Kenith Trodd is a British television producer best known for his long association with television playwright Dennis Potter.
The son of a crane driver, Trodd was raised in the Christian fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren. A graduate of Oxford University, following work as a university teacher in West Africa, Trodd began his career in television as an assistant to Roger Smith, script editor of The Wednesday Play in 1964. A problem with the script of Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton first brought Trodd into contact with Dennis Potter, the play's author. A desire to adapt a short story for an episode of BBC 2's Thirty-Minute Theatre, led to a phone call from its author, Simon Gray, beginning Trodd's association with him and Gray's work in drama.
In 1968, with colleagues Tony Garnett and Ken Loach, he set up Kestrel Productions, a company which was affiliated with London Weekend Television. From now on Trodd worked as a producer, and the short-lived Kestrel saw the beginning of Trodd's professional relationship with Dennis Potter with Moonlight on the Highway and Lay Down Your Arms, Potter's first play produced in colour. British Sounds, a film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, which Trodd produced, had a particularly deleterious effect on Kestrel's relationship with LWT, who banned it.
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