1970s Before becoming a comedy writer Renwick worked as a journalist, reporter and sub-editor on his home town newspaper, the
Luton News. On beginning his comedy writing career in the mid-1970s he initially submitted material for BBC radio comedies including
Week Ending and
The News Huddlines. He also contributed to other radio series such as
Oh, Get On With It! starring
Kenneth Williams and with David McKellar co-wrote
Harry Worth in Things Could Be Worse featuring
Harry Worth. Teaming up with writing partner
Andrew Marshall, they wrote the
BBC Radio 4 comedy series
The Burkiss Way and provided sketches for BBC television shows such as
The Two Ronnies and ''
Not the Nine O'Clock News'' during the late 1970s and early '80s. One of the most celebrated sketches he wrote for
The Two Ronnies was a parody of the BBC quiz programme
Mastermind, where a "Charlie Smithers" chose to answer questions on the specialist subject "Answering the question before last", adapted from his "Answering one question behind all the time" sketch from
The Burkiss Way. Their short-lived
LWT series for
ITV,
End of Part One, was an attempt to transfer
Burkiss-style humour to television. Renwick also wrote for
Les Dawson,
Bernie Winters and
Little and Large at the end of the 1970s.
1980s In 1982 Renwick and Marshall penned the comedy drama serial
Whoops Apocalypse for
LWT, based on the insanity of international politics in the age of
nuclear weapons, and four years later they adapted the screenplay (changing most of the characters and situations completely) into a feature film version. In 1983 they wrote
The Steam Video Company for
Thames Television, a short comedy series consisting of absurd
parodies of famous novels. This was followed in 1986 by
Hot Metal for LWT, a six-part satire of the tabloid newspaper industry starring
Robert Hardy,
Geoffrey Palmer and
John Gordon Sinclair. The show was a critical success and returned for a further six episodes in 1988 with a revised cast of
Robert Hardy,
Richard Wilson and
Caroline Milmoe. Renwick also wrote for the sketch show ''
Alexei Sayle's Stuff'' and
Spike Milligan's ''
There's a Lot of It About''. He began writing solo at the end of the 1980s when he created the sitcom
One Foot in the Grave, starring
Richard Wilson, which was highly successful.
1990s One Foot in the Grave went on to be a popular hit for an entire decade. It also ran for four seasons as an American remake titled
Cosby, starring
Bill Cosby, although this is generally regarded as a very loose adaptation of the original. The series won a BAFTA award for best comedy programme in 1992, with Renwick receiving The Writers' Guild Award for Best Comedy Writer in that same year. Renwick switched to writing drama in 1990 and 1991 to indulge his love of detective stories and dramatise four episodes (one being co-written) for the series ''
Agatha Christie's Poirot (ITV, 1989–2002), featuring David Suchet as the Belgian sleuth. In 1992, Renwick and co-writer Michael Baker received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the Poirot
episode "The Lost Mine", which aired in the US as part of the PBS anthology series Mystery!'' In 1993, he wrote, back with Marshall again, the four-part comedy miniseries
If You See God, Tell Him which starred
Imelda Staunton,
Adrian Edmondson and
Richard Briers, with a brief appearance from
Angus Deayton. Several other minor roles also went to actors with whom Renwick worked on
One Foot in the Grave. In 1997, Renwick devised the comedy-drama and mystery series,
Jonathan Creek, in which the eponymous designer of magic tricks, played by comedian
Alan Davies, applied his cleverness to the solving of crimes. This series also became successful. In 1999 Renwick received BAFTA's Dennis Potter Award, established to recognise outstanding writing for television. Renwick, and his former writing partner Marshall, had cameo roles in an episode of the series as members of a television sitcom scriptwriting team. On 3 December 2007
BBC Four broadcast
David Renwick Night, a themed evening of programmes written by or about the author. In 2008, Renwick directed for the first time as he brought back the series
Jonathan Creek after a five year hiatus. The episode,
The Grinning Man, was almost two hours long and was broadcast on New Year's Day 2009. He was awarded the Writers Guild Ronnie Barker Award at the British Comedy Awards 2008.
2010s In 2010 Renwick directed a further episode of his series
Jonathan Creek, with the 94-minute long instalment
The Judas Tree being broadcast on Easter Sunday. In 2012, he developed a series called
Ergo for
ITV, which was to star
Robert Webb as a man living with his stepmother following the death of his father. "It was a domestic comedy, my attempt to do something like
One Foot in the Grave in the country really," said Renwick. However, Renwick and ITV encountered creative differences and the project was not produced. Renwick wrote a further five episodes of
Jonathan Creek, the last of which to date was broadcast in December 2016. As of 2020, thirty-two episodes have been produced across five short-run series and six specials. The slow rate of production is partly due to Renwick's writing of the episodes, which he describes as being a painstaking process in which the intricacies of the plots take several months to work out. It is not known whether the series will return. In 2016 Renwick wrote the four-part radio miniseries
Desolation Jests. The show, starring
David Jason,
John Bird,
Jan Ravens and
Rory Bremner, was broadcast on
BBC Radio 4 from 13 December 2016 until 3 January 2017. The miniseries was repeated on
BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2022. ==Books==