Davies' first television play, ''
Who's Going to Take Me On?'', was broadcast in 1967 as part of BBC1's
The Wednesday Play strand. His early plays were written as a sideline to his work in education, many of them appearing in anthology series such as
Thirty Minute Theatre,
Play for Today and
Centre Stage. One of his London stage plays,
Rose, played on Broadway in 1981, with
Glenda Jackson and
Jessica Tandy. His first serial adaptation of a work of fiction was
To Serve Them All My Days (1980), from the novel by
R. F. Delderfield. He wrote
A Very Peculiar Practice (1986–88), a campus based comedy-drama series that drew upon his career in education. Davies is now best known for his adaptations of classic works of literature for television including the
Charles Dickens short story
The Signalman (1976),
Pride and Prejudice (1995) starring
Colin Firth and
Jennifer Ehle,
Vanity Fair (1998),
Bleak House (2005) and
Sense and Sensibility (2008). He is the writer of the screenplays for the
BBC production
Middlemarch (1994) and a planned film of the same name once announced for 2011 release. Davies was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1996. Davies also co-devised with Bernadette Davis the sitcom
Game On for BBC2 and co-wrote the first two series broadcast in 1995 and 1996. The popularity of his adaptation of
Michael Dobbs's political thriller
House of Cards (for which Davies won his first Emmy award for
Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries) was a significant influence in Dobbs's decision to write two sequels, which Davies also adapted for television. In film, he has collaborated on the screenplays for the first two
Bridget Jones films, based on
Helen Fielding novels. Davies is a prolific writer for children. The first of his novels was ''Conrad's War'', published by Blackie in 1978. Davies won the annual
Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, which is judged by a panel of British children's writers and recognises the best book by an author who has not yet won it.
ITV was looking to recreate its period drama success with
Downton Abbey with a new series
Mr Selfridge, written by Davies and starring
Jeremy Piven. An initial ten-part series first aired on 6 January 2013 and it has run for 4 series by 2016. Davies' six-part adaptation of
Leo Tolstoy's
War & Peace was broadcast on
BBC One in January and February 2016. Following its success, the BBC announced in July 2016 that it would be followed up with a six-part adaptation of
Victor Hugo's
Les Misérables to be scripted by Davies. In May 2017, it was announced that BBC would adapt
Vikram Seth's magnum opus
A Suitable Boy into an eight-part series to be scripted by Davies. In May 2018, he announced at the Hay Festival that he is adapting John Updike's
Rabbit, Run for television. ==Filmography==