Paul Seed, Bafta-winning television director of House of Cards, A Rather English Marriage and Just William
Paul Seed, Bafta-winning television director of House of Cards, A Rather English Marriage and Just William
Telegraph ObituariesMon, May 11, 2026 at 10:36 AM UTC
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Paul Seed in his acting days, in Victoria Wood’s 1980 television play Nearly A Happy Ending - ITV ARCHIVE
Paul Seed, who has died aged 78, was a television director whose creative genius added a touch of style to dramas scripted by some of the screen’s finest writers.
Most notable was House of Cards, Andrew Davies’s adaptation of Michael Dobbs’s novel, starring Ian Richardson as the ruthless politician Francis Urquhart. Seed made the visuals for the 1990 BBC mini-series compelling from the start, with an opening titles sequence filmed from a helicopter above the Thames as it tracks a motor cavalcade across Westminster Bridge to the Houses of Parliament, then swoops around Big Ben’s clock tower.
Accompanying the pictures – and just as dramatic – is Jim Parker’s theme music, performed on three high trumpets, with timpani rumbling in the background. It was commissioned by Seed, who enjoyed listening to trumpet concertos by the Baroque composer Georg Philipp Telemann.
This followed a brief scene of Richardson, as the Machiavellian Conservative Party chief whip aiming for high office, looking at a framed photograph of Margaret Thatcher – in real life serving her final days as Prime Minister – and saying: “Even the longest, most glittering reign must come to an end some day.”
Such asides were delivered by Richardson direct to camera, “breaking the fourth wall” (talking to the audience). It was a dramatic device from Davies as memorable as Urquhart’s retorts to the manipulated and doomed political correspondent Mattie Storin (played by Susannah Harker): “You might think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.”
Seed, who also directed To Play the King (1993), the second in Dobbs’s trilogy, likened making the drama to producing a pantomime with Urquhart as the villain, adding: “It’s the fun of being extremely naughty.”
When he and Davies later teamed up for a 1998 feature-length TV version of Angela Lambert’s novel A Rather English Marriage, they brought poignancy to the story of widowers, a retired squadron leader (Albert Finney) and a former milkman (Tom Courtenay) living together.
Joanna Lumley and Albert Finney in A Rather English Marriage - alamy
The pair’s officer-batman relationship, with Courtenay cooking and cleaning for Finney, is tested by the arrival of a woman (played by Joanna Lumley). Although the book ends bleakly with Lumley’s character leaving Finney’s, director and writer preferrred to finish on a sweet note, so Seed came up with the idea of reprising an earlier scene where the two men dance, ballroom style, dreaming of the sweethearts of their youth. The play won a Bafta for Best Single Drama.
Switching gear, Seed brought nostalgia of a different kind to Christmas teatimes with Just William (2010), Simon Nye’s four-part adaptation of Richmal Crompton’s beloved children’s books, which won another Bafta award, for Best Drama.
Paul Anthony Seed was born in Bideford, Devon, on September 18 1947 to Joan, née Jackson, and Jos (John) Seed, and the family moved to Manchester when his father started a teaching job there.
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He attended the city’s grammar school before studying drama at Manchester University. Graduating in 1970, he acted with the city’s Library Theatre company in productions including Charles Wood’s anti-war play Dingo.
Television soon followed, with small roles in popular series such as Doomwatch in 1972 and Z Cars in 1975, when he met the actress Elizabeth Cassidy, whom he married in 2000.
He played the tyrannical, revenge-seeking Graff Vynda-K in the 1978 Doctor Who adventure The Ribos Operation and the Catholic priest Father Harris in Coronation Street (from 1979 to 1981), officiating at Brian Tilsley and Gail Potter’s wedding and the christening of their son Nick.
Paul Seed, centre, as Father Harris in Coronation Street, 1981, at the christening of Nicholas Tilsey. From left: Paul Duncan, Christopher Quinten, Warren Jackson, Helen Worth and Pat Phoenix - ITV/Shutterstock
Bored and frustrated with acting, Seed took a BBC directors’ course in 1980. Success behind the camera followed with a Play for Today, Too Late to Talk to Billy (1982), set in Belfast, written by Graham Reid and starring Kenneth Branagh in his breakthrough role. Over the next two years, Seed directed the two further plays in the trilogy.
He also steered another newcomer towards success, with Liam Neeson starring in David Rudkin’s drama Across the Water (1983). Among a string of single plays that followed (Seed admitted to being a “workaholic”) were his first with Andrew Davies, Inappropriate Behaviour (1987), a psychological drama starring Charlotte Coleman, and Ex (1991), William Humble’s comedy with Griff Rhys Jones as a soap opera writer.
Dirty Tricks (2000), adapted by Nigel Williams from Michael Dibdin’s novel, starred Martin Clunes – breaking the fourth wall – as an impoverished language teacher implicated in murder and won an International Emmy Award.
James Ellis and Kenneth Branagh in the 1982 Play for Today, Too Late to Talk to Billy’ - Alamy
As single plays became fewer, Seed made the 2002 series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and the first run of Blandings (2013), starring Timothy Spall as PG Wodehouse’s eccentric aristocrat Lord Emsworth in dramatisations by Guy Andrews.
He also directed episodes of popular series such as Playing the Field (1998), New Tricks (2004) and Lark Rise to Candleford (2010).
His last television work, again with Clunes, was on Doc Martin from 2011 to 2013.
Paul Seed is survived by his wife and their two sons.
Paul Seed, born September 18 1947, died March 7 2026
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
