made called Time In. Sykes worked for Levy as an assistant on the film Herostratus. Sykes did an 18-month training cadetship with the BBC then made the documentary Walkabout to Cornwall (1966).

Sykes was commissioned to make a series of films for the British Pavilion exhibit at Expo 67 in Montreal. The series was called Britain Around the World. It led to him meeting Peter Brook who invited Sykes to produce Tell Me Lies (1968).

Features Max Steuer admired Walkabout to Cornwall and he invited Sykes to direct The Committee. According to Sight and Sound the film "had a fairly successful if controversial art house career" and while being "top heavy with rather pretentious theatrical dialogue... contained good sequences and was put together with some flair." Kenneth Tynan called it "admirable".

On the strength of this, Sykes was asked to direct some episodes of The Avengers. Sykes recalled they told him, "Look, we've seen this film. We don't understand it, but it looks fantastic, the atmosphere is amazing. Would you come and direct The Avengers? He says "It was a passport for me to do something completely different."

One of his Avengers episodes, "Noon Doomsday", was much praised. Sykes was set to direct a war film, The Rules of War, but that fell through and instead he directed Venom which he called "a romantic fantasy with horror overtones".

Sykes directed the last of the Hammer horror films until 2008, To the Devil a Daughter (1976).

Later career Sykes went to France in 1977 to direct the series Magicians of the Future. He was meant to return to Australia to direct Eddie and the Breakthrough (also known as Eddie and the Lucky Peanut) but the film was never made. He went to Israel to direct Jesus.

Sykes went to Greece to make The Search for Alexander the Great and then to Ireland for the second series of The Irish R.M..

Sykes directed The Lost Secret for the BBC and The Defectors for Video Arts

In the 1990s, he taught scriptwriting at the University of Winchester while also directing for Danish television.

Sykes died in 2006.

Selected filmography South Bank (1964) (documentary) - assistant editor Walkabout to Cornwall (1966) (documentary about surfers) - director Britain Around the World (1967) (17 short documentaries) - director The Avengers (1967–68) (TV series) - director Tell Me Lies (1968) - documentary about the play US - executive producer The Committee (1968) - director, writer Venom (aka The Legend of Spider Forest) (1971) - director Demons of the Mind (1972) - director The House in Nightmare Park (1973) - director Steptoe and Son Ride Again (1973) - director Orson Welles Great Mysteries (1973–74) (TV series) - director To the Devil a Daughter (1976) - director Les magiciens du futur (1978) (TV movie) - director Jesus (1979) - director Emmerdale (1980) (TV series) - director The Search for Alexander the Great (1981) (TV series) - director The Blues Band (1981) - director The Irish R.M. (1984) (TV series) - director The Lost Secret (1985) - director MAC Satellite Broadcasting (1988) (documentary) - director The Other Britain (1989) (documentary) - director Castle of Holstebro (1990) - director The Merger (1995) (TV drama) - director Kaosmos (1996) (Danish TV) - director