Alvin Rakoff obituary

Stage and film director who contributed to the success of the single play on television Alvin Rakoff, who has died aged 97, left his native Canada in the early 1950s to become a prolific director of television plays in Britain, helping to pioneer small-screen drama during its formative years. Single plays were his preferred format – he made dozens – and his legacy is best demonstrated in A Voyage Round My Father, a 1982 Emmy award-winning production of the writer John Mortimer’s autobiographical drama. Laurence Olivier played the cantankerous, eccentric, blind father in declining health, with Alan Bates as the devoted son who followed him into law while harbouring ambitions as a writer. Rakoff directed much of the leisurely action between them in the large garden of Mortimer’s Buckinghamshire home – capturing the special bond between father and son while dealing sensitively with Olivier’s own failing health and difficulty in remembering lines.