Michael Pickwoad
Michael Pickwoad (born 11 July 1945) is a production designer for Doctor Who whose work began with A Christmas Carol. He replaced Edward Thomas, marking the first changeover at the helm of the art department, since Rose.
He is the son of Doctor Who guest actor William Mervyn. (CON: Christmas Special 2010)
Career history
Pickwoad's career began in the early 1970s, and he has worked steadily since — first as an art director, and, beginning in 1986, as a production designer. One of his very earliest jobs as the full production designer was Withnail and I, the film which was crucial to the careers of both Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann. He designed another Grant vehicle, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, which also starred Richard Wilson.
By the turn of the 1990s he had begun to head the art departments of ongoing television programmes, such as when he deigned the initial series of the Dawn French mystery-comedy, Murder Most Horrid, or a substantial number of episodes for the John Thaw legal drama, Kavanagh Q.C..
In the early 21st century, he designed a few episodes of Agatha Christie's Poirot, including one which featured Paul McGann and Geoffrey Beevers alongisde star David Suchet. In 2007, he lent his talents to the Derek Jacobi/Toby Jones version of Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop. That same year, he also got his first BAFTA nomination for the highly-acclaimed film, Longford, starring Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan.
More recently, he was responsible for the first episode of Lost in Austen, the 2008 story of a modern-day girl who suddenly finds that she's become a Jane Austen character. The production was likely the first time he'd worked with Alex Kingston, one of the stars with whom he'd work on Doctor Who. It also featured a number of other Doctor Who alumni, including: Jemima Rooper, Christina Cole, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Florence Hoath, and Lindsay Duncan.
His final production before coming to Doctor Who was the 2009 revival of The Prisoner. He and his art design team were nominated for an Excellence in Production Design Award from the Art Directors Guild — thus making him one of the few people to have ever worked on Doctor Who to have been nominated for an award by a chiefly American guild.
