Patricia "Paddy" Russell (4 July 1928 – 2 November 2017) was a British television director. She was among the earliest female directors at the BBC.<!-- Naomi Capon and Dorothea Brooking both pre-date Russell (and Julia Smith). IMDb is wrong in asserting Russell was "one of the first two [BBC Television] women directors." -->
Early life and career
Born in Highgate, to Bertie Russell, a P&O clerk, and his wife, Alicia (née Quinn) It was only by including a stage management element to her course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama that Russell was able to overcome her father's resistance to her pursuing such a career. She worked on the later Quatermass science-fiction serials, as well as the 1954 adaptation of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the Studio 4 series, she appeared on screen in the Cartier directed Holocaust drama Doctor Korczak and the Children (1962) instructing the actors on the roles they were to perform. The production was made in the unadorned studio without sets or the actors in costume.
She progressed to becoming a director herself, one of the first two women directors in BBC television along with Julia Smith. She directed many television programmes from 1962. She became the first woman to direct episodes of Doctor Who when she directed The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve (1966). She directed three further Doctor Who serials: Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974), Pyramids of Mars (1975), and Horror of Fang Rock (1977). The last two Doctor Who serials featured Tom Baker in the title role. She told Doctor Who Magazine: "Tom Baker was easy to deal with at first, but the part went to his head completely. By the time I did Horror of Fang Rock, he was desperately difficult to work with".