Martin McKeand, who has died aged 86 of bacterial pneumonia, went from the glossy, commercial world of advertising to become producer of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, one of the grittiest television programmes of the 1980s, reflecting the haves-and-have-nots polarised world under Margaret Thatcher’s government.
He was already producing documentaries for ITV when it hired him to make the new comedy-drama, featuring seven builders finding work in Germany as unemployment soared in Britain. “It’s also about the insularity of the British abroad,” said McKeand, “blokes living in prison-hut conditions on German building sites unable to relate to anything or anybody around them.”
Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, previously known for sitcoms such as The Likely Lads and Porridge, wrote most of the scripts, from stories devised by Franc Roddam, based on the experiences of Mick Connell, a Stockton-on-Tees bricklayer.
McKeand, a hands-on producer, was influenced in the casting by seeing the director Ken Loach’s 1981 film Looks and Smiles, about unemployment – set in Sheffield, with local non-professional actors in the lead roles. Seeking to recreate some of this social realism, McKeand sat in on auditions with the director, Roger Bamford, and Barry Ford, casting director of Central Independent Television, which co-produced the series with Witzend Productions.
They agreed on Tim Healy and Kevin Whately to play the philosophising Dennis and the ever-homesick Neville, but were stuck on the casting for Oz, the tough character inspired by Connell. Their problem was solved when Jimmy Nail, who had a broken nose and several missing teeth, walked into the auditions.
The septet was completed by Timothy Spall as the boring Brummie electrician Barry, Gary Holton as the womanising cockney carpenter Wayne, Pat Roach as the Bristolian bricklayer and ex-wrestler Bomber, and Christopher Fairbank as the Liverpudlian plasterer Moxey.
It was a complicated production. While a construction site, complete with cranes, dumper trucks, portable toilets and thousands of bricks imported from Germany, was built at Elstree studios, location filming was done in Hamburg, doubling as Düsseldorf. And McKeand had to cope with the cast’s high jinks. Long drinking sessions in the hotel bar led to rowdiness and visits from the police, and the night porter once objected when one cast member brought a sex worker back. “I was called into the hotel manager’s office,” recalled McKeand in an article for the programme’s official fansite. He was told: “In our country, people who make films are artists, civilised people. This does not seem to be true of some of your group. I must ask you to leave.” McKeand’s diplomacy saved the day. He set about keeping his rabble-rousers in order for the rest of the shoot.
McKeand felt that the series (1983-84) was under-publicised by Central, but when viewing figures hit almost 14 million, it commissioned a second run, set in Spain and screened in 1986.
The producer’s problems this time included working around industrial action at home by the TV electricians’ union and a rainy Costa del Sol during filming in Marbella. Even more challenging was the task of completing the series following the death of Holton in October 1985 from an alcohol and morphine overdose. With all location shooting finished, a double was used and scripts were rewritten.
Although he was not involved in a later Auf Wiedersehen, Pet revival for the BBC (2002-04), McKeand was proud to have launched Nail’s career and produced him again in the first two series (1991-92) of the hugely popular Spender, with Nail playing the unorthodox undercover Newcastle detective sergeant, Freddie Spender.
Born in Sutton, Surrey, Martin was the son of Joan (nee ten Bruggenkate) and Jay (James) McKeand, who worked in insurance. He attended the City of London school before doing national service with the Royal Army Service Corps in Egypt.
After entering the advertising industry in 1955 as a media buyer with Young & Rubicam, he graduated to producer, then worked for several other companies. He joined Brooks Fulford in 1970, becoming its managing director the following year, and helped to create the Smash instant mashed potato commercials with Martian robots and the slogan: “For mash, get Smash.”
Keen to break into television, he was eventually commissioned by the ITV company ATV to produce Havoc (1978), a documentary series about disasters, and the feature-length drama Dirty Money (1979), starring Ian McShane in the real-life story of French neo-fascists committing a bank robbery to finance their terrorist activities.
McKeand then became embroiled in the diplomatic row that followed the screening of Death of a Princess (1980), the drama-documentary he co-produced with the director Antony Thomas, for which he had helped to raise funding from half a dozen countries. After seeing its re-enactment of the public executions of a Saudi royal and her male lover, Saudi Arabia imposed sanctions and ejected Britain’s ambassador from Riyadh. The programme-makers also had to fight off attacks from Conservative politicians in parliament – and critics who condemned the drama-documentary style.
Between making Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and Spender, McKeand was Saatchi & Saatchi’s deputy head of television advertising (1988-89). He returned to TV to produce another comedy-drama by Clement and La Frenais, Full Stretch (1993), starring Kevin McNally as a former footballer running a struggling limousine-hire company, and the first series of Harry (1993), with Michael Elphick as an unscrupulous news agency reporter.
McKeand’s 1965 marriage to Lorna Heaton ended in divorce. He then had a long-term relationship with Jill Forbes, who died in 2001. He is survived by the two children of his marriage, Kate and Richard, his stepson, Alex, and his sister, Janet.
• James Martin McKeand, television producer and advertising executive, born 16 August 1935; died 21 January 2022
