Sandy Johnson

Sandy Johnson is a Bafta Award winning director, writer and producer who has worked extensively in comedy and drama.

He started as a painter at art school in Glasgow and worked as an actor, appearing as one of the “Knights of Ni” in MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL. After film school, he began a career in directing with THE COMIC STRIP PRESENTS… for C4 and made his first full length feature COAST TO COAST (1987) starring Lenny Henry, John Shea and Pete Postlethwaite, followed by LEAVING (1988) a coming of age feature set in 1960s Greenock. His work on pop videos led to the music based road movie THE WRECK ON THE HIGHWAY (1990) starring the country singer Lynn Anderson (Rose Garden).

He directed major drama series for ITV – INSPECTOR MORSE, RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES, GONE TO THE DOGS, GONE TO SEED, A TOUCH OF FROST, and a musical feature in the USA, SOUL SURVIVORS (1995) starring Ian McShane and Isaac Hayes, before returning to the BBC to make ROUGHNECKS, a 7-part drama set on the North Sea oil rigs.

More comedy followed with ADRIAN MOLE – THE CAPPUCCINO YEARS and JONATHAN CREEK starring Alan Davies, where he won his first Bafta for Best Drama series.

AUF WIEDERSEHEN PET in Thailand, SUPERNOVA, with Rob Brydon in Australia, KINGDOM with Stephen Fry and LOVE SOUP starring Tamsin Greig were followed by HARRY AND PAUL with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse where he won a further 2 Baftas for Best Comedy Series.

He directed CRADLE TO GRAVE, an 8 part series based on the real life adventures of Danny Baker starring Peter Kay and two films with Harry Hill, THE INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES OF PROFESSOR BRANESTAWM and PROFESSOR BRANESTAWM RETURNS adapted by Charlie Higson from the books by Norman Hunter.

He directed 6 series of the ever-popular NTA award winning comedy series BENIDORM for ITV and has recently completed THE INDIAN DETECTIVE, a 4-part series for CTV/Netflix starring Russell Peters, Anupam Kher, William Shatner and Mishqa Parthiephal and HOLD THE SUNSET a 6-part series for BBC1 reuniting him with Monty Python’s John Cleese.