David Rose, the former head of drama at BBC Birmingham, is to return to the city on Thursday night to talk about his 50-year career in film and television.

Though born in Dorset and now based in London, the man who helped to bring Z Cars and Softly, Softly to our screens believes he spent the happiest years of his life at Pebble Mill after David Attenborough asked him to establish a drama department there in the 1970s.

David, who will be 85 in November, said: “I was first asked to compile this presentation for the British Film Institute and now I’ve got half a dozen dates for it around the country!

“Looking back, I realised that in each of my five decades there were quite distinct areas of innovation.

“I enjoyed my career so much and it was all down to the people I worked with – I was quite distressed when Pebble Mill was closing down and I didn’t get an invitation.”

As well as being a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, David holds the gold medal of the Royal Television Society and received the Roberto Rossellini award in Cannes in 1987 for Channel 4, where he helped to develop Brookside, as well as Film Four.

After flying 34 missions in a Lancaster Bomber during World War Two, David took a year out and managed to get himself to Cannes where he watched Michael Powell explaining film rushes after a day’s shooting on The Red Shoes.

David studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama from 1947-49 before working for five years in repertory theatre as a stage manager and director. After moving into television in 1954 as an assistant floor manager for Michael Barry’s drama department, from 1962-65 he produced 176 episodes of Z Cars before moving on to the spin-off series Softly, Softly.

He then developed plays ranging from Peter Terson’s The Fishing Party to Philip Martin’s Gangsters and Alan Bleasdale’s The Black Stuff before joining Channel 4 as senior commissioning editor for fiction. David has been married to his third wife, Karin Bamborough, for 25 years and has nine children, two of whom he adopted.

First staged in 2008 at the National Film Theatre, David’s showcase uses film clips and his own recollections to explain what it was like working with people from Mike Leigh to Willy Russell and Stephen Frears.

Asked what he was most proud of, David said: “Narrowing the gap between films and television. When I started, there was a big gap. Television didn’t want to get involved with the unions and felt film was a dirty word.

“Cinema hated television because it felt it was showing films on the cheap and would think that what we were doing was ‘only a telly film’.

“I resented that because it’s the talent that matters. A film is a film is a film, but when Channel 4 was launched, of the 21 feature films being made in this country at the time, 19 were American. A lot of people I worked with in Birmingham, like Frears (Dangerous Liaisons/The Queen) have gone on to have successful film careers – they saw opportunities and grabbed them.”

While mourning the death last week of Z-Cars’ co-creator and Italian Job and Edge of Darkness writer Troy Kennedy Martin – “every day of my working life depended on writers and he gave me four years’ work” – David’s one to watch for the future is Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall.

David has been invited to give the talk by Creative Networks, which is staged monthly by the School of Digital Media Technology at Birmingham City University’s Campus at Millennium Point.

Dave Taylor from Creative Networks said: “It promises to be an inspiring evening, acknowledging this region’s contribution to the industry, past, present and future.”

Following an hour of networking from 6pm and a 15-minute session involving the pitching of ideas, David’s presentation will last from 7.15pm-9pm.

l Anyone interested in attending should telephone 0121 331 5400 or visit www.creativenetworksonline.com