Stephen Russell Davies ( ; born 27 April 1963), known professionally as Russell T Davies, is a Welsh screenwriter and television producer. He is best known for being the original showrunner and head writer of the revival of the BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who, from 2005 to 2010 and again since 2023. His other notable works include creating the series Queer as Folk (1999–2000), Bob & Rose (2001), The Second Coming (2003), Casanova (2005), Doctor Who spin-offs Torchwood (2006–2011), The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–2011), and The War Between the Land and the Sea (2025), Cucumber (2015), A Very English Scandal (2018), Years and Years (2019), It's a Sin (2021) and Nolly (2023).
Born in Swansea, Davies had aspirations as a comic artist before focusing on being a playwright and screenwriter. After graduating from Oxford University, he joined the BBC's children's department, CBBC, in 1985 on a part-time basis and held various positions, which included creating two series, Dark Season and Century Falls. He eventually left the BBC for Granada Television, and in 1994 began writing adult television drama. His early scripts generally explored concepts of religion and sexuality among various backdrops: Revelations was a soap opera about organised religion and featured a lesbian vicar; Springhill was a soap drama about a Catholic family in contemporary Liverpool; The Grand explored society's opinion of subjects such as prostitution, abortion and homosexuality during the interwar period; and Queer as Folk recreated his experiences in the Manchester gay scene. His work in the 2000s included Bob & Rose, which portrayed a gay man who fell in love with a woman; The Second Coming, which focused on the second coming and deicide of Jesus Christ from a mostly non-religious point of view; Mine All Mine, a comedy about a family who discover they own the entire city of Swansea; and his return to the BBC with BBC Three's Casanova (produced concurrently with the Doctor Who revival but broadcast first), an adaptation of the complete memoirs of Venetian adventurer Giacomo Casanova.
Following the show's sixteen-year hiatus, Davies revived and ran Doctor Who for the period between 2005 and 2010, with Christopher Eccleston and later David Tennant starring as the Doctor. Davies's tenure as executive producer of the show saw a surge in popularity which led to the production of two spin-off series, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, and the revival of Saturday prime-time dramas as a profitable venture for production companies. Davies was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2008 for services to drama, which coincided with the announcement he would step down from Doctor Who as the show's executive producer with his final script, "The End of Time" (2009–2010). Davies moved to Los Angeles in 2009, where he oversaw production of Torchwood: Miracle Day and the fifth and final series of The Sarah Jane Adventures. After his partner developed cancer in late 2011, Davies returned to the UK. In September 2021, shortly before the filming of Chris Chibnall's era had wrapped, Davies was announced as returning Doctor Who showrunner; the first episodes of his second tenure are the show's sixtieth anniversary specials in 2023, with Tennant leading in the specials, and Ncuti Gatwa becoming the new Doctor from December 2023 to May 2025. Davies's second tenure included production of another spin-off show he created called The War Between the Land and the Sea.
In the 2010s Davies co-created the CBBC science fantasy drama Wizards vs Aliens, and created Cucumber, a Channel 4 series about middle-aged gay men in the Manchester gay scene; Banana, an E4 series about young LGBT people in the Cucumber universe; and Tofu, an All 4 documentary series which discussed LGBT issues. Davies's later work for BBC One in the 2010s include a television film adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream; A Very English Scandal, a miniseries adaptation of the 2016 novel A Very English Scandal; and Years and Years, a drama series which follows a Manchester family affected by political, economic, and technological changes to Britain over 15 years. Davies returned to Channel 4 for a third time in 2021 as creator of It's a Sin, a semi-autobiographical drama about the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. Later in the 2020s he worked with former Red Production Company owner and longtime collaborator Nicola Shindler at Shindler's Quay Street Productions company on ITV's Nolly, a biographical miniseries about Crossroads soap opera star Noele Gordon, and Channel 4's Tip Toe, a miniseries about two Manchester gay men facing an anti-LGBTQ+ culture war in the 2020s.
Early life
Stephen Russell Davies was born on 27 April 1963 at Mount Pleasant Hospital in Swansea. His father, Vivian Davies, and his mother, Barbara, were teachers. Davies was the youngest of three children and their only son. Because he was born by caesarean section, his mother was placed on a morphine drip and was institutionalised after an overdose resulted in a psychotic episode. He described his mother's experience as "literally ... like science fiction" and an early inspiration for his writing career. As a child, Davies was almost always referred to by his middle name. He grew up in a household that "never switched the TV off" until after closedown, and he subsequently became immersed in dramas such as I, Claudius and Doctor Who. One of his first memories, at the age of three, was the 1966 Doctor Who serial The Tenth Planet. He was also an avid cartoonist and comics enthusiast, and purchased series such as Asterix and Peanuts.
Davies attended Tycoch Primary School in Sketty in Swansea, and enrolled at Olchfa School aged 11. In his first year, the main school buildings were closed for rebuilding after inspectors discovered the high alumina cement used in construction had caused other public buildings to collapse. Lessons were instead held in portable buildings, which influenced Davies's imagination to create mystery, science-fiction, and conspiracy thriller stories about the main building. He also immersed himself in books such as Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence and The Crystal Mouse by Babs Hodges Deal; the latter influenced him so much he could "see it echoing in anything" he wrote. At age 14, he auditioned for and joined the newly formed West Glamorgan Youth Theatre Company (WGYTC). The group's founder and director, Godfrey Evans, considered him to be "a total all-rounder" who was talented and popular with the other students. Working with the group allowed him to define his sexual identity, and he embarked on a several-month relationship with fellow youth actor Rhian Morgan. He later came out as homosexual in his teenage years.
In 1979, Davies completed his O-Levels and stayed at Olchfa with the ambition to study English literature at the University of Oxford; he abandoned his aspirations of becoming a comic artist after a careers advisor convinced him that his colour-blindness would make that path unlikely. During his studies, he participated in the WGYTC's assignments to create Welsh language drama to be performed at the National Eisteddfod of Wales; two such productions were Pair Dadeni, a play based on the Mabinogion myth cycle, and Perthyn, a drama about community belonging and identity in early-1980s West Glamorgan. In 1981, he was accepted by Worcester College, Oxford to study English literature. At Oxford, he realised he was enamoured with the narrative aspect of fiction, especially 19th-century literature such as that by Charles Dickens.
Davies continued to submit scripts to the WGYT during his studies at Oxford, including Box, a play about the influence of television which Evans noted contained Davies's penchants for misdirecting the audience and mixing comedy and drama; In Her Element, which centred on the animation of still objects; and Hothouse, an Alan Bennett-inspired piece about internal politics in an advertising office. In 1984, he made his final performance for the WGYT and signed up for a course in Theatre Studies at Cardiff University after he graduated from Oxford. He worked sporadically for the Sherman Theatre's publicity department and claimed unemployment benefit in the interim. In 1985, Davies began his professional television career after a friend suggested he should talk to a television producer who was seeking a temporary graphic artist for the children's show Why Don't You?.
Children's television career (1985–1993)
Davies was taken as a member of the BBC Wales children's department (CBBC) in 1985 and given one-day contracts and commissions, such as illustrating for Why Don't You?. As he was only given three days of work per month by the BBC, he continued to freelance and volunteer for the Sherman Theatre. In 1986, he was approached by the Sunday Sport before its launch to provide a football-themed daily strip; he declined because he was concerned about the pornographic content of the newspaper. He submitted a script for Crossroads in response to an appeal for new writers; it was not used because the show was cancelled in 1987. He ultimately abandoned his graphic art career entirely when he realised in his early twenties that he enjoyed writing the dialogue of a comic more than creating the art.
On 1 June 1987, Davies made his first and only appearance as a television presenter on Play School alongside regular presenter Chloe Ashcroft. Why Don't You? line producer Peter Charlton suggested that he would "be good on camera" and advised him to take his career public. Davies was granted the opportunity for sporadic appearances over a period of six months; he hosted only one episode as a storytelling illustrator before he walked off the set and commented he was "not doing that again". The appearance remains an in-joke in the industry, and the recordings were invariably requested for wrap parties Davies attended.
On Why Don't You?, Davies held various jobs including: researcher, director, illustrator, assistant floor manager and unofficial publicist for fan-mail. He was offered his first professional scriptwriting job in 1986 by producer Dave Evans; he had entered Evans's office to collect his wages and was offered an extra £100 to write a replacement script. Davies's script was positively received by the CBBC and led to increasingly larger roles which culminated in a six-month contract to write for the show after it relocated to Manchester in 1988. He worked for the show for two more years and became the show's producer. He oversaw an increase in drama which tripled its audience—despite the fact BBC Manchester was not permitted by the corporation to create children's dramas—which reached its climax with his last episode: a drama where the Why Don't You? protagonists, led by the show's longest running presenter Ben Slade, were trapped in a café by a supercomputer which tried to kill them.
While producing Why Don't You?, Davies branched out within CBBC at BBC Manchester: he attended directors' courses; wrote for older audiences with his contributions to DEF II and On the Waterfront; and accompanied Keith Chegwin to Norway to assist in the production of a children's documentary about politics. The head of CBBC, Ed Pugh, offered him the chance to produce Breakfast Serials, a new series scheduled for an 8:00 am slot. Breakfast Serials incorporated elements of non-sequitur comedy and popular culture references aimed at older children, such as a parody of Land of the Giants. He decided to leave CBBC during the production of Breakfast Serials: a friend called him after the first episode was transmitted and observed he had "broadcast a joke about the juvenilia of Emily Brontë at eight o'clock in the morning"; the conversation caused him to reflect he was writing for the wrong audience. Davies worked as a writer on three more children's series while he pursued an adult drama career, creating Dark Season and Century Falls, and writing for Children's Ward.
Dark Season and Century Falls
alt=Kate Winslet at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in 2011.|thumb|upright|Dark Season was a breakthrough role for actress [[Kate Winslet.]]
During his tenure on Why Don't You?, Davies oversaw the production of a story that took place in Loch Ness. The story was the precursor for his first freelance children's project: Dark Season. The show, originally called The Adventuresome Three, would feature the Why Don't You? characters in a purely dramatic setting influenced by his childhood. He submitted the script to the head of CBBC, Anna Home, and Granada Television. Both companies were interested in producing the show with minor changes: Granada wished to produce it as one six-part serial, as opposed to Davies's plan of two three-part serials; and Home was interested in accepting the show on the condition it included a new cast of characters. He accepted Home's offer, and the show was allocated the budget and timeslot of Maid Marian and her Merry Men, which had been put on hiatus the year before.
The first three episodes of Dark Season feature three young teenagers in a contemporary secondary school, Reet (Kate Winslet), Marcie (Victoria Lambert), and Tom (Ben Chandler), who discover a plot by the villain Mr Eldritch (Grant Parsons) to take over the world using school computers. Eldritch is eventually defeated by Marcie and the computer expert Professor Polzinsky (Rosalie Crutchley). The next three episodes focus on a new villain: the archaeologist Miss Pendragon (Jacqueline Pearce), later described by Davies as a "devil worshipping Nazi lesbian", who becomes a part of the ancient supercomputer Behemoth. The two distinct plot elements converge at the end of the fifth episode, when Pendragon crashes through the school stage as Eldritch walks into the auditorium.
Dark Season uses concepts seen in his tenure as executive producer of Doctor Who: "School Reunion", written by Toby Whithouse, shares its concept of the antagonist using computers in a comprehensive school to take over the world; "Army of Ghosts" unexpectedly brings together the series' two major villains for the final episode; and the characters of Marcie and her friends are similar, albeit unintentionally, to the structure of the Doctor and their companions. Dark Season was the first series he was credited as "Russell T Davies"—the initial arbitrarily chosen to distinguish himself from the BBC Radio 4 presenter—and the first series he was commissioned to write a novelisation: it features a more ambiguous climax and foreshadows a sequel set in an arcade similar to the one featured in The Sarah Jane Adventures serial, Warriors of Kudlak.
Davies started planning a second series for Dark Season, which followed a similar structure. The first half of the series would take part in the arcade mentioned in the novelisation, and the second would feature the appearance of psychic twins and the re-emergence of the villain Eldritch. The concepts were transferred to its spiritual successor, Century Falls, which was produced in 1993 at the request of Dark Season director Colin Cant. The series primarily used the "psychic twins" concept and was set in an isolated village based on those in the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors.
The plot of Century Falls is driven by a legend that no children had been born in the eponymous village for more than forty years. The protagonist, Tess Hunter (Catherine Sanderson), is an overweight teenager who moves to the village with her mother at the beginning of the serial. She quickly befriends the psychic Ben Naismith (Simon Fenton) and his twin sister Carey (Emma Jane Lavin). The three teenagers examine the waterfall that gave Ben his powers and the disaster which caused the legendary infertility. The serial climaxes in a confrontation between Tess and the deity Century, who is attempting to fuse with Tess's unborn sister.
Century Falls is conceptually much darker than its predecessor Dark Season and his later work, which Davies attributed to a trend that inexperienced writers "get off on the dark stuff": In a BAFTA interview with Davies, Home recalled she "very nearly got into trouble because it did actually push at the boundaries which some of the powers-that-be would rather not have been pushed". The series offered a sense of realism in its protagonist, who is not heroic and aspirational, has poor social skills, and is bluntly described by Ben as a "fat girl". a game show based on the board game Cluedo, and Do the Right Thing, a localised version of the Brazilian panel show Você Decide with Terry Wogan as presenter and Frank Skinner as a regular panellist. One writing job, for The House of Windsor, a soap opera about footmen in Buckingham Palace, was so poorly received his other scripts for the show would be written under the pseudonym Leo Vaughn.
In 1994, Davies relinquished all of his producing jobs, and was offered a scriptwriting role on the late-night soap opera Revelations, created by him, Tony Wood, and Brian B. Thompson. The series was a tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of organised religion, and featured his first overtly homosexual character: a lesbian vicar portrayed by Sue Holderness, who came out of the closet in a two-hander episode with Carole Nimmons.
Davies attributes the revelation about Holderness's character as a consequence of both the "pressure cooker nature" of the show and the recent ordination of female vicars in the Church of England. He let his contract with Granada expire and pitched a new early-evening soap opera to Channel 4, RU, with its creator Bill Moffat, Sandra Hastie, a producer on Moffat's previous series Press Gang, and co-writer Paul Cornell. Although the slot was eventually taken by Hollyoaks, he and Cornell mutually benefited from the pitch: Davies introduced Cornell to the Children's Ward producers and established contact with Moffat's son Steven, and Cornell introduced Davies to Virgin Publishing. Davies wrote one Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures novel, Damaged Goods, in which the Doctor tracks a Class A drug tainted by Time Lord technology across several galaxies. The book includes several themes which Davies would intersperse in his later works—including a family called "Tyler" and companion Chris Cwej participating in casual homosexual sex— and a subplot formed the inspiration for The Mother War, a proposed but never produced thriller for Granada about a woman, Eva Jericho, and a calcified foetus in her uterus.
Davies continued to propose dramas to Channel 4. The next drama to be commissioned was Springhill, an apocalyptic soap-opera, co-created by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Paul Abbott, which aired simultaneously on Sky One and Channel 4 in 1996–97. Set in suburban Liverpool, the series focuses on the devoutly Catholic Freeman family and their encounter and conflict with Eva Morrigan (Katharine Rogers). He storylined for the second series, but submitted fewer scripts; Granada had commissioned him to write for their soap The Grand, temporarily storyline for Coronation Street, and write the straight-to-video special, Coronation Street: Viva Las Vegas!. The second series of Springhill continued his penchant for symbolism; in particular, it depicted Marion Freeman (Judy Holt) and Eva as personifications of good and evil, and climaxed with a finale set in an ultra-liberal dystopian future where premarital sex and homosexuality are embraced by the Church. Boyce later commented that without Davies's input, the show would have been a "dry run" for Abbott's hit show Shameless.
The Grand
Davies's next project was The Grand, a period soap drama set in a Manchester hotel during the interwar period. It was designed to be a valuable show in a ratings war with the BBC and was scheduled at 9 pm on a Friday night. After the original writer abandoned the series, Granada approached him to write the entire show. His scripts for the first series reflect the pessimism of the period; each episode added its own emotional trauma on the staff; these included a soldier's execution for desertion, a destitute maid who threatened to illegally abort her unborn child to survive, and a multi-episode about the chambermaid, Monica Jones (Jane Danson), who kills her rapist in self-defence, is arrested, and eventually hanged for murder. The show was renewed for a second series despite the first's dark tone.
The second series had a lighter tone and greater emphasis on character development, which Davies attributed to his friend Sally, who had previously warned him of the adult humour in Breakfast Serials; she told him his show was too bleak to be compared to real life. He highlighted the sixth and eighth episodes of the second series as a time of maturity as a writer: for the sixth, he utilised then-unconventional narrative devices such as flashbacks to explore the hotel barman's closeted homosexuality and the societal attitudes towards sexuality in the 1920s; and he highlighted the eighth as when he allowed the series to "take on its own life" by deliberately inserting plot devices such as McGuffins to enhance the comic relief of the series.
Although well received, the series' ratings were not high enough to warrant a third series. After its cancellation in September 1997, Davies had an existential crisis after almost dying from an accidental overdose; the experience persuaded him to detoxify and make a name for himself by producing a series which celebrated his homosexuality.
Queer as Folk
thumb|Manchester's [[gay district on Canal Street was a major source of inspiration for Queer as Folk and, later, Bob & Rose.|alt=Canal Street during Europride 2003: several rainbow flags adorn the exterior of bars along the road.]]
After his near-death experience, Davies started to develop a series for Channel 4 which reflected the "hedonistic lifestyle" of the gay quarter of Manchester he was leaving behind. Encouraged by ex-Granada executives Catriona MacKenzie and Gub Neil to "go gay", the series focused on a group of friends in Manchester's gay scene, tentatively titled The Other End of the Ballroom, and later, Queer as Fuck.
By February 1998, when he completed the first draft for the series première, the series was known under its eventual title Queer as Folk. The series emulates dramas such as Band of Gold in presenting realistic discussion on sexuality, as opposed to "one-sided" gay characters in soap operas such as EastEnders, and eschews "heavy-handed discussion" of issues such as HIV; the show instead focuses on the party scene on Canal Street.
After he wrote the pilot, he approached actors for the main characters. Christopher Eccleston was Davies's first choice for the role of Stuart Jones; Eccleston declined because of his age and suggested his friend Aidan Gillen instead. The roles of Vince Tyler and Nathan Maloney were given to Craig Kelly and Charlie Hunnam, and the secondary character Alexander Perry, originally written for the television producer Phil Collinson during his brief acting career, was portrayed by Antony Cotton, who later played the gay character Sean Tully in Coronation Street. The series was allocated a £3 million budget, and was produced by Red Productions, then owned by his friend and former colleague Nicola Shindler, and filmed by director Charles McDougall and Sarah Hardin on location in Manchester. The eight 40-minute episodes emulated experiences from his social life and includes an episode where the minor character Phil Delaney (Jason Merrells) dies of a cocaine overdose, unnoticed by his social circle.
The series was aired in early 1999, when Parliament were discussing LGBT equality; the series première aired on the day the House of Lords was discussing the Sexual Offences Bill 1999, which eventually reduced the age of consent for homosexual couples to 16. The première was controversial, in particular because it depicted the character Nathan, aged 15, in sexual intercourse with an older man; the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom received 136 complaints and the series received criticism from Hunnam's parents and from activist Mary Whitehouse. The controversy was amplified when the sponsor Beck's withdrew after several episodes and homosexual activists complained the series was not representative of gay culture. Nevertheless, the show garnered 3.5 million viewers per episode and a generally positive reaction from fans, and was renewed for a two-episode special due for the following year.
Queer as Folk 2 was broadcast in 2000 and was driven by the plot element of Vince's half-sister's wedding. The specials place emphasis on Vince and Stuart's relationship, and ends with their departure for another gay scene in a pastiche of Grease, as Nathan took the role as the leader of the Manchester scene's next generation. The show ended on 22 February 2000. On the heels of the special, Davies pitched the spin-off Misfits, a late-night soap opera set in a boarding house owned by Vince's mother, Hazel, and The Second Coming, a series which depicted the Second Coming of Christ in contemporary Manchester. Misfits was rejected in December 2000 and The Second Coming was initially approved by Channel 4 but later rejected after a change of executive personnel. Instead of contesting the cancellation of The Second Coming, he left Channel 4 and vowed to not work with them again until Cucumber and Banana were commissioned in 2013.<!--the announcement was in 2013, they aired in 2015--> The subplot climaxes in the fourth episode, when Monica and Bob lead a rally into direct action by handcuffing themselves to a bus run by a company whose management donated millions to keeping the law on the books; the scene directly parallels protests against the transport company Stagecoach due to their founder Brian Souter's financial and political support of Section 28—at one point, Davies intended to explicitly name Stagecoach in the script— In 2020 he tweeted that he was mistaken, sharing photographs of a spec script from 1986 called Mind of the Hodiac.
During the late 1990s, Davies lobbied the BBC to revive the show from its hiatus and reached the discussion stages in late 1998 and early 2002. His proposals would update the show to be better suited for a 21st-century audience: the series would be recorded on film instead of videotape; the length of each episode would double from twenty-five minutes to fifty; episodes would primarily take place on Earth, in the style of the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) UNIT episodes; and Davies would remove "excess baggage" from the mythology such as Gallifrey and the Time Lords. Davies's pitch competed against Dan Freedman's proposed retool as a fantasy series, Matthew Graham's gothic horror-styled reboot, and the Mark Gatiss—Gareth Roberts—Clayton Hickman pitch which made the Doctor the audience surrogate character, instead of his companions. Davies also took cues from American fantasy television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville, most notably Buffys concepts of series-long story arcs and the "Big Bad". Ultimately, with the exception of select shots including a slow-motion martial arts sequence, Doctor Who was not filmed on 16mm or 35mm film, and initially Davies's revival was shot on Digital Betacam.
In August 2003, the BBC had resolved the legal confusion over production rights which had surfaced as a result of the jointly produced Universal Studios–BBC–20th Century Fox 1996 Doctor Who film, and the Controller of BBC One Lorraine Heggessey and Controller of Drama Commissioning Jane Tranter approached Gardner and Davies to create a revival of the series to air in a primetime slot on Saturday nights, as part of their plan to devolve production to its regional bases. By mid-September, they accepted the deal to produce the series alongside Casanova.
Davies's pitch for Doctor Who was the first one he wrote voluntarily; previously, he opted to outline concepts of shows to commissioning executives and offer to write the pilot episode because he felt a pitch made him "feel like [he's] killing the work". The fifteen-page pitch outlined a Doctor who was "your best friend; someone you want to be with all the time", the 19-year-old Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) as a "perfect match" for the new Doctor, avoidance of the 40-year back story "except for the good bits", the retention of the TARDIS, sonic screwdriver, and Daleks, removal of the Time Lords, and a greater focus on humanity. His pitch was submitted for the first production meeting in December 2003 and a series of thirteen episodes was obtained by pressure from BBC Worldwide and a workable budget from Julie Gardner.
The first new series of Doctor Who featured eight scripts by Davies; the remainder were allocated to experienced dramatists and writers for the show's ancillary releases: Steven Moffat penned a two-episode story, and Mark Gatiss, Robert Shearman, and Paul Cornell each wrote one script. Davies also approached his old friend Paul Abbott and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling to write for the series; both declined due to existing commitments. Shortly after he secured writers for the show, Davies stated he had no intention of approaching writers from the old series; the only writer he would have wished to work with was Holmes, who died in May 1986.
By early 2004, the show had settled into a regular production cycle. Davies, Gardner, and BBC Controller of Continuing Drama Series Mal Young took posts as executive producers, and Phil Collinson, his old colleague from Granada, took the role of producer. Davies's official position as showrunner combined the roles of head writer and executive producer and consisted of laying a skeletal plot for the entire series, holding "tone meetings" to correctly identify the tone of an episode, often described in one word—for example, the "tone word" for Moffat's "The Empty Child" was "romantic"—and overseeing all aspects of production.
The production team was also tasked with finding a suitable actor for the role of the Doctor. Most notably, they approached film actor Hugh Grant and comedian Rowan Atkinson for the role. By the time Young suggested The Second Coming and Our Friends in the North actor Christopher Eccleston to Davies, Eccleston was one of three left in the running for the role: the other candidates are rumoured to have been Alan Davies and Bill Nighy. Eccleston created his own characteristics of his rendition of the Doctor based on Davies's life, most notably, his catchphrase "Fantastic!":
The show started filming in July 2004 on location in Cardiff for "Rose". The start of filming created stress among the production team because of unseen circumstances: several scenes from the first block had to be re-shot because the original footage was unusable; the Slitheen prosthetics for "Aliens of London", "World War Three", and "Boom Town" were noticeably different from their computer-generated counterparts; and the BBC came to a gridlock in negotiations with the Terry Nation estate to secure the Daleks for the sixth episode of the series; Davies and episode writer Rob Shearman were forced to rework the script to feature another race, until Gardner was able to secure the rights a month later. After the first production block, which he described as "hitting a brick wall", the show's production was markedly eased as the crew familiarised themselves.
The first episode of the revived Doctor Who, "Rose", aired on 26 March 2005 and received 10.8 million viewers and favourable critical reception. Four days after the transmission of "Rose", Tranter approved a Christmas special and a second series. The press release was overshadowed by a leaked announcement that Christopher Eccleston would leave the role after one series; in response, David Tennant was announced as Eccleston's replacement.
Tennant had been offered the role when he was watching a pre-transmission copy of Doctor Who with Davies and Gardner. Tennant initially believed the offer was a joke, but after he realised they were serious, he accepted the role and made his first appearance in the dénouement of "The Parting of the Ways", the final episode of the first series. Doctor Who continued to be one of BBC's flagship programmes throughout Davies's tenure, and resulted in record sales of the show's official magazine, an increase in spin-off novels, and the launch of the children's magazine Doctor Who Adventures and toy sonic screwdrivers and Daleks. The show's popularity ultimately led to a resurgence in family-orientated Saturday night drama; the ITV science-fiction series Primeval and the BBC historical dramas Robin Hood and Merlin were specifically designed for an early Saturday evening timeslot. Davies was also approached by the BBC to produce several spin-off series, eventually creating two: Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.
Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures
In October 2005, BBC Three Controller Stuart Murphy invited Davies to create a post-watershed Doctor Who spin-off in the wake of the parent series' popularity. Torchwood—named after an anagrammatic title ruse used to prevent leaks of Doctor Who's first series—incorporated elements from an abandoned Davies project titled Excalibur and featured the pansexual 51st century time-traveler Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) and a team of alien hunters in Cardiff. The show began production in April 2006 and was marketed through foreshadowing in the main story arc of Doctor Who's second series, which portrayed Torchwood as a covert quasi-governmental organisation that monitors, exploits, and suppresses the existence of extraterrestrial life and technology. Upon its transmission, Torchwood was one of BBC Three's most popular shows; however, it received criticism for "adolescent" use of sexual and violent themes. This led the production team to alter the format to be subtler in its portrayal of adult themes.
Concurrently, he was approached to produce a CBBC show which was described as Young Doctor Who. Davies was reluctant to diminish the mystery of the Doctor's character and instead pitched a show with Elisabeth Sladen as the once-popular companion Sarah Jane Smith: The Sarah Jane Adventures, which follows Sarah Jane and local schoolchildren as they investigate extraterrestrial events in the London Borough of Ealing. The show was given a backdoor pilot as the Doctor Who episode "School Reunion" and premièred in its own right with "Invasion of the Bane" on 1 January 2007. The show was more successful than its 1981 predecessor K-9 and Company; it received more favourable reviews than Torchwood and a significant periphery demographic which compared the show to 1970s Doctor Who episodes.
The workload of managing three separate shows prompted Davies to delegate writing tasks for Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures to other writers so he could focus on writing Doctor Who. After Billie Piper's departure as Rose Tyler in the second series finale "Doomsday", he suggested a third spin-off, Rose Tyler: Earth Defence, a compilation of annual bank holiday specials which followed Rose and a parallel universe version of Torchwood. He later reneged on his idea, as he believed Rose should stay off screen, and abandoned the idea even though it had been budgeted.
The Writer's Tale, and writing the fourth series
thumb|right|Davies at a book signing for The Writers Tale in [[Waterstone's, the Trafford Centre, Greater Manchester, on 9 October 2008|alt=Davies in a navy-blue polo shirt, with one hand resting on a copy of his book.]]
In September 2008, BBC Books published The Writer's Tale, a collection of emails between Davies and Radio Times and Doctor Who Magazine journalist Benjamin Cook. Dubbed the "Great Correspondence" by Davies and Cook, The Writer's Tale covers a period between February 2007 and March 2008 and explores his writing processes and the development of his scripts for the fourth series of Doctor Who: "Voyage of the Damned", "Partners in Crime", "Midnight", "Turn Left", "The Stolen Earth", and "Journey's End". The book's first chapter focuses on Cook's "big questions" on Davies's writing style, character development—he used the Doctor Who character Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) and the Skins character Tony Stonem (Nicholas Hoult) as contrasting examples—, how he formulated ideas for stories, and the question "why do you write?". After several weeks, Cook assumes an unofficial advisory role to the scriptwriting and the development of the series. The book's epilogue consists of a short exchange between Davies and Cook: Cook changes from his role as "Invisible Ben" to "Visible Ben" and strongly advises to vastly alter the denouement to "Journey's End" from a cliffhanger which led into "The Next Doctor"—which had occurred in the previous three series finales, "The Parting of the Ways", "Doomsday", and "Last of the Time Lords"—to a melancholy ending that showed the Doctor alone in the TARDIS. After three days of deliberation, Davies accepts Cook's suggestion and thanks him for improving both episodes.
After its release, the pair embarked on a five-stop signing tour to promote the book in October 2008 at Waterstone's branches in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, and Cardiff. The book received positive reviews: Veronica Horwell of The Guardian wrote Davies was the "Scheherazade of Cardiff Bay" and opined the book should have been twice the published length; Ian Berriman of science fiction magazine SFX gave the book five stars and commented it was the only book about "new Who" a reader needed; television critic Charlie Brooker was inspired by the book to devote an entire episode of his BBC Four show Screenwipe to interviewing television writers; and chat show couple Richard and Judy selected the book as a recommended Christmas present in the "Serious Non-Fiction" category of their book club. A second edition of the book, The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter, was released in January 2010 by BBC Books. The second edition added 350 pages of correspondence—before excising draft scripts included in the first edition—and covered Davies's final months as executive producer of Doctor Who as he co-wrote the five-part BBC One Torchwood miniseries Children of Earth, planned David Tennant's departure and Matt Smith's arrival as the Doctor, and moved to the United States.
Post–Doctor Who career (2010–2021)
Davies stepped down from the show's production in 2009 along with Gardner and Collinson, and finished his tenure with four special length episodes. His departure from the show was announced in May 2008, alongside a press release which named Steven Moffat as his successor. His role in late 2008 was split between writing the 2009 specials and preparing for the transition between his and Moffat's production team; one chapter of The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter discusses plans between him, Gardner, and Tennant to announce Tennant's departure live during ITV's National Television Awards in October 2008. His final full script for Doctor Who was finished in the early morning of 4 March 2009, and filming of the episode closed on 20 May 2009.
Davies moved with Gardner and Jane Tranter to the United States in June 2009 and resided in Los Angeles, California. He continued to oversee production of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures; he wrote one story for the 2010 series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, Death of the Doctor, which included Matt Smith as the Doctor and Katy Manning as the Doctor's former companion Jo Grant, and was the executive producer and author of the premiere ("The New World") and finale ("The Blood Line") of Torchwood: Miracle Day, the fourth series of Torchwood. He additionally gave informal assistance to and later served as creative consultant of ex-Doctor Who script editor Helen Raynor's and playwright Gary Owen's BBC Cymru Wales drama, Baker Boys. Davies had planned to return to art by writing a graphic novel, and was approached by Lucasfilm to write for the proposed Star Wars live-action television series but refused the commission.
In August 2011, Davies's boyfriend Andrew Smith was diagnosed with a brain tumour, which prompted Davies to postpone current projects and move back to the UK so his partner could undergo treatment closer to their respective families. Davies's return enabled him to develop a replacement series for The Sarah Jane Adventures with prolific series writer Phil Ford after the former series ended due to Elisabeth Sladen's death. Wizards vs Aliens, a CBBC drama about a teenage wizard and his scientist friend and their conflict with the alien Nekross who wished to destroy Earth, was formed to create a "genre clash" between science fiction and supernatural fantasy, as opposed to "culture clashes" such as Cowboys & Aliens. Davies additionally made his first contribution to CBeebies, with two scripts for Old Jack's Boat, which stars Doctor Who alumni Bernard Cribbins and Freema Agyeman as retired fisherman Jack and his neighbour Shelley.
Cucumber, Banana, and Tofu
Davies's next project after Doctor Who, codenamed More Gay Men, was a spiritual successor to Queer as Folk and would have focused on middle-aged gay men in the Manchester gay scene. The show's genesis dates back from 2001, when his friend Carl Austin asked him "why are gay men so glad when we split up?". The show was due to enter into production in 2006, but was indefinitely postponed due to the success of Doctor Who. Davies continued to develop ideas for the show, and explained a pivotal scene in the premiere to Cook in 2007:
In 2011, the series had entered into pre-production, with American cable network Showtime contracted for transmission and BBC Worldwide for distribution. Showtime had reached the point of casting before Davies moved back to Manchester, at which point the series was picked up by Channel 4 to be produced with Nicola Shindler and the Red Production Company. The commission by Channel 4 marked Davies's first collaboration with the channel since Queer as Folk and Shindler and Red since Casanova. Davies was convinced to return to the channel by Head of Drama and former Doctor Who executive producer Piers Wenger, who described the show as a "political piece of writing" which creates a "radical approach" to sexuality. Although Cucumber was designed as a self-contained serial about the life of one man, Davies envisioned Banana as open-ended with the potential to continue after its sister series finished.
Second return to the BBC
After Cucumber, Davies returned to the BBC in 2016 to produce A Midsummer Night's Dream, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Davies credits the play as "opening his eyes to drama" after he starred in a school version of the play as Bottom.
In 2018, Davies produced and wrote the screenplay for A Very English Scandal, an adaptation of the book A Very English Scandal about the Thorpe affair—a sex scandal which involved former Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe—which starred Hugh Grant as Thorpe and Ben Whishaw as Thorpe's former lover Norman Scott. Davies's screenplay is more compassionate to Thorpe and Scott than previous narratives of the scandal, which he described as "history written by straight men". For his writing on the series, Davies received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special in 2019.
Davies followed that with the miniseries Years and Years, a Red Production Company series for BBC One which starred Emma Thompson, Rory Kinnear and Russell Tovey. It focuses on an ordinary family in Manchester who experience massive political, economic, and technological changes over fifteen years as a fascist dictator, played by Thompson, takes over Britain.
It's a Sin
It's a Sin, began filming on 7 October 2019—under the working title of Boys—and completed filming on 31 January 2020. The series, produced by Red Productions for Channel 4, is a dramatised retrospective of the HIV/AIDS crisis during the 1980s, focusing on the men "living in the bedsits", as opposed to films such as Pride, which focused on gay activists. Davies notes the stories about the politics of the crisis and the virus itself has been told, but not those about the early victims of the virus itself.
In 2015, Davies described Boys as a way of "coming to terms" with his own actions during the 1980s, when the shock of the crisis prevented him from properly mourning the deaths of his close friends.
It's a Sin is Davies's first script to primarily focus on AIDS since Children's Ward, although the pandemic's legacy is present in his other shows: Queer as Folk relegates AIDS to fleeting mentions as Davies "refused to let [gay peoples'] lives be defined by the disease"; and in Cucumber, middle-aged protagonist Henry blames "those fucking icebergs" for his fear of intimacy. Although the series was filmed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the show's transmission in early 2021 invited comparisons between the two pandemics; Davies himself cited the "overreaction and lack of reaction" to the pandemics, as well as the focus on social distancing and personal protective equipment, as "history [repeating] itself",
Return to Doctor Who (2021–present)
After his departure from Doctor Who, Davies kept in contact with the show's crew and made several contributions to its expanded universe: in 2013, Davies made a cameo appearance in Peter Davison's spoof special The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot; in 2015, his Virgin New Adventures novel Damaged Goods was adapted into an audio play by Big Finish; in 2017 he illustrated a book of Doctor Who poetry titled Now We Are Six Hundred: A Collection of Time Lord Verse; and in 2018, he wrote a novelisation of "Rose" for Target Books.
During the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, Davies engaged with Doctor Who fans on social media by writing short stories and drawing sketches. For the "Rose" watch party, Davies released a short story originally written in 2013 for the show's fiftieth anniversary—the story was written for Doctor Who Magazine and stylised as the final pages of a Target novelisation, but was not included in the magazine due to continuity conflicts with the anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor"; for the "New Earth" and "Gridlock" watch party, he wrote the script for an animated sequel, "The Secret of Novice Hame", with Tennant and Anna Hope reprising their roles as the Doctor and Hame respectively; and for "The Runaway Bride" watch party, Davies shared excerpts of his 1986 spec script, Mind of the Hodiac, which was later optioned by Big Finish for its The Lost Stories audio play range and was released on 30 March 2022.
On 24 September 2021, three weeks before filming had wrapped on Chris Chibnall's BBC Centenary special "The Power of the Doctor", the BBC announced Davies would return as Doctor Who showrunner, succeeding Chibnall for the show's 60th anniversary in 2023 and beyond. Davies is joined by the Bad Wolf production company, which was founded by Gardner and Tranter. In May 2022, the BBC announced that Davies had cast Rwandan–Scottish actor Ncuti Gatwa in the role of the Doctor; Gatwa is the first black actor to portray the series' lead role. A week later, the BBC further announced that David Tennant and Catherine Tate would reprise their roles of the Doctor and Donna Noble in the show's 2023 specials, which had already started filming. On 23 October 2022, during the broadcast of "The Power of the Doctor", Tennant's character was revealed to be the Fourteenth Doctor, which followed Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor and would precede Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor, whom took over in the last of the specials with Tennant, "The Giggle". Tennant's scene at the end of "The Power of the Doctor" was also filmed in May 2022. In November 2022, it was announced that Millie Gibson would join the cast as Ruby Sunday, the companion of the Fifteenth Doctor.
Shooting on Gatwa and Gibson's first recording block began in December 2022, initially overlapping with Gatwa's schedule on the fourth season of Sex Education. Gibson remained a cast member in the next series, and appeared alongside Varada Sethu as the new companion Belinda Chandra. Shooting for the 2025 series began in October 2023, before the first full episode with the Fourteenth or the Fifteenth Doctor, or Sethu's appearance in "Boom" as Belinda's distant descendant Mundy Flynn, had aired. Gatwa portrayed the Doctor for two series and left the series at the end of "The Reality War", broadcast in May 2025; his successor in the show's lead role was Billie Piper, whose specific role in the show was left ambiguous.
On 26 July 2024, during San Diego Comic-Con, the BBC and Disney Branded Television announced Davies would write a new Doctor Who spin-off, The War Between the Land and the Sea, and Jemma Redgrave would reprise her role as UNIT commander Kate Lethbridge-Stewart in the series. It was filmed between August and December 2024. The series aired on BBC One in December 2025 and will air on Disney+ in 2026.
Adult television career after It's a Sin (2023–present)
In 2021, Nolly, a miniseries written by Davies about the Crossroads star Noele Gordon, was the first drama commission for Nicola Shindler's newly created production company, the ITV Studios division Quay Street Productions, after Shindler left Red Production Company at the end of 2020. The series aired in 2023, and won Davies Best Writer at the 2023 BAFTA Cymru Awards.
He executive produced and was a script consultant for 2023's Three Little Birds, a fictionalisation of Lenny Henry's mother's experiences arriving in Britain as part of the Windrush generation.
In February 2025, Tip Toe, a miniseries surrounding two gay Manchester men facing the anti-LGBTQ+ culture war of 2020s Britain, was commissioned by Channel 4 to be written by Davies. It is another collaboration between Shindler's Quay Street and Davies, with Shindler and Davies both executive producing. and to adapt Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop for television. "The Stolen Earth", and the first part of "The End of Time", and Rose Tyler's unadvertised appearance in "Partners in Crime" was excised. In an interview with BBC News shortly after the transmission of episode "The Stolen Earth", he argued that the success of a popular television series is linked to how well producers can keep secrets and create a "live experience":