throughout the 1980s he worked on a number of programmes, of particular note being channel 4's anthology comedy series "the comic strip presents..." and the bbc sketch shows "french and saunders" and "a bit of fry and laurie". he began his association with writer steven moffat in 1989, directing over half of the episodes of the teen comedy drama series "press gang" (1989–1993) for the itv network. according to moffat, spiers was the "principal director" taking an interest in the other episodes and setting the visual style of the show. spiers particularly used tracking shots, sometimes requiring more dialogue to be written to accommodate the length of the shot. the other directors would come in and "do a spiers". spiers then directed all twelve episodes of moffat's sitcom "joking apart" (1993, 1995). the show won the bronze rose of montreux and was entered for the emmys.