Quatermass (TV serial)

Quatermass (also known as Quatermass IV, or The Quatermass Conclusion for its limited international theatrical release) is a 1979 British television science fiction serial. Produced by Euston Films for Thames Television, it was broadcast on the ITV network in October and November 1979. Like its three predecessors, Quatermass was written by Nigel Kneale. It is the fourth and, to date, final television serial to feature the character of Professor Bernard Quatermass, this time played by John Mills.

Influenced by the social and geopolitical situation of the early 1970s and the hippie youth movement of the late 1960s, Quatermass is set in a near future in which large numbers of young people are joining a cult known as the Planet People who gather at prehistoric sites, believing they will be transported to a better life on another planet. The series begins with Professor Quatermass arriving in London to look for his granddaughter, Hettie Carlson, and witnessing the destruction of two spacecraft and the disappearance of a group of Planet People at a stone circle by an unknown force. He investigates this force, believing that Hettie may be in danger. As the series progresses, it becomes apparent that the Planet People are being harvested by an alien force rather than transported.

Quatermass was originally conceived as a BBC production, but after the corporation lost faith in the project because of spiralling costs, work was halted. The scripts were acquired by Euston Films and Kneale, who was commissioned to rewrite the scripts into two versions: a four-part television serial and The Quatermass Conclusion, a 100-minute film, intended for international theatrical release.

Despite ITV making the series its flagship premier for its 1979 autumn schedule, the four-part serial was met with lukewarm reviews. Reasons were blamed on the plot, casting and character development. The cinematic edited version, The Quatermass Conclusion, was given a limited release due to lack of interest from distributors.

Series

Cast

thumb|[[John Mills as Bernard Quatermass]]

John Mills ... Prof. Bernard Quatermass
Simon MacCorkindale ... Joe Kapp
Ralph Arliss ... Kickalong
Paul Rosebury ... Caraway
Jane Bertish ... Bee
Toyah Willcox ... Sal
Rebecca Saire ... Hettie Carlson
Tony Sibbald ... Chuck Marshall
Barbara Kellerman ... Clare Kapp
Margaret Tyzack ... Annie Morgan
Brewster Mason ... Gurov
Bruce Purchase ... Tommy Roach
Annabelle Lanyon ... Isabel
David Yip ... Frank Chen
Neil Stacy ... Toby Gough
Tudor Davies ... TV Director

Production

Development

Professor Bernard Quatermass was created by Manx writer Nigel Kneale in 1953 for the serial The Quatermass Experiment. Its success led to two sequels, Quatermass II (1955) and Quatermass and the Pit (1958). These three Quatermass serials are seen today as seminal 1950s television productions. Kneale, however, became disenchanted with the BBC and went freelance in the late 1950s, producing scripts for Hammer Films and Associated Television.

The notion of bringing Professor Quatermass back for a fourth adventure dated back to at least 1965 when producer Irene Shubik asked Kneale to contribute a new Quatermass story for the first season of the science fiction anthology series, Out of the Unknown. Nothing came of this but the prospect of Quatermass making a reappearance arose again when, following the success of the film version of Quatermass and the Pit in 1967, Hammer was in discussions with Kneale for a new Quatermass adventure. Again, this did not progress beyond the initial negotiation stage. In the meantime Kneale had been coaxed back to the BBC, writing plays such as The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968), Wine of India (1970) and The Stone Tape (1972).

Assigned to produce the serial was Dixon of Dock Green producer Joe Waters. Preliminary filming on Quatermass began in June 1973 at Ealing Studios where special effects designer Jack Wilkie and his assistant, Ian Scoones shot model footage for part one of the serial, of a space station with astronauts working on its hull. At this point the BBC got cold feet about the project; it had become concerned about the cost of mounting the production and had been refused permission to film at Stonehenge, one of the locations at which Kneale had envisaged the Planet People would gather to be reaped by the alien force. In the end, it was decided during summer 1973 that for financial reasons the BBC would not proceed with the production. Kneale was dubious about having to craft both a television serial version and a film version of his tale, feeling that "in the end we had two versions, neither of which was the right length for the story". During the rewrites, Kneale transplanted the action at the conclusion of part three from Stonehenge to the more easily available Wembley Stadium.

Writing

Kneale began writing the scripts, working to a delivery deadline of February 1973. Much of the setting for the story was influenced by contemporary political events such as strikes, power cuts, the oil crisis and developments in the space race, especially the planned Apollo-Soyuz missions and Skylab. Writing in the listings magazine TV Times to promote the serial, Kneale said: "Quatermass is a story of the future – but perhaps only a few years from now. There are some clues already in the most obvious places: the streets. Pavements littered with rubbish. Walls painted with angry graffiti. Belfast black with smoke and rage. Worst of all, the mindless violence". Concerns about the state of society, especially the "dropout" culture of the youth movement, had been a theme of Kneale's writing for some time. This was seen in such works as The Big, Big Giggle, an unmade play about a teenage suicide cult; The Year of the Sex Olympics, about the consequences of a world with no censorship or inhibitions; and Bam! Pow! Zap! (1969), about teenage delinquents, all of which fed into the world depicted in the new Quatermass serial. Kneale said: "I looked at the alarming aspects of contemporary trends. Since then, we'd seen 'flower power' and hippies, so all I did was bring them into the story. It was written in 1972 and it was about the sixties really".

Following Quatermass, writer Nigel Kneale developed the sitcom Kinvig (1981) for London Weekend Television. During the 1980s he was courted for scripts by admiring Hollywood directors and producers such as John Carpenter, John Landis and Joe Dante, but with limited success. Returning to television, he adapted Susan Hill's novel The Woman in Black (1989) and wrote episodes of Sharpe and Kavanagh QC. He died in 2006. Mills, whose only previous television credit at the time was The Zoo Gang (1974), was reluctant to take the part but was persuaded by his wife, who liked the script. MacCorkindale was delighted with the part of Joe Kapp, finding it a break from the typecast romantic roles he was used to playing.

Quatermass also featured many familiar faces from British television and film in supporting roles, including Margaret Tyzack, Bruce Purchase, James Ottaway, Brenda Fricker, David Yip, Kevin Stoney, Gretchen Franklin, Brian Croucher and Chris Quinten, as well as the singer (and later television presenter) Toyah Willcox.

Director Piers Haggard, who was the great-grand-nephew of author H. Rider Haggard, Commenting on the script, Haggard described it as "a tremendous re-assertion of the importance of people, ordinary people, and how necessary they are in fighting evil". She became Chief Executive of Euston Films in 1979; Quatermass was one of the first productions she oversaw in the role, seeing it as a project to make her mark on the company. Despite this she held Kneale in high esteem, describing him as "a fantastic writer... hugely imaginative... considering the impact his work has had, I think he's undervalued". She died in 2007.

Producer Ted Childs had begun his career with Euston on Special Branch (1969–74) and had produced episodes of The Sweeney and its film spin-offs Sweeney! (1977) and Sweeney 2 (1978). Childs saw Quatermass as a big gamble for Euston, out of step with the company's usual fare. He continues to be one of British television's top producers, responsible for such shows as Chancer (1991), Inspector Morse (1987–2000), Sharpe (1993–2006), Kavanagh QC (1995–2001) and Lewis (2006–2015).

Filming

The production took place between 26 August and 23 December 1978 The budget was £1.25 million (£ in ), making it one of the most expensive undertakings Euston had attempted at that time. Post-production was completed in mid-February 1979. Unlike the original BBC Quatermass serials, which had used stock music tracks, the new serial had a specially composed soundtrack by Marc Wilkinson and Nic Rowley which made particular use of the nursery rhyme "Huffity, Puffity, Ringstone Round" devised by Kneale in his scripts. However, industrial action began at ITV on 3 August and escalated into a full-scale blackout from 10 August, leaving the channel—and Quatermass—off the air for 75 days.

Reception

Quatermass met with a generally unenthusiastic critical response. Sean Day-Lewis wrote: "Although Piers Haggard's direction achieves much verisimilitude and the story is certainly enough to command some addiction; I did not feel exactly grabbed; the genre has moved some way since the 1950s and the Professor moves a little slowly for the 1970s". This view is echoed by filmmaker John Carpenter who said that "Nigel was very embittered about the way of the world, as was shown, I think, in The Quatermass Conclusion".

Reflecting on the serial, Nigel Kneale said that he was not satisfied with that project. He was similarly unimpressed with Simon MacCorkindale, noting that "we had him in Beasts playing an idiot and he was very good at that". Executive producer Verity Lambert's opinion is that it "didn't have the staying power of the originals, but then that's almost inevitable when you try to bring something back in a slightly different form".

The story was novelised by Nigel Kneale, his first book since his Somerset Maugham Award-winning short story collection Tomato Cain was published in 1949. The novelisation expanded on the backgrounds of many of the characters seen in the story, and added a deeper, more physical, relationship between Quatermass and Annie Morgan. It was this version of the story with which Kneale was most pleased. A two disc region 1 DVD of Quatermass was released by A&E Home Entertainment in 2005, and contained both the television and film versions as well as a History Channel documentary about Stonehenge. In July 2015, Network Distributing released the series on Blu-ray disc for the first time, remastered from the original 35mm film negatives. Network simultaneously released the series as a remastered DVD set. Both sets (Region B/Region 2 respectively) also contain The Quatermass Conclusion film, also remastered and presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio.

Notes

References

External links

The Quatermass Trilogy – A Controlled Paranoia