A TELEVISION director and producer who worked on much-loved programmes from the last 50 years has died aged 93.

Bill Sellars, who died on December 19, 2018, produced All Creatures Great and Small, the long-running adaptation of the James Herriot novels about the life of a Yorkshire Dales vet.

Once he retired from television, he was theatre manager at the Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond, from 1992 to 2003, where he made an impact as a boss and director.

Mr Sellars was also a producer on some of the biggest soap operas of the 1960s and 70s, including Compact and The Brothers.

Sellars joined the BBC in the 1960s working on the drama A for Andromeda as a production assistant and began working as a television director on the soap opera Compact, which was created by Hazel Adair and Peter Ling, who subsequently devised Crossroads; the show was set in the world of magazine publishing and ran from 1962 to 1965.

Sellars moved into producing with the soap opera The Newcomers, about a family moving from the city to a small town.

In the 1980s, Sellars had considerable success with All Creatures Great and Small, producing the show throughout the decade.

From 1984 to 1987, Sellars also produced another veterinary-themed drama One by One about a vet caring for animals in zoos. All Creatures Great and Small won Sellars two awards nominations, a Bafta nomination for Best Drama Series in 1979, and a Primetime Emmy nomination in 1990.

His daughter Lindy Carr said Sellars died peacefully in his sleep. She said: “He was just a kind man who came from humble beginnings, and he worked his way up and became a success.”