Born: 24th March 1935
Died: 3rd January 2017
Episodes Broadcast: 1975-1976

A graduate of Cambridge University, Rodney Bennett had become involved in student theatre during his studies. He parlayed this experience into a job as a producer with BBC Radio, then moved into television when BBC Two debuted in 1964. After several years with the Schools Department, Bennett began working on Thirty-Minute Theatre and Z Cars from 1969. He then left the BBC to become a freelance director.

In 1972, Bennett worked on an episode of the horror anthology Dead Of Night, written by frequent Doctor Who contributor Robert Holmes. When Holmes became Doctor Who's script editor he recommended hiring Bennett, who ultimately made three stories for the early part of Tom Baker's tenure as the Fourth Doctor. The Ark In Space and The Sontaran Experiment were effectively made as a single production, while The Masque Of Mandragora provided the opportunity for sumptuous location filming in Portmeirion, Wales. Bennett's other Seventies television included The Case Of Eliza Armstrong, Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm and The Legend Of King Arthur.

When the BBC embarked on a comprehensive series of adaptations of the works of William Shakespeare, Bennett was tasked with no less a play than Hamlet, with Derek Jacobi in the title role, Patrick Stewart as Claudius, and Lalla Ward (who was simultaneously playing the Doctor's Time Lord companion, Romana, in Doctor Who) as Ophelia. Other credits during the Eighties included Sense And Sensibility, Dombey & Son, Monsignor Quixote and Rumpole Of The Bailey. In the early Nineties, Bennett helped Catherine Zeta-Jones find fame when he cast her in The Darling Buds Of May. He also directed for Soldier Soldier and Doctor Finlay before retiring around the middle of the decade. Bennett died on January 3rd, 2017.