London TV Award Nomination Alan Bleasdale: 'Over the last 40 years, Bleasdale has created an astonishing body of work which champions the disenfranchised British working-classes.'

Revered Liverpudlian dramatist Alan Bleasdale made a grand return to his key medium in 2011 with The Sinking of the Laconia, a two-part TV film about the sinking of the former British ocean liner RMS Laconia in World War Two. The liner – whose crew were mainly from Liverpool - was attacked by a German U-boat off the coast of Africa, but upon realising the ship carried civilians, the Commander took the decision to rescue the passengers along with three other U-boats and an Italian submarine, all of which were then attacked by an American bomber. The cast included Lindsay Duncan and Brian Cox.

Over the last 40 years, Bleasdale has created an astonishing body of work which champions the disenfranchised British working-classes. His social-realist visions of the lives and culture of ‘ordinary’ men and women have mercifully kept a good deal of their portrayal out of the hands of the media’s middle-class tyrants. Whether tackling lives blighted by Thatcher’s reign of terror in Boys from the Blackstuff or corruption in northern politics in G.B.H., the constant themes are always handled with a leavening black humour. Photo BFI