John Purdie, who has died aged 82 after suffering from dementia, was one of the pioneers of fly-on-the-wall television documentary series. Film-makers such as Denis Mitchell and Norman Swallow had made single documentaries in the style, and Paul Watson broke new ground in the UK by taking it to a series with The Family in 1974. Purdie soon afterwards followed in his footsteps with Sailor (1976), in which he charted the daily lives of those aboard HMS Ark Royal as it sailed from Plymouth to the US.
It gave viewers an insight into the much-loved British aircraft carrier and its crew as it set off on what proved to be its penultimate voyage before being decommissioned in 1979. The series showed the workings of a Royal Navy ship with fighter and bomber aircraft, and helicopters, and the differing lives of the 2,500 officers and ratings above and below deck.
Purdie, producing and directing the 10 episodes, was at sea with his film crew for the three-month trip across to Florida, then rejoined the ship for the final week of its journey home. Getting permission to film everything, warts and all, was a major achievement.
The story began with scenes of raucous partying in port the night before departure, some ratings returning to the vessel with black eyes and one with no trousers, before they settled into the realities of life at sea, both the mundane and dramatic. Personalities to emerge included a fighter pilot getting a ribbing from his mates after taking seven attempts to land, an aircraft handler brought to book for failing to meet the necessary level of responsibility and the padré using four-letter words while insisting: “Swearing is not as bad as blasphemy.”
Sailor, with the Rod Stewart single Sailing as its title song, won a Bafta award as best factual series and a second as best factual programme, for a dramatic episode in which Ark Royal was diverted towards the Azores to airlift, by Sea King helicopter, an American submarine sailor with acute appendicitis. He and a Royal Navy winchman were on top of the submarine, preparing to be taken up on a rope, when a giant wave threw them into the sea. Purdie and his crew in the helicopter above captured the heart-stopping moment but both men survived.
The producer-director was away from home for three months again when he continued with the fly-on-the-wall technique for another Bafta award-winning documentary, The Hong Kong Beat (1978). The compulsive nine-part series followed the then British colony’s police force as it faced robbery, kidnap, murder, drugs – and allegations of corruption.
Purdie moved on to become editor of the BBC’s special features unit (1981-84), responsible for factually based dramas. These included The Story of Ruth (1982), a psychiatric case study that he also directed, starring Connie Booth as an American woman confronted by a dark secret from her childhood. Another he produced was Freud (1984), a six-part biopic with David Suchet as the father of psychoanalysis.
As executive producer, Purdie was responsible for Threads (1984), the writer Barry Hines’s chillingly realistic drama-documentary imagining the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Sheffield – marking the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He also commissioned The Monocled Mutineer (1986), Alan Bleasdale’s controversial drama about Percy Toplis, the British army first world war mutineer and deserter.
Purdie was born during wartime in Saltcoats, Ayrshire, to Mary (nee Hughes), who owned an antiques shop, and John Purdie, an explosives factory worker, and educated at Ardrossan Academy. He started a degree in philosophy and English literature at Birkbeck, University of London, but left to work briefly as an accounts clerk for the Prudential insurance company.
After being taken on as a BBC trainee in 1963, he became a film editor in TV news. He switched to current affairs as a producer and director in 1968, working on programmes such as 24 Hours.
On attachment to the general features department, he made episodes in the natural history series The World About Us (in 1971 and 1972), then switched to documentaries in 1972. His contributions to Inside Story (in 1974 and 1975) included a shocking programme on the eviction of a tenant farmer and his family.
Later, while in charge of special features, Purdie produced The Last Day (1983), the journalist John Pilger’s semi-autobiographical drama about the end of the Vietnam war, and The Waiting War (1983), Maggie Wadey’s play about three women whose husbands are aboard HMS Sheffield when it is hit by an Argentine missile during the Falklands conflict.
Purdie left the BBC in 1984 to work as an independent producer. There were further documentaries for the corporation such as The Lane, a 1990 series about the history of families in Brick Lane, east London, and Omnibus programmes on the relationship between arts and glasnost in the Soviet Union (1987) and investigating the death of Tchaikovsky (1993).
He also made Portrait of the Soviet Union (1988) for American television, Eton – Class of ’91 (1991) for Channel 4’s Cutting Edge series and The Search for the Lost Fighter Bombers (2004) for Channel 5. Later, he was associate producer on the Icelandic documentary The Sunshine Boy (2009), about autism, and made three films on environmental issues in Ethiopia (2009-14),
Purdie’s 1966 marriage to Kathie Voisey ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Emma (nee Shakespeare), whom he married in 1997, and his children: Jonathan and Simon from his first marriage; Alexander and Michael from a relationship with Irina Mishina; and Jack, India and Sahara, from his second marriage.
• John Purdie, producer and director, born 13 February 1940; died 3 October 2022
