Born in Lowestoft, Marshall attended Fen Park School and then
Lowestoft Grammar School, and afterwards
Borough Road College where he studied mathematics and psychology. Around the same time, he worked regularly on
Radio 4's
Week Ending, together with
David Renwick,
Douglas Adams,
Alistair Beaton,
John Lloyd,
Simon Brett and others. Shortly afterwards he began writing
The Burkiss Way with David Renwick and John Mason (who later dropped out to go to acting school). Renwick and Marshall remained scriptwriting partners for many years. Brought by
Humphrey Barclay to
London Weekend Television, originally to repeat his 'nursery slopes comedy'
Do Not Adjust Your Set with
End of Part One, Marshall and Renwick went on to write a series of television satires, including
Whoops Apocalypse,
Hot Metal and
If You See God, Tell Him — the latter originally for
Channel 4, but postponed for several years when the channel refused to let them direct it, and finally ending up at the
BBC later. They also experimented with a type of neo-
Vaudeville style in
The Steam Video Company for
Thames Television, ultimately ending up at the BBC, writing, with
Alexei Sayle, ''
Alexei Sayle's Stuff. Along the way they also wrote the screenplay for a film version of Whoops Apocalypse'' and adapted
Tom Sharpe's novel
Wilt for a
film of the same title. After a tentative and unsuccessful attempt at solo writing with
Sob Sisters at
Central Television, Marshall found long-lasting success
BBC One's
2point4 children, adding to it
Health and Efficiency and later,
Dad. He also found time to adapt Alexei Sayle's short story "Lose Weight, Ask Me How" for the series
Spinechillers, in which Sayle also starred. Having also contributed to ''
Agatha Christie's Poirot on ITV, he next wrote drama with the telefantasy series Strange'' for Saturday nights on BBC One. However, due to scheduling issues, a one-year gap between the pilot episode and the series and the BBC's decision not to repeat the pilot before the series began, the series failed to find a large audience in its Saturday night slot and was not recommissioned for a second run. For many years Marshall avoided publicity of any kind, explaining that "it's very bad for you" and cited his major influences as "Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney... which explains a lot." In 2005, he had a small cameo appearance on-screen in an episode of David Renwick's comedy-drama
Love Soup on BBC One, alongside Renwick himself, as members of a sitcom script-writing team. He also appeared as a member of the critics panel on several editions of BBC 7's "Serious About Comedy" in 2006–7. He later began a new collaboration with
Rob Grant, producing directing and writing the Radio 4 Series
The Quanderhorn Xperimentations, as well as the novel version published by
Gollancz. He and Grant launched a Radio 4 sketch Series "
The Nether Regions" as writer/performers in October 2019. In February 2026, it was announced that a
Red Dwarf prequel titled
Red Dwarf: Titan would be released in July 2026 by
Gollancz, written by Rob Grant and Marshall. ==Screenography==