Born: 23rd September 1959 (as Francis Gerard Boyce)
Episodes Broadcast: 2014, 2017

Frank Cottrell-Boyce was born into the Boyce family of Bootle, Merseyside and demonstrated a talent for writing while still in grammar school. He was a fan of Doctor Who during his childhood, particularly enjoying the Earth-based adventures which were the hallmark of Jon Pertwee's time as the Third Doctor. Boyce attended Oxford University, where he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and a doctorate which focussed on King Charles I. Having begun a relationship with theology student Denise Cottrell, they decided to marry in 1983 and combine their surnames; subsequent credits would be styled both with and without a hyphen. The family grew to include seven children: four boys and three girls.

Cottrell-Boyce began writing for television in 1986, starting with a stint on the soap opera Brookside and its spin-off Damon And Debbie. He moved on to another soap opera, Coronation Street, on which his tenure lasting for half a decade. In between, Cottrell-Boyce began collaborating with director Michael Winterbottom, initially on the 1990 movie Forget About Me. He also provided television criticism to the journal Living Marxism. After leaving Coronation Street in 1996, Cottrell-Boyce worked with future Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies on the supernatural soap opera Springhill, and created the animated science-fiction spoof Captain Star.

In 2012, Cottrell-Boyce and Danny Boyle developed the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympic Games in London

Much of Cottrell-Boyce's focus was now on movies, however: his partnership with Winterbottom produced the likes of Welcome To Sarajevo and 24 Hour Party People, while other screenplays included Hilary And Jackie and The Railway Man. His novelisation of his script for the 2005 family film Millions garnered critical acclaim and won the Carnegie Medal, enabling him to fulfill a longstanding ambition by establishing a second career as a children's novelist. Amongst Cottrell-Boyce's prose work were several authorised sequels to Ian Fleming's classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. In 2012, he became the inaugural Professor of Reading and Communication at Liverpool Hope University. The same year, Cottrell-Boyce and director Danny Boyle -- with whom he had first worked on the movie version of Millions -- developed Isles Of Wonder, the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympic Games in London.

Cottrell-Boyce now worked in television only rarely, an exception being the 2009 telefilm Framed -- which starred Eve Myles of the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood -- on which he was both the scriptwriter and an executive producer. Nonetheless, he had been keen to write for Doctor Who ever since its 2005 revival, and he finally declared his interest to Davies. He was soon put in touch with Steven Moffat, Davies' successor as the programme's showrunner, and the result was In The Forest Of The Night, a 2014 adventure for Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor. A second Twelfth Doctor story, Smile, followed in 2017.

Cottrell-Boyce's subsequent projects included the AA Milne biopic Goodbye Christopher Robin. During the Twenties, he returned to television as a writer and executive producer of the crime drama Stephen, on which he collaborated with his son Joe. Cottrell-Boyce also contributed to the script for a sketch which saw Queen Elizabeth II meet the beloved children's character Paddington Bear; it was released as part of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022.