Maggie Coombes recalls how she came to be employed by Granada TV

 I’d done a postgraduate course at Bristol University in film and television, and I just wrote round to all the television companies I could think of, this is who I am, I’ve done this postgraduate course, I’ve been at art college for four years before that, I’ve done a three-dimensional design course, I’d like to…

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Maggie Coombes remembers working with the director Ken Russell

So you became a production designer … That’s the top of the pile, if you like, and that was a tremendous privilege really, because you get to work with so many creative people, I mean, writers and directors. I mean, Anthony Minghella, Charles Sturridge, John Madden, Ken Russell… I mean, I worked with those people,…

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Maggie Coombes talks about filming on location as a designer

TThe Sherlock Holmes thing with Jeremy Brett, which, I think, was through four series (Jeremy did four different Sherlock Holmes productions, each ran for between one and three series) and then they did some one-offs after that. I really enjoyed that. I mean, one of the great things if you were doing drama, and particularly…

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Maggie Coombes on Granada as a regional company

I’m from the south myself, but I’ve lived most of my adult life in Manchester, and I think what was so refreshing about Granada was that it wasn’t a London satellite. It really wasn’t. And when I first went there, and sort of into the ‘80s, people were actively… they were expected to live in…

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Maggie Coombes talks about Granada as an employer

I think they were terrific, absolutely terrific. It was small enough and eccentric enough to feel almost like a family. I mean, it sounds like a cliché, but it was – and although I didn’t really have anything to do with the very senior people like the Bernsteins or Denis Forman or others, I mean,…

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