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He has unparalleled creative freedom within the BBC. But, as Stephen Poliakoff's latest lavish drama reaches our screens, what does he make of his reputation for being a control freak?

'I'm quite sure," Stephen Poliakoff giggles, "there are people within the BBC who run down the corridors blocking their ears when they see me coming." His reputation certainly precedes him – a great galloping colossus of media folklore, variously casting the writer as a genius, control freak, force of nature or diva, sometimes all at the same time. Descriptions of his appearance err towards cartoonish caricature – dishevelled, wild-haired, fidgety, like a mad professor who has accidentally electrocuted himself – only adding to the mythology of a wild man of letters. But to everyone about to fall in love with his latest drama, Poliakoff may well soon be at real risk of becoming a national treasure.

Dancing on the Edge is set...

His name might be pretty much unfamiliar to all but the most fervent Anglophiles, but Stephen Poliakoff is something of a legend among British writers. He started his career as a playwright in the 1970s, before moving into television, which has hosted the bulk of his work, followed by feature films like "Hidden City" and "Close Your Eyes," with Alan Rickman and Clive Owen. Poliakoff's consistently idiosyncratic, often oblique dramas have become a brand in to themselves, making him one of the few writers who can continually bring in huge audiences for serious, adult television when it airs on the BBC.

We all have film sequences that stick in our minds. Some are shared by many – such as the shower scene from Psycho – others are particular to us. Here our film critic and a panel of leading movie-makers reveal their favourites. What are yours?

Who will ever forget the first time they saw the 45-second shower-room murder in Hitchcock's Psycho? I remember 1959 and 1961 as the years when my first two children were born. But the first thing that comes to mind about the year in between was seeing Psycho, which I'd been looking forward to since a radio programme I'd produced the previous October, when Hitchcock had enticingly described Psycho as "my first real horror film". Entering the Plaza, Lower Regent Street, the day the film opened, I passed the cardboard cut-out of Hitchcock in the foyer, from which a tape recording of the Master's familiar Leytonstone undertaker's voice warned us...