Career
He also wrote the screenplay for 2013 feature film Trance. Among his work for World were episodes of the 1997 series the British Broadcasting Corporation Two drama This Life, for which Ahearne wrote two and directed another three episodes, making him the only person to both write and direct episodes for the series. His next major production for World was the six-episode Channel Four vampire series Ultraviolet, which Ahearne both wrote and directed.
Ultraviolet was broadcast in 1998 to high critical acclaim, and has subsequently been released on both VHS and Digital Video Disc. The series also ran on the Sciences-Fi Channel in the United States, and the Fox Network in that country produced a pilot for their own version in 2001, although this did not lead to a series.
In 2002 Ahearne directed the pilot for the Big Bear Productions horror-fantasy drama Strange, written by Andrew Marshall and broadcast on British Broadcasting Corporation One. The pilot was successful enough for a series to be commissioned the following year, with Ahearne helming three of the six episodes, although the series was not a success and a second did not follow.
Ahearne both wrote and directed the two-part drama-documentary series Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets for the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Discovery Channel in 2004. He was the director of five episodes of the 2005 series of the British Broadcasting Corporation"s Doctor Who, for which Ahearne was nominated for his first British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In December 2006 his drama Perfect Parents, starring Doctor Who lead Christopher Eccleston, was aired on ITV1.
The following month, Ahearne returned to This Life to direct the one-off reunion episode "This Life +10", shown on British Broadcasting Corporation Two on 2 January 2007.
Ahearne will also work on Da Vinci"s Demons, a fictional adventure television-series created by David South. Goyer for Starz and British Broadcasting Corporation Worldwide. Ahearne"s project Apparitions, a supernatural series for the British Broadcasting Corporation which he wrote and directed, began on British Broadcasting Corporation One in November 2008. He also wrote the four-issue Fantastic Force mini-series for Marvel Comics in 2009 and Fantastic Four Annual 32 in 2010.
In 2013, Ahearne co-wrote the screenplay for Trance, a 2013 psychological thriller directed by Danny Boyle starring James McAvoy.
He had sent it to Boyle in 1994 after the release of Shallow Grave. Boyle never forgot it and over a decade later contacted Ahearne with the intention of making a feature film.
lieutenant went on to receive mostly positive reviews.