Ready When You Are Mr. McGill

Ready When You Are, Mr McGill is a feature length TV drama, written by Jack Rosenthal. ITV produced two versions, in 1976 and 2003. The 1976 version was the first in a series of six single television plays called Red Letter Days each of which showed the events in a single, special day in someone’s life. The 2003 version was a remake which was partly rewritten by Rosenthal.

In the 2003 adaptation Tom Courtenay takes the lead role of Steven McGill. The story is centered around the filming of a movie starring Amanda Holden as a police officer and Bill Nighy as an increasingly frustrated director.

Rosenthal said his rewrite had turned the drama into a criticism of Television executives, and argued that “the industry has gone crazy and it needs a new generation to change it into something better”. He also criticised television schedulers. Although completed early in 2003 the resulting film was held back and had not been screened by the time Rosenthal died in May 2004; it turned out to be his last work. It was first screened, not on ITV but on Sky Movies 1, in September 2004.

Rosenthal’s widow Maureen Lipman claimed that TV executives were reluctant to screen the film which was “maybe too acerbic”. In April 2005 she challenged the management of ITV to show the film as a tribute to Rosenthal, threatening to kill them if it was put in a slot outside primetime. —Wikipedia