Hannah Kodicek obituary

My mother, Hannah Kodicek, who has died aged 63 of pancreatic cancer, was a film-maker, actor, writer, educator and creator of children's television classics, who blended artistic vision with erudition and a childlike humour.

Born Zuzana Oprsalova in Czechoslovakia and trained as a pianist at the Prague Conservatoire, she emigrated to Britain in 1968, after the Russian invasion, with her husband, Michal, and young son, Peter. They were lucky enough to be taken under the wing of an English family in Blackheath, south-east London, which enabled Hannah to get on her feet through a succession of low-paid jobs, until she learned the language.

The cold war meant that there were opportunities for a beautiful young woman with an exotic accent and she found a number of acting roles, under the name Susan Kodicek, mostly as some kind of spy. Her most celebrated role was as Irina in the widely acclaimed 1979 TV adaptation of John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

At the same time, she and another Czech emigre, Rosta Cerny, put together a small group of puppeteers working as the Black Theatre Group of Prague, first on stage in variety acts, with performers such as Mike Yarwood and Paul Daniels, then eventually on television, where their work with the children's series Vision On led to their creating three series of their own: Once Upon a Time, Pullover and Fox Tales.

In the mid-80s, this work began to dry up as regional broadcasters stopped commissioning new children's TV. But Hannah had developed an interest in psychology, alchemy and symbolism, and became a respected member of the Jungian community in London. Then her life changed again with the fall of communism and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. After 20 years, she was able to return to her home country and found that she still had a vast, unexpected love for it.

This love was given expression in her semi-autobiographical feature film A Pin for the Butterfly (1994), featuring Hugh Laurie, Joan Plowright and a young Florence Hoath. The film never found a cinema release in Britain but it led to other work. Hannah taught story structure for screenwriters for many years, and went on to be the story editor on films including the Oscar-winning The Counterfeiters (2007).

In 2001 she moved back to the Czech Republic, where she lived in the beautiful town of Cesky Krumlov. She continued to innovate, acting as artistic director on the treasure hunt website TimeHunt, but mostly she filled her time between story editing and teaching with walks in the woods, picking mushrooms.

Hannah and Michal divorced. She is survived by her long-term partner, Connie; two sons, Peter and me; her mother, Olga, and stepfather, Mirko; and four grandchildren, Anna, Matthew, Harper and Milla.

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