In fact, Quatermass proved such a hit that before the second BBC serial had even aired, film adaptations of the scripts had begun – a franchise that kickstarted the legendary Hammer Studios' successful turn towards the horror cinema they would become famous for.
Whereas the corporation had previously leaned towards producing single televised plays and dramas such as Jack Hulbert's contribution to the Festival of Britain in 1951, The Golden Year, or various theatrical adaptations of Shakespeare, episodic drama was normalised after Quatermass.
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It showed how a series could grow audiences over time, and proved to the BBC that serialised drama really worked, hooking viewers in a fast-changing TV landscape from week to week, who were desperate to know how it ended. Indeed, while the first episode achieved 3.4 million viewers, its final episode achieved closer to 5 million. In creating overarching multi-episode storylines, the Quatermass serials were at the forefront of pioneering television's use of the cliffhanger as a way to keep people coming back. Yet its imprint can be seen everywhere today, from its model of serialised drama to its themes of alien invasion, mysterious military establishments and unsettled landscapes. Quatermass took science fiction and brought it to a captivated, not to say terrified, mass British audience, while innovating with the multi-camera format of the period, and creating something unique. They proved it could have a broad audience."
This wasn't 'genre television' as a cult niche. Quatermass serials were mainstream and popular. "Quatermass wasn't the only television drama to have a sense of ambition," he tells BBC Culture, "but I think it's certainly a landmark example that surely made fellow programme makers sit up and pay attention. Beyond the BBC, meanwhile, Kneale biographer Andy Murray believes the programmes set a new benchmark for British television more generally. They were one of the earliest examples of event television, providing for the young medium what we now know of as watercooler moments. Throughout the 1950s, the Quatermass serials helped define the BBC's drama output. It was followed by Quatermass II, broadcast in 1955, while the initial trilogy concluded in 1958 with the astonishing Quatermass and the Pit – both of these thankfully are still in existence in the BBC archives. Today, only two episodes of the original serial are still viewable, since the show, as with other TV dramas back then, was performed and broadcast live, with the other episodes not recorded. The serials centred on the intrepid scientist Professor Bernard Quatermass – whose name was inspired by a surname discovered by chance in the telephone book and the astronomer Bernard Lovell – as he faces down a range of unusual extraterrestrial threats.Īcross six episodes, broadcast throughout the summer of 1953, The Quatermass Experiment, starring Reginald Tate as the professor, gripped the nation with the tale of an astronaut bringing something aggressively alien back to Earth. Directed by the legendary Rudolph Cartier, the first of the serials, The Quatermass Experiment (1953), was also the first original adult science-fiction drama that the BBC had produced for television. Out of Kneale's many contributions to British screen culture, it is arguably his creation of the Quatermass television serials for the BBC in the 1950s that has left the most profound mark. – The sci fi-stories that have become a reality – The historical roots of the 'multiverse' His work covered a range of genres, from science fiction and horror to British kitchen sink and political dramas, becoming incredibly influential across generations – and so it is that his centenary has been celebrated with a season of his work at London's BFI Southbank this month. Having started his career in the late 1940s as an actor in radio, Kneale soon rose to prominence as one of the most in-demand writers in the UK, for both the big and small screen. Today marks 100 years since the birth of a figure who may not be a household name, but who has greatly influenced 20th-Century film and television – British screenwriter Nigel Kneale.