AustLit

Television script-writer.

George Kerr worked for the BBC and commercial television companies ATV and ABC in London, including scripts for anthology series BBC Sunday-Night Theatre, Lili Palmer Theatre, ITV Television Playhouse, and Armchair Theatre.

He arrived in Australia in 1957. He wrote a wide range of television and radio plays for the ABC, beginning with the four-part anthology series Killer in Close-Up, four plays focusing on famous British murder cases: Robert Wood (the Camden Town Murder), William Herbert Wallace, Francis Rattenbury, and Madeleine Smith. The series was produced in both Sydney and Melbourne: episodes one and four were produced in Sydney, broadcast live, and recorded for later showing in Melbourne; the reverse is the case for episodes two and three. Per the title, directors made extensive use of close-ups to create tension in the episodes. (This work, focusing as it does on British crimes, is not indexed on AustLit.) He has been suggested as the author of the ABC television adaptation of Jean Anouilh's play Traveller without Luggage (broadcast August 1961, as producer Henri Safran's English-language drama debut), but his name is not associated with it in early newspaper reports.

He returned to England in c.1965: although the exact date of departure is unknown, he wrote teenage-detective series Quick Before They Catch Us for the BBC in 1966.