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‘Quatermass and the Pit’: The original, classic TV series by Nigel Kneale

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Workers at a building site in London excavate what appears to be human remains. On closer examination, these turn out to be something far more sinister, and when a space capsule is discovered, a series of disturbing events lead Professor Bernard Quatermass and his team to face a deadly martian threat and consider far darker origin to humanity.

This is the plot of Nigel Kneale‘s classic science-fiction series Quatermass and the Pit, which was originally shown on BBC Decemebr 22, 1958, to January 26, 1959.

Quatermass was an incredibly successful and influential series, which ran for 3 seasons from 1953-1959. Its success was in no way diminished by a change in lead actor - not once but 3 times.

Reginald Tate played the Professor in the opening series The Quatermass Experiment. and was about to film Quatermass II in 1955, when he dropped dead of a heart attack outside his London home. Tate was replaced by John Robinson, who proved quite successful, but due to other commitments he could not film Quatermass and the Pit in 1958. This allowed the man most associated with Quatermass, André Morell to take over.

All this proves is that a great character and a brilliant script can work with any number of different actors.

When the series moved to the big screen, it was believed an American star would guarantee box office success in the States, so Brian Donlevy was brought in to star in Hammer Film’s versions of The Quatermass Experiment and Quatermass II. By 1967, it was all change again as Scottish actor Andrew Keir played the professor in the first color version of Quatermass and the Pit.

And it didn’t stop there: Kneale revived Quatermass for a new TV series in the 1970s, with John Mills this time as the maverick scientist. While the BBC tried their hand with a live performance of The Quatermass Experiment, which starred Jason Flemyng in 2005.

Though I have great liking for Keir’s performance, this original TV version of Quatermass and the Pitt starring André Morell is, in many ways, the best. Part of the reason for this is the three-and-half hours of air time, which allowed Kneale far greater opportunity to develop ideas that a 90 minute film could not hold.

Understandably, Quatermass has cast a long shadow over TV, film and fiction for more than 50 years, and has inspired Stephen (Tommyknockers) King, John Carpenter (who wanted Kneale to write Halloween III), and series such as Dr Who and The X Files.

This was because Nigel Kneale was such a brilliant writer, who was sadly often side-lined by the idiotic snobbery of critics, who saw him as a mere scriptwriter of speculative science-fiction and pulp thrillers. But as Mark Gatiss rightly pointed out at the time of Kneale’s death in 2006:

‘Kneale is amongst the greats—he is absolutely as important as Dennis Potter, as David Mercer, as Alan Bleasdale, as Alan Bennett…’

Now here’s your chance to watch a master writer at his height, producing one the greatest TV dramas ever made, Quatermass and the Pit.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.03.2012
09:35 pm
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