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Radio producer and director Marc Beeby, who was involved with many of the genre productions from BBC Radio over the past few years, has died.

Pilgrim creator Sebastian Baczkiewicz passed on the news on his Facebook page, revealing Beeby died on Christmas Day. Beeby originally worked in education before moving to the World Service.

Beeby was the producer of Pilgrim, with other genre pieces including Rendezvous with Rama, The Once and Future King, The War of the Worlds, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mysterious Island, The Divine Comedy and Frankenstein.

Talking at an event in 2016, Beeby noted of the relationship between writer and producer in radio, “There is just the writer and producer and nobody else interfering. Writers are incredibly important to us… The writer understands the medium and allows you to do exciting things with sound. It’s a very fulfilling venture.”

Brian Sibley told Sci-Fi Bulletin: “I had the privilege of working with Marc Beeby on two of my radio drama projects: my serialisation of T H White’s epic, THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING (co-produced with Gemma Jenkins and David Hunter) and my two-part dramatisation of Richard Adams’ WATERSHIP DOWN. Reserved, almost enigmatic until you got to know him, Marc was an exceptional director: highly intelligent; clear in his focus, but always open to the interpretive skills of the actor and, as a result, was able to elicit wonderfully nuanced performances from his cast.

“To a writer – well, to this writer, at any rate – he was everything that you need from a director: precise in his questions; courteous in his suggestions for amendments – but never prescriptive, thereby always allowing you the space to find your own way of solving whatever conundrum he had set before you; respectful of the writer’s investment in his material and open to working together in studio. In my time, I have worked with directors to whom my presence was an irksome trial that had to be endured and, in one case, a director who ‘preferred’ me to not be there at all! Marc always welcomed my attendance at recordings and was open to suggestions of tweaks and amendments – even, on occasion, complete rewrites of scenes that we both knew could be improved. To work with Marc was to engage in a collaborative experience of the most satisfying kind.”