Nigel Kneale
Encyclopedia
Nigel Kneale was a British screenwriter
from the Isle of Man
. Active in television
, film
, radio drama
and prose fiction
, he wrote professionally for over fifty years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award
and was twice nominated for the British Film Award
for Best Screenplay. In 2000 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association.
Predominantly a writer of thrillers which used science-fiction and horror
elements, he was best known for the creation of the character Professor Bernard Quatermass
. Quatermass was a heroic scientist who appeared in various television, film and radio productions written by Kneale for the BBC
, Hammer Film Productions
and Thames Television
between 1953 and 1996. Kneale wrote original scripts and successfully adapted works by writers such as George Orwell
, John Osborne
, H. G. Wells
and Susan Hill
.
He was most active in television, joining BBC Television
in 1951 as one of its first staff writers; his final script was transmitted on ITV
in 1997. Kneale wrote well-received television dramas such as The Year of the Sex Olympics
(1968) and The Stone Tape
(1972) in addition to the Quatermass serials. He has been described as "one of the most influential writers of the 20th century," and as "having invented popular TV."
, England
. His family came from the Isle of Man
, and returned to live there in 1928, when Kneale was six years old. He was raised in the island's capital, Douglas
, where his father was the owner and editor of the local newspaper, The Herald. He was educated at St Ninian's High School, and after leaving studied law, training to become an advocate
at the Manx Bar. He also worked in a lawyer
's office, but became bored with his legal training and eventually abandoned the profession. At the beginning of the Second World War
Kneale attempted to enlist in the British Army
, but was deemed medically unfit for service due to photophobia
from which he had suffered since childhood.
On 25 March 1946 Kneale made his first broadcast on BBC Radio
, performing a live
reading of his own short story
"Tomato Cain" in a strand entitled Stories by Northern Authors on the BBC
's North of England
Home Service
region. Later that year he left the Isle of Man and moved to London
, where he began studying acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
(RADA). He made further radio broadcasts in the 1940s, including a reading of his story Zachary Crebbin's Angel on the BBC Light Programme
, broadcast nationally on 19 May 1948. He also had further short stories published in magazines such as Argosy and The Strand
. He began using the name "Nigel Kneale" for these professional credits, but continued to be known as "Tom" to his family and friends up until his death.
After graduating from RADA, Kneale worked for a short time as a professional actor performing in small roles at the Stratford Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon
. He continued to write in his spare time and in 1949 a collection of his work, entitled Tomato Cain and Other Stories, was published. The book sufficiently impressed the writer Elizabeth Bowen
that she wrote a foreword
for it, and in 1950 the collection won the Somerset Maugham Award
. (His son, Matthew Kneale
, would later win the same award in 1988 for his novel Whore Banquets.)
Following this success, Kneale gave up acting to write full-time. He did take small voice-over
roles in some of his 1950s television
productions, such as the voice heard on the factory loudspeaker
system in Quatermass II
(1955), for which he also narrated
most of the recaps shown at the beginning of each episode. Kneale's publisher was keen for him to write a novel, but Kneale himself was more interested in writing for television. A keen cinema-goer, he believed that the audience being able to see human faces was an important factor in storytelling.
His first professional script writing
credit came when he wrote the radio drama
The Long Stairs, broadcast by the BBC on 1 March 1950 and based on a historical mining
disaster on the Isle of Man. In 1951 he was recruited as one of the first staff writers to be employed by BBC Television
; before he started working for the BBC, Kneale had never seen any television. Kneale was initially a general purpose writer, working on adaptations of books and stage plays and even writing material for light entertainment
and children's programmes
. The following year, Michael Barry became the Head of Drama at BBC Television, and spent his entire first year's script budget of £250 to hire Kneale as a full-time writer for the drama department. Kneale's first credited role in adult television drama was providing "additional dialogue" for the play Arrow to the Heart
, broadcast on 20 July 1952. This play was adapted and directed by the Austria
n television director
Rudolph Cartier
, who had also joined the staff of the BBC drama department in 1952. It was the beginning of a successful working relationship between the pair, that would lead to some of Kneale's best known work.
and television studies
at the University of Warwick
, wrote in his 2000 history of early British television drama that "It was the arrival of Nigel Kneale... and Rudolph Cartier... that challenged the intimate drama directly... Kneale and Cartier shared a common desire to invigorate television with a faster tempo and a broader thematic and spatial canvas, and it was no coincidence that they turned to science-fiction in order to get out of the dominant stylistic trend of television intimacy."
The science-fiction production to which Jacobs referred was The Quatermass Experiment
, broadcast in six half-hour episodes in July and August 1953. The serial told the story of Professor Bernard Quatermass
of the British Experimental Rocket Group, and the consequences of his sending the first manned mission into space when a terrible fate befalls the crew and only one returns. The Quatermass Experiment was the first adult television science-fiction production, held a large television audience gripped across its six weeks, and has been described by the Museum of Broadcast Communications
as dramatising "a new range of gendered fears about Britain's postwar and post-colonial security." Kneale was inspired in choosing the character's unusual surname by the fact that many Manx surnames began with "Qu"; the actual name itself was picked from a London telephone directory
. The Professor's first name was chosen in honour of the astronomer
Bernard Lovell
.
The BBC recognised the success of the serial, particularly in the context of the impending arrival of commercial television
to the UK. Controller of Programmes Cecil McGivern
wrote in a memo that: "Had competitive television been in existence then, we would have killed it every Saturday night while [The Quatermass Experiment] lasted. We are going to need many more 'Quatermass Experiment' programmes." Like all of Kneale's 1950s television work for the BBC, The Quatermass Experiment was transmitted live
. Only the first two episodes were telerecorded and survive in the BBC's archives.
Kneale and Cartier next collaborated on an adaptation of Wuthering Heights
(broadcast 6 December 1953) and then on a version of George Orwell
's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
(12 December 1954). Nineteen Eighty-Four was a particularly notable production; many found it shocking, and questions were asked in Parliament
about whether some of the scenes had been suitable for television. There was also prominent support for the play; the Duke of Edinburgh
made it known that he and the Queen
had watched and enjoyed the programme, and the second live performance on 16 December gained the largest television audience since her coronation
the previous year. The Guardian
newspaper's obituary of Kneale in 2006 claimed that the adaptation had "permanently revived Orwell's reputation," while the British Film Institute
included it in their list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes
of the 20th century in 2000.
The Creature—an original script by Kneale concerning the legend of the abominable snowman—was his next collaboration with Cartier, broadcast on 30 January 1955, followed by an adaptation of Peter Ustinov
's play The Moment of Truth (10 March 1955), before Kneale was commissioned to write Quatermass II
. Specifically designed by the BBC to combat the threat of the new ITV
network, which launched just a month before Quatermass II was shown, the serial was even more successful than the first, drawing audiences of up to nine million viewers. Kneale was inspired in writing the serial by contemporary fears over secret UK Ministry of Defence research establishments such as Porton Down
, as well the fact that as a BBC staff writer he had been required to sign the Official Secrets Act
.
Almost simultaneously with the transmission of Quatermass II in the autumn of 1955, Hammer Film Productions
released The Quatermass Xperiment
, their film adaptation of the first serial. Kneale was not pleased with the film, and particularly disliked the casting of Brian Donlevy
as Quatermass, as he explained in a 1986 interview. "[Donlevy] was then really on the skids and didn't care what he was doing. He took very little interest in the making of the films or in playing the part. It was a case of take the money and run. Or in the case of Mr Donlevy, waddle."
Quatermass II was Kneale's final original script for the BBC as a staff writer. He left the corporation when his contract expired at the end of 1956; "Five years in that hut was as much as any sane person could stand," he later told an interviewer. He continued to write for the BBC on a freelance basis.
, adapting Quatermass II
for Hammer Film Productions along with producer
Anthony Hinds
and director
Val Guest
. Hinds and Guest had overseen the first Quatermass film, upon which Kneale had been unable to work due to his BBC staff contract. Kneale was disappointed that Brian Donlevy also returned in the role of Quatermass. The film premiered at the end of May 1957, and was reviewed positively in The Times
: "The writer of the original story, Mr. Nigel Kneale, and the director, Mr. Val Guest, between them keep things moving at the right speed, without digressions. The film has an air of respect for the issues touched on, and this impression is confirmed by the acting generally." 1957 also saw the release of another cinematic collaboration between Kneale and Guest, when Kneale adapted his 1955 BBC play The Creature into The Abominable Snowman
; in this case, Hammer retained the star of the BBC version, Peter Cushing
.
In May 1957, Kneale was contracted by the BBC to write a third Quatermass serial, and this was eventually transmitted as Quatermass and the Pit
across six weeks in December 1958 and January 1959. On this occasion Kneale was inspired by the racial tensions that had recently been seen in the United Kingdom, and which came to a head while the serial was in pre-production
when the Notting Hill race riots
occurred in August and September 1958. Drawing audiences of up to 11 million, Quatermass and the Pit has been referred to by the BBC's own website
as "simply the first finest thing the BBC ever made." It was also included in the British Film Institute's "TV 100" list in 2000, where it was praised for the themes and subtexts it explored. "In a story which mined mythology and folklore... under the guise of genre it tackled serious themes of man's hostile nature and the military's perversion of science for its own ends."
Despite the success of the serial, Kneale felt that he had now taken the character of Quatermass as far as he could. "I didn't want to go on repeating because Professor Quatermass had already saved the world from ultimate destruction three times, and that seemed to me to be quite enough," he said in 1986. It was also his final new collaboration with Rudolph Cartier, although the director did later handle a new version of Kneale's 1953 adaptation of Wuthering Heights for the BBC in 1962.
In 1958, Kneale's play Mrs Wickens in the Fall, transmitted by the BBC the previous year, was remade by the CBS
network in the United States, retitled The Littlest Enemy. Broadcast on 18 June as part of The United States Steel Hour
anthology series, the script was severely cut back in length. It was Kneale's only involvement with American television, and he was not pleased with the result. "I made up my mind I would never ever again have anything done on a television network in America," he later commented.
For the next few years, Kneale concentrated mostly on film screenplays, adapting plays and novels for the cinema. Described by The Independent
as "one of the few writers not to fall out with John Osborne
," Kneale adapted Osborne's plays Look Back in Anger
and The Entertainer
in 1958 and 1960 respectively, both for director Tony Richardson
. Kneale knew Richardson through having previously adapted a Chekhov
short story for the BBC, which Richardson had directed. Kneale was nominated for the British Film Award
(later known as a BAFTA) for Best Screenplay for both films. Film producer
Harry Saltzman
, who had produced the two Osborne adaptations, approached Kneale about scripting a project he was working on to adapt Ian Fleming
's James Bond
novels for the cinema; Kneale was not a fan of Fleming's work and turned the offer down. Further adaptations Kneale did work on were H.M.S. Defiant (1962, from the novel Mutiny by Frank Tilsley) and First Men in the Moon (1964, from the novel by H. G. Wells
).
Less successfully during this period, Kneale completed screenplays for adaptations of the novels Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
and Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
. Neither of these scripts ever saw production, as the companies making them went out of business—Kneale commented in a 2003 interview that "I reckon I closed down at least two film companies." Another screenplay that went unproduced was a Kneale original, a drama involving a wave of teenage suicide
s called The Big Giggle, or The Big, Big Giggle. Written in 1965 while Kneale was suffering from a mystery illness and forced to stay in bed for a long period, the concept started life as a drama serial for the BBC, before the corporation had second thoughts about the nature of the storyline and the possibility of copycat suicide
s; Kneale later agreed that they were probably right not to make it for television. The production was nearly made as a film by 20th Century Fox
, but John Trevelyan, Chief Executive of the British Board of Film Censors
, forbade the script's production.
In 1966 Kneale worked again for Hammer Film Productions when he adapted Norah Lofts
's 1960 novel The Devil's Own into the horror film
The Witches
. Kneale had first worked on the screenplay for the adaptation in 1961, the same year in which he had begun to adapt Quatermass and the Pit for Hammer. Like The Witches, the film version of Quatermass and the Pit
took several years to reach the screen, eventually being released in 1967. Roy Ward Baker
directed, with Andrew Keir
starring as Quatermass. Kneale was much happier with this version than the previous Hammer Quatermass adaptations, and the film was described by The Independent in 2006 as "one of the best ever Hammer productions." Quatermass and the Pit was Kneale's final credited film work; 1979's The Quatermass Conclusion
was only released to cinemas in overseas markets after having been made for television in the UK, and he had his name removed from the credits of Halloween III: Season of the Witch
(1982).
Kneale had returned to writing for television with the BBC for the first time since Quatermass and the Pit when his play The Road was broadcast in September 1963. The play concerned the population of an 18th century village who become haunted by visions of a future nuclear war
, and was followed by several further one-off dramas for the BBC over the following decade, including two entries into BBC1
's The Wednesday Play
anthology strand. During this period he was regarded as one of the finest writers working for the BBC. Kneale did his first work for the ITV
network during this time, writing one-off play The Crunch for the ATV company in 1964.
A particular critical success was The Year of the Sex Olympics
, broadcast as part of BBC2
's Theatre 625
series in July 1968. Kneale's first television work to be made in colour—although only a black-and-white
copy now survives—the story was based in a future where the majority of the population are kept in a docile state by constant broadcasts of pornography
and other low-brow reality television
programming. The Live Life Show, in which a family are watched twenty-four hours a day as they struggle to live on an isolated rural
island, becomes a massive success, especially when a murderer is introduced into the set-up.
The Year of the Sex Olympics has been praised for its foreshadowing of the rise of reality television programmes such as Big Brother
(1999–present) and Celebrity Love Island (2005–2006). The critic Nancy Banks-Smith
wrote in 2003 that: "In The Year of the Sex Olympics [Kneale] foretold the reality show and, in the scramble for greater sensation, its logical outcome... This is satire from a TV insider, but it mutates into something far more desolate and disorientating." The island locations scenes for the production were filmed on the Isle of Man, Kneale's homeland.
In 1965 Kneale had been approached by the producer of the BBC2 science-fiction anthology series Out of the Unknown
to write a new one-off 75-minute Quatermass story for the programme. Nothing came of this, but seven years later he was commissioned by the BBC to write a new four-part Quatermass serial, based in a dystopia
n near future world overrun with crime, apathy, martial law
and youth cult
s. The serial was announced as a forthcoming production by the BBC in November 1972, and some model filming was even begun in June 1973, but eventually budgetary problems and the unavailability of Stonehenge
—a central location in the scripts—led to the project's cancellation. "It lingered through the summer and slowly died as a project," he later commented.
Kneale's next script for the BBC was The Stone Tape
, a scientific ghost story
broadcast on Christmas Day 1972. Lez Cooke praised the production, when writing in 2003, describing it as "one of the most imaginative and intelligent examples of the horror genre to appear on British television, a single play to rank alongside the best of Play for Today
." His final BBC work was an entry into a series called Bedtime Stories, adapting traditional fairy tale
s into adult dramas. Kneale's script, Jack and the Beanstalk, was transmitted on 24 March 1974, and marked the end of his BBC writing career.
, made by the network's Midlands
franchise holders Associated TeleVision
(ATV) in 1975. The play, a horror piece based around witchcraft
, led the following year to a series called Beasts
, a six-part anthology where Kneale created six different character-based tales of horror and the macabre. Beasts did not gain a full network run on ITV; different regions transmitted the episodes in different timeslots and some in different sequences.
In the mid-1970s, Kneale made his only attempt at writing a stage play. Called Crow, it was based upon the memoirs of real-life Manx slaver Captain Hugh Crow. Kneale was unable to find backing to produce the play for the stage, but sold the script to ATV who put it into pre-production for television. However, shortly before filming it was cancelled by order of ATV's managing director, Lew Grade
—Kneale was never told why.
Following the cancellation of Crow, Kneale moved to work for another of the ITV companies, Thames Television
, who in 1977 commissioned the production of the scripts of Kneale's previously abandoned fourth Quatermass serial, to be produced by their Euston Films
subsidiary film company. The production was structured to work both as a four-episode serial for transmission in the UK, and a 100-minute film version for cinema release overseas—something Kneale later regretted agreeing to. Starring John Mills
as Quatermass and with a budget of over £1 million—more than fifty times the budget of Quatermass and the Pit in 1958—the serial was not as critically successful as its predecessors. "Thematically no less awesome than Mr Kneale's earlier science-fiction essays for BBC Television, his ITV debut has proved only a so-so affair," was the verdict of The Times when previewing the final episode. Tying in with the series, Kneale returned to prose fiction when he wrote his only full-length novel, Quatermass, a novelisation of the serial.
Kneale's next television series was a departure from his usual style—Kinvig
, his sole attempt at writing a sitcom, produced by London Weekend Television
and broadcast on ITV in the autumn of 1981. Although his first out-and-out comedy, Kneale was keen to stress that there had always been elements of humour present throughout his scripts, and some of the press reaction to Kinvig
was positive. "If you like the idea of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide
but found its realization tiresomely hysterical you may well prefer Kneale's relaxed wit. Cast splendid, direction deft," was The Timess preview of the first episode. However, the series was not a success, although Kneale later remained personally pleased with it.
In 1982, Kneale made another one-off diversion from his usual work when he wrote his only produced Hollywood movie script, Halloween III: Season of the Witch
. Kneale had initially been approached by the director John Landis
to work on the screenplay for a remake
of Creature from the Black Lagoon
, and he and his wife spent some time living at the Sheraton Hotel in Hollywood while Kneale worked on the project. The Black Lagoon script never went into production, but while in America Kneale met the director Joe Dante
, who invited him to script the third film in the Halloween series
, on which Dante was working. Kneale agreed, on the proviso that it would be a totally new concept unrelated to the first two films, which he had not seen and did not like what he had heard of.
Kneale's treatment
for the film met with the approval of John Carpenter
, the producer of the Halloween series, although Kneale was required to write the script in only six weeks. Kneale got on well with the director assigned to the film, Tommy Lee Wallace
, but when one of the film's backers, Dino De Laurentiis
, insisted upon the inclusion of more graphic violence and a rewrite of the script from Wallace, Kneale became displeased with the results and had his name removed from the film.
He returned to writing scripts for British television, including Gentry with Roger Daltrey
for ITV in 1987, and the 1989 adaptation of Susan Hill
's novel The Woman in Black
for transmission on ITV on Christmas Eve. Lynne Truss
, reviewing a repeat
broadcast of the production on Channel 4
for The Times in 1994, wrote that: "Clip-clop is not usually a noise to get upset about. But it will be an interesting test, today, to go up behind people and whisper 'clip-clop', to find out whether they saw The Woman in Black last night. People who made the bold decision to watch this excellent drama will respond to any 'clip-clop' by gratifyingly leaping in the air and grabbing the backs of their necks." The adaptation nearly went unmade; Kneale had written the script in ten days but been advised by his agent to wait before submitting it to the producers Central Independent Television
so that they would not think he had rushed it. When he did submit the script three weeks later, he discovered that Central had been about to cancel the production as they had assumed that Kneale, then 67, had not been able to complete the work due to his age.
Susan Hill herself did not like some of the changes that Kneale had made to The Woman in Black. It has been observed that Kneale on some occasions operated a double-standard with adaptations; being unhappy when others made changes to his stories, but willing to make changes to stories he was adapting into script form. Referring to The Woman in Black adaptation, the writer and critic Kim Newman
noted that: "He was very offended at the notion of Susan Hill using the name of Kipps from HG Wells as the hero of The Woman in Black, and so he decided not to use it and to change the hero's name to Kidd. I'm sure if somebody thought that Quatermass was a silly name and changed it, he'd be furious!" However, an adaptation he wrote in 1991, a four-part version of Kingsley Amis
's novel Stanley and the Women, met with approval from the original author, with Amis regarding it as the most successful adaptation of any of his work.
Kneale also adapted Sharpe's Gold
for ITV in 1995, as part of their series of adaptations of Bernard Cornwell
's Sharpe
novels. This was an assignment that surprised his agent; "We didn't think he'd want to bother with them but he did. That was probably because he liked the producer." He returned to writing for radio for the first time since the 1950s in 1996, when he wrote the drama-documentary The Quatermass Memoirs
for BBC Radio 3
. Partly composed of Kneale looking back at the events that led to the writing of the original three Quatermass serials and using some archive material, there was also a dramatised strand to the series, set just before the ITV Quatermass serial and featuring Andrew Keir
, star of the Hammer version of Quatermass and the Pit, as the Professor.
While recording an audio commentary
for that film in 1997, Kneale speculated about a possible Quatermass prequel set in 1930s Germany
. According to The Independent, Kneale conceived a storyline involving the young Quatermass becoming involved in German rocketry experiments in the 1930s, and helping a young Jewish woman to escape the country during the 1936 Berlin Olympics
.
Kneale was invited to write for the successful American science-fiction series The X-Files
(1993–2002), but declined the offer. His final professional work was an episode of the ITV legal drama Kavanagh QC
, starring John Thaw
. Kneale's episode, "Ancient History", was about a Jewish woman who during the Second World War had been subjected to horrific experiments in a concentration camp. Transmitted on 17 January 1997 and cited as one of the programme's finest episodes, it brought Kneale's writing career to a close after more than fifty years.
He continued to appear as an interview subject in various television documentaries, and also recorded further audio commentaries for the release of some of his productions on DVD
. In 2005, he acted as a consultant when the digital television
channel BBC Four
produced a live remake of The Quatermass Experiment. He lived in Barnes, London, until his death on 29 October 2006 at the age of 84, following a series of small stroke
s.
, paying tribute to Kneale on the BBC News Online
website shortly after his death, indicated that he was among the first rank of British television writers, but that this had been overlooked. "He is amongst the greats—he is absolutely as important as Dennis Potter
, as David Mercer, as Alan Bleasdale
, as Alan Bennett
, but I think because of a strange snobbery about fantasy or sci-fi it's never quite been that way." Similarly, his obituary in The Guardian commented that:
Writing about The Year of the Sex Olympics in 2003, Nancy Banks-Smith felt that Kneale was one of the few television writers whose work was particularly memorable.
Kneale was admired by the film director John Carpenter
, who hired Kneale to write the screenplay Halloween III. Carpenter also wrote the screenplay for his 1987 film Prince of Darkness
under the pseudonym
"Martin Quatermass" (a reference to Kneale's work). The horror fiction
writer Stephen King
has also cited Kneale as an influence, with Kim Newman suggesting in 2003 that King had "more or less rewritten Quatermass and the Pit in The Tommyknockers
." Other writers to have acclaimed Kneale as an influence on their work have included comics
writer Grant Morrison
and television screenwriter
Russell T Davies, who described the Beasts episode "Baby" as "the most frightening thing I've ever seen... Powerful stuff." Film screenwriter and director Dan O'Bannon
was also an admirer of Kneale's writing, and in 1993 wrote a potential remake of The Quatermass Experiment, of which Kneale approved, but the film was never made.
High profile entertainment industry figures have publicly expressed admiration for Kneale's work, including The Beatles
' drummer Ringo Starr
, members of the rock group Pink Floyd
and Monty Python's Flying Circus
writer/performer Michael Palin
.
Kneale never saw himself as a science-fiction writer, and was often critical of the genre. He particularly disliked the BBC series Doctor Who
(1963–89; 1996; 2005–present), for which he had once turned down an offer to write. "It sounded a terrible idea and I still think it was," he commented in 1986. "The fact that it's lasted a long time and has a steady audience doesn't mean much. So has Crossroads and that's a stinker". He also slammed Blake's 7
, which he described as the lowest point of British television science-fiction: “I think the low point for me would be the very few bits I've seen of a thing called Blake's 7
which I found paralytically awful. The dialogue/characterisation seemed to consist of a kind of childish squabbling” and Doomwatch
: “I was approached to write Doomwatch
. That didn't seem to be much good either.” Doctor Who was heavily influenced by Kneale's Quatermass serials, in some cases even using specific storylines that were very similar to those from Quatermass.
, a Jewish refugee
, in the BBC canteen. They married on 8 May 1954 and had two children; Matthew
, who later became a successful novelist, and Tacy, an actress and later a special effects designer who worked on the popular Harry Potter
series of films. Kerr became a successful children's writer, with the Mog
series of books and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
, which was based on her own experiences of fleeing Nazi Germany in her youth. Kneale worked with Kerr on an adaptation of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit in the 1970s, but the eventual makers of the film version disregarded their script. Similarly, in 1995 Kneale scripted a four-part adaptation of one of Kerr's sequels to the book, A Small Person Far Away, but this also went unproduced.
Kneale was proud of his son's success as a writer. When his novel English Passengers
won the Whitbread Book of the Year
award in 2001, his father commented that: "Matthew's much better than I am. I just wrote screenplays."
Kneale's younger brother is the renowned artist
and sculptor
Bryan Kneale
, who was Master and then Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy
from 1982 to 1990. Bryan Kneale painted the covers for the Quatermass script books released by Penguin Books
in 1959 and 1960. He was also responsible for a painting of a lobster
from which special effect
s designers Bernard Wilkie and Jack Kine drew their inspiration for the Martian
creatures they constructed for the original television version of Quatermass and the Pit.
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
from the Isle of Man
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
. Active in television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, radio drama
Radio drama
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...
and prose fiction
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
, he wrote professionally for over fifty years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award
Somerset Maugham Award
The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...
and was twice nominated for the British Film Award
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...
for Best Screenplay. In 2000 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association.
Predominantly a writer of thrillers which used science-fiction and horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
elements, he was best known for the creation of the character Professor Bernard Quatermass
Bernard Quatermass
Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional scientist, originally created by the writer Nigel Kneale for BBC Television. An intelligent and highly moral British scientist, Quatermass is a pioneer of the British space programme, heading up the British Experimental Rocket Group...
. Quatermass was a heroic scientist who appeared in various television, film and radio productions written by Kneale for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies and in later...
and Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
between 1953 and 1996. Kneale wrote original scripts and successfully adapted works by writers such as George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, John Osborne
John Osborne
John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre....
, H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
and Susan Hill
Susan Hill
Susan Hill is an English author of fiction and non-fiction works. Her novels include The Woman in Black, The Mist in the Mirror and I'm the King of the Castle for which she received the Somerset Maugham Award in 1971....
.
He was most active in television, joining BBC Television
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...
in 1951 as one of its first staff writers; his final script was transmitted on ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
in 1997. Kneale wrote well-received television dramas such as The Year of the Sex Olympics
The Year of the Sex Olympics
The Year of the Sex Olympics is a 1968 television play made by the BBC and first broadcast on BBC2 as part of Theatre 625. It stars Leonard Rossiter, Tony Vogel, Suzanne Neve and Brian Cox. It was directed by Michael Elliot...
(1968) and The Stone Tape
The Stone Tape
The Stone Tape is a television play directed by Peter Sasdy and starring Michael Bryant, Jane Asher, Michael Bates and Iain Cuthbertson. It was broadcast on BBC Two as a Christmas ghost story in 1972...
(1972) in addition to the Quatermass serials. He has been described as "one of the most influential writers of the 20th century," and as "having invented popular TV."
Early life and career
Kneale was born Thomas Nigel Kneale in Barrow-in-FurnessBarrow-in-Furness
Barrow-in-Furness is an industrial town and seaport which forms about half the territory of the wider Borough of Barrow-in-Furness in the county of Cumbria, England. It lies north of Liverpool, northwest of Manchester and southwest from the county town of Carlisle...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. His family came from the Isle of Man
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
, and returned to live there in 1928, when Kneale was six years old. He was raised in the island's capital, Douglas
Douglas, Isle of Man
right|thumb|250px|Douglas Promenade, which runs nearly the entire length of beachfront in Douglasright|thumb|250px|Sea terminal in DouglasDouglas is the capital and largest town of the Isle of Man, with a population of 26,218 people . It is located at the mouth of the River Douglas, and a sweeping...
, where his father was the owner and editor of the local newspaper, The Herald. He was educated at St Ninian's High School, and after leaving studied law, training to become an advocate
Advocate
An advocate is a term for a professional lawyer used in several different legal systems. These include Scotland, South Africa, India, Scandinavian jurisdictions, Israel, and the British Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man...
at the Manx Bar. He also worked in a lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
's office, but became bored with his legal training and eventually abandoned the profession. At the beginning of the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Kneale attempted to enlist in the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
, but was deemed medically unfit for service due to photophobia
Photophobia
Photophobia is a symptom of abnormal intolerance to visual perception of light. As a medical symptom photophobia is not a morbid fear or phobia, but an experience of discomfort or pain to the eyes due to light exposure or by presence of actual physical photosensitivity of the eyes, though the term...
from which he had suffered since childhood.
On 25 March 1946 Kneale made his first broadcast on BBC Radio
BBC Radio
BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...
, performing a live
Live radio
Live radio is radio broadcast without delay. Before the days of television, audiences listened to live dramas, comedies, quiz shows, and concerts on the radio much the same way that they now do on TV. Most talk radio is live radio where people can speak about their opinions/lives....
reading of his own short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
"Tomato Cain" in a strand entitled Stories by Northern Authors on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's North of England
Northern England
Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North or the North Country, is a cultural region of England. It is not an official government region, but rather an informal amalgamation of counties. The southern extent of the region is roughly the River Trent, while the North is bordered...
Home Service
BBC Home Service
The BBC Home Service was a British national radio station which broadcast from 1939 until 1967.-Development:Between the 1920s and the outbreak of The Second World War, the BBC had developed two nationwide radio services, the BBC National Programme and the BBC Regional Programme...
region. Later that year he left the Isle of Man and moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, where he began studying acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...
(RADA). He made further radio broadcasts in the 1940s, including a reading of his story Zachary Crebbin's Angel on the BBC Light Programme
BBC Light Programme
The Light Programme was a BBC radio station which broadcast mainstream light entertainment and music from 1945 until 1967, when it was rebranded as BBC Radio 2...
, broadcast nationally on 19 May 1948. He also had further short stories published in magazines such as Argosy and The Strand
Strand Magazine
The Strand Magazine was a monthly magazine composed of fictional stories and factual articles founded by George Newnes. It was first published in the United Kingdom from January 1891 to March 1950 running to 711 issues, though the first issue was on sale well before Christmas 1890.Its immediate...
. He began using the name "Nigel Kneale" for these professional credits, but continued to be known as "Tom" to his family and friends up until his death.
After graduating from RADA, Kneale worked for a short time as a professional actor performing in small roles at the Stratford Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, south east of Birmingham and south west of Warwick. It is the largest and most populous town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers...
. He continued to write in his spare time and in 1949 a collection of his work, entitled Tomato Cain and Other Stories, was published. The book sufficiently impressed the writer Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, CBE was an Irish novelist and short story writer.-Life:Elizabeth Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 at 15 Herbert Place in Dublin, Ireland and was baptized in the nearby St Stephen's Church on Upper Mount Street...
that she wrote a foreword
Foreword
A foreword is a piece of writing sometimes placed at the beginning of a book or other piece of literature. Written by someone other than the primary author of the work, it often tells of some interaction between the writer of the foreword and the book's primary author or the story the book tells...
for it, and in 1950 the collection won the Somerset Maugham Award
Somerset Maugham Award
The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...
. (His son, Matthew Kneale
Matthew Kneale
Matthew Kneale is a British writer, best known for his 2000 novel English Passengers, which won the prestigious Whitbread Book Award and was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He went to school at Latymer Upper School and then studied Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford, and afterwards...
, would later win the same award in 1988 for his novel Whore Banquets.)
Following this success, Kneale gave up acting to write full-time. He did take small voice-over
Voice-over
Voice-over is a production technique where a voice which is not part of the narrative is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations...
roles in some of his 1950s television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
productions, such as the voice heard on the factory loudspeaker
Loudspeaker
A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer that produces sound in response to an electrical audio signal input. Non-electrical loudspeakers were developed as accessories to telephone systems, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube made loudspeakers more generally useful...
system in Quatermass II
Quatermass II
Quatermass II is a British science-fiction serial, originally broadcast by BBC Television in the autumn of 1955. It is the second in the Quatermass series by writer Nigel Kneale, and the first of those serials to survive in its entirety in the BBC archives...
(1955), for which he also narrated
Narrator
A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
most of the recaps shown at the beginning of each episode. Kneale's publisher was keen for him to write a novel, but Kneale himself was more interested in writing for television. A keen cinema-goer, he believed that the audience being able to see human faces was an important factor in storytelling.
His first professional script writing
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
credit came when he wrote the radio drama
Radio drama
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...
The Long Stairs, broadcast by the BBC on 1 March 1950 and based on a historical mining
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
disaster on the Isle of Man. In 1951 he was recruited as one of the first staff writers to be employed by BBC Television
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...
; before he started working for the BBC, Kneale had never seen any television. Kneale was initially a general purpose writer, working on adaptations of books and stage plays and even writing material for light entertainment
Light entertainment
Light entertainment is a term used to describe a broad range of usually televisual performances. These include comedies, variety shows, quiz/game shows, sketch shows and people/surprise shows.-Light entertainment in Britain:...
and children's programmes
Children's television series
Children's television series, are commercial television programs designed for, and marketed to children, normally scheduled for broadcast during the morning and afternoon when children are awake. They can sometimes run in the early evening, for the children that go to school...
. The following year, Michael Barry became the Head of Drama at BBC Television, and spent his entire first year's script budget of £250 to hire Kneale as a full-time writer for the drama department. Kneale's first credited role in adult television drama was providing "additional dialogue" for the play Arrow to the Heart
Arrow to the Heart
Arrow to the Heart is a British television drama, originally broadcast by BBC Television in 1952 and remade in 1956. It was adapted from the German novel Unruhige Nacht by Albrecht Goes, published in 1950...
, broadcast on 20 July 1952. This play was adapted and directed by the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n television director
Television director
A television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...
Rudolph Cartier
Rudolph Cartier
Rudolph Cartier was an Austrian television director, filmmaker, screenwriter and producer who worked predominantly in British television, exclusively for the BBC...
, who had also joined the staff of the BBC drama department in 1952. It was the beginning of a successful working relationship between the pair, that would lead to some of Kneale's best known work.
BBC staff screenwriter
Neither Kneale nor Cartier were impressed with the state in which they found BBC television drama. At his initial job interview with Michael Barry, Cartier had criticised the department's output as being too sedate and theatrical, while Kneale was frustrated at what he saw as the slow and boring styles of television drama production then employed, which he felt wasted the potential of the medium. Together they would help to revolutionise British television drama and establish it as an entity separate from its theatre and radio equivalents; the television historian Lez Cooke wrote in 2003 that "Between them, Kneale and Cartier were responsible for introducing a completely new dimension to television drama in the early to mid-1950s." Jason Jacobs, a lecturer in filmFilm studies
Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to films. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies...
and television studies
Television studies
Television studies is an academic discipline that deals with critical approaches to television. Usually, it is distinguished from mass-communication research, which tends to approach the topic from an empirical perspective...
at the University of Warwick
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...
, wrote in his 2000 history of early British television drama that "It was the arrival of Nigel Kneale... and Rudolph Cartier... that challenged the intimate drama directly... Kneale and Cartier shared a common desire to invigorate television with a faster tempo and a broader thematic and spatial canvas, and it was no coincidence that they turned to science-fiction in order to get out of the dominant stylistic trend of television intimacy."
The science-fiction production to which Jacobs referred was The Quatermass Experiment
The Quatermass Experiment
The Quatermass Experiment is a British science-fiction serial broadcast by BBC Television in the summer of 1953 and re-staged by BBC Four in 2005. Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, it tells the story of the first manned flight into space, overseen by...
, broadcast in six half-hour episodes in July and August 1953. The serial told the story of Professor Bernard Quatermass
Bernard Quatermass
Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional scientist, originally created by the writer Nigel Kneale for BBC Television. An intelligent and highly moral British scientist, Quatermass is a pioneer of the British space programme, heading up the British Experimental Rocket Group...
of the British Experimental Rocket Group, and the consequences of his sending the first manned mission into space when a terrible fate befalls the crew and only one returns. The Quatermass Experiment was the first adult television science-fiction production, held a large television audience gripped across its six weeks, and has been described by the Museum of Broadcast Communications
Museum of Broadcast Communications
The Museum of Broadcast Communications is an American museum that currently exists exclusively on the Internet and not in any physical capacity. Its stated mission is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform and entertain...
as dramatising "a new range of gendered fears about Britain's postwar and post-colonial security." Kneale was inspired in choosing the character's unusual surname by the fact that many Manx surnames began with "Qu"; the actual name itself was picked from a London telephone directory
Telephone directory
A telephone directory is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that publishes the directory...
. The Professor's first name was chosen in honour of the astronomer
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
Bernard Lovell
Bernard Lovell
Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell OBE, FRS is an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first Director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980.-Early Life:...
.
The BBC recognised the success of the serial, particularly in the context of the impending arrival of commercial television
Commercial Television
Commercial Television was the third free-to-air broadcast television station in Hong Kong. It first went on air in 1975, and ceased transmissions in 1978.-History:...
to the UK. Controller of Programmes Cecil McGivern
Cecil McGivern
Cecil McGivern CBE was a British broadcasting executive, who initially worked for BBC Radio before transferring to BBC Television in the late 1940s....
wrote in a memo that: "Had competitive television been in existence then, we would have killed it every Saturday night while [The Quatermass Experiment] lasted. We are going to need many more 'Quatermass Experiment' programmes." Like all of Kneale's 1950s television work for the BBC, The Quatermass Experiment was transmitted live
Live television
Live television refers to a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. From the early days of television until about 1958, live television was used heavily, except for filmed shows such as I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Video tape did not exist until 1957...
. Only the first two episodes were telerecorded and survive in the BBC's archives.
Kneale and Cartier next collaborated on an adaptation of Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë published in 1847. It was her only novel and written between December 1845 and July 1846. It remained unpublished until July 1847 and was not printed until December after the success of her sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre...
(broadcast 6 December 1953) and then on a version of George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four (TV programme)
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a British television adaptation of the novel of the same name by George Orwell, originally broadcast on BBC Television in December 1954. The production proved to be hugely controversial, with questions asked in Parliament and many viewer complaints over its supposed...
(12 December 1954). Nineteen Eighty-Four was a particularly notable production; many found it shocking, and questions were asked in Parliament
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
about whether some of the scenes had been suitable for television. There was also prominent support for the play; the Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the husband of Elizabeth II. He is the United Kingdom's longest-serving consort and the oldest serving spouse of a reigning British monarch....
made it known that he and the Queen
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
had watched and enjoyed the programme, and the second live performance on 16 December gained the largest television audience since her coronation
Coronation of the British monarch
The coronation of the British monarch is a ceremony in which the monarch of the United Kingdom is formally crowned and invested with regalia...
the previous year. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper's obituary of Kneale in 2006 claimed that the adaptation had "permanently revived Orwell's reputation," while the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
included it in their list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes
100 Greatest British Television Programmes
The BFI TV 100 is a list compiled in 2000 by the British Film Institute , chosen by a poll of industry professionals, to determine what were the greatest British television programmes of any genre ever to have been screened....
of the 20th century in 2000.
The Creature—an original script by Kneale concerning the legend of the abominable snowman—was his next collaboration with Cartier, broadcast on 30 January 1955, followed by an adaptation of Peter Ustinov
Peter Ustinov
Peter Alexander Ustinov CBE was an English actor, writer and dramatist. He was also renowned as a filmmaker, theatre and opera director, stage designer, author, screenwriter, comedian, humourist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio broadcaster and television presenter...
's play The Moment of Truth (10 March 1955), before Kneale was commissioned to write Quatermass II
Quatermass II
Quatermass II is a British science-fiction serial, originally broadcast by BBC Television in the autumn of 1955. It is the second in the Quatermass series by writer Nigel Kneale, and the first of those serials to survive in its entirety in the BBC archives...
. Specifically designed by the BBC to combat the threat of the new ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
network, which launched just a month before Quatermass II was shown, the serial was even more successful than the first, drawing audiences of up to nine million viewers. Kneale was inspired in writing the serial by contemporary fears over secret UK Ministry of Defence research establishments such as Porton Down
Porton Down
Porton Down is a United Kingdom government and military science park. It is situated slightly northeast of Porton near Salisbury in Wiltshire, England. To the northwest lies the MoD Boscombe Down test range facility which is operated by QinetiQ...
, as well the fact that as a BBC staff writer he had been required to sign the Official Secrets Act
Official Secrets Act
The Official Secrets Act is a stock short title used in the United Kingdom, Ireland, India and Malaysia and formerly in New Zealand for legislation that provides for the protection of state secrets and official information, mainly related to national security.-United Kingdom:*The Official Secrets...
.
Almost simultaneously with the transmission of Quatermass II in the autumn of 1955, Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies and in later...
released The Quatermass Xperiment
The Quatermass Xperiment
The Quatermass Xperiment is a 1955 British science fiction horror film. Made by Hammer Film Productions, it was based on the 1953 BBC Television serial The Quatermass Experiment written by Nigel Kneale. It was directed by Val Guest and stars Brian Donlevy as the eponymous Professor Bernard...
, their film adaptation of the first serial. Kneale was not pleased with the film, and particularly disliked the casting of Brian Donlevy
Brian Donlevy
Brian Donlevy was an Irish-born American film actor, noted for playing tough guys from the 1930s to the 1960s. He usually appeared in supporting roles. Among his best known films are Beau Geste and The Great McGinty...
as Quatermass, as he explained in a 1986 interview. "[Donlevy] was then really on the skids and didn't care what he was doing. He took very little interest in the making of the films or in playing the part. It was a case of take the money and run. Or in the case of Mr Donlevy, waddle."
Quatermass II was Kneale's final original script for the BBC as a staff writer. He left the corporation when his contract expired at the end of 1956; "Five years in that hut was as much as any sane person could stand," he later told an interviewer. He continued to write for the BBC on a freelance basis.
Freelance film and television work
The same year that he left the BBC, Kneale wrote his first feature film screenplayScreenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
, adapting Quatermass II
Quatermass II
Quatermass II is a British science-fiction serial, originally broadcast by BBC Television in the autumn of 1955. It is the second in the Quatermass series by writer Nigel Kneale, and the first of those serials to survive in its entirety in the BBC archives...
for Hammer Film Productions along with producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
Anthony Hinds
Anthony Hinds
Anthony Hinds , aka Tony Hinds, aka John Elder, is a British screenwriter and producer. He is the son of the founder of Hammer Film Productions, William Hinds.-Early life:Tony Hinds was educated at St Paul's School...
and director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
Val Guest
Val Guest
Val Guest was a British film director, best known for his science-fiction films for Hammer Film Productions in the 1950s, but who also enjoyed a long, varied and active career in the film industry from the early 1930s up until the early 1980s.-Early life and career:He was born Valmond Maurice...
. Hinds and Guest had overseen the first Quatermass film, upon which Kneale had been unable to work due to his BBC staff contract. Kneale was disappointed that Brian Donlevy also returned in the role of Quatermass. The film premiered at the end of May 1957, and was reviewed positively in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
: "The writer of the original story, Mr. Nigel Kneale, and the director, Mr. Val Guest, between them keep things moving at the right speed, without digressions. The film has an air of respect for the issues touched on, and this impression is confirmed by the acting generally." 1957 also saw the release of another cinematic collaboration between Kneale and Guest, when Kneale adapted his 1955 BBC play The Creature into The Abominable Snowman
The Abominable Snowman (film)
The Abominable Snowman is a 1957 British horror film, directed by Val Guest and starring Forrest Tucker and Peter Cushing...
; in this case, Hammer retained the star of the BBC version, Peter Cushing
Peter Cushing
Peter Wilton Cushing, OBE was an English actor, known for his many appearances in Hammer Films, in which he played the handsome but sinister scientist Baron Frankenstein and the vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing, amongst many other roles, often appearing opposite Christopher Lee, and occasionally...
.
In May 1957, Kneale was contracted by the BBC to write a third Quatermass serial, and this was eventually transmitted as Quatermass and the Pit
Quatermass and the Pit
Quatermass and the Pit is a British television science-fiction serial, originally transmitted live by BBC Television in December 1958 and January 1959. It was the third and last of the BBC's Quatermass serials, although the character would reappear in a 1979 ITV production simply entitled Quatermass...
across six weeks in December 1958 and January 1959. On this occasion Kneale was inspired by the racial tensions that had recently been seen in the United Kingdom, and which came to a head while the serial was in pre-production
Pre-production
Pre-production or In Production is the process of preparing all the elements involved in a film, play, or other performance.- In film :...
when the Notting Hill race riots
Notting Hill race riots
The Notting Hill race riots were a series of racially-motivated riots that took place in London, England over several nights in late August and early September 1958.-Context:The end of World War II had seen a marked increase in Caribbean migrants to Britain...
occurred in August and September 1958. Drawing audiences of up to 11 million, Quatermass and the Pit has been referred to by the BBC's own website
Bbc.co.uk
BBC Online is the brand name and home for the BBC's UK online service. It is a large network of websites including such high profile sites as BBC News and Sport, the on-demand video and radio services co-branded BBC iPlayer, the pre-school site Cbeebies, and learning services such as Bitesize...
as "simply the first finest thing the BBC ever made." It was also included in the British Film Institute's "TV 100" list in 2000, where it was praised for the themes and subtexts it explored. "In a story which mined mythology and folklore... under the guise of genre it tackled serious themes of man's hostile nature and the military's perversion of science for its own ends."
Despite the success of the serial, Kneale felt that he had now taken the character of Quatermass as far as he could. "I didn't want to go on repeating because Professor Quatermass had already saved the world from ultimate destruction three times, and that seemed to me to be quite enough," he said in 1986. It was also his final new collaboration with Rudolph Cartier, although the director did later handle a new version of Kneale's 1953 adaptation of Wuthering Heights for the BBC in 1962.
In 1958, Kneale's play Mrs Wickens in the Fall, transmitted by the BBC the previous year, was remade by the CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
network in the United States, retitled The Littlest Enemy. Broadcast on 18 June as part of The United States Steel Hour
The United States Steel Hour
The United States Steel Hour is an anthology series which brought hour-long dramas to television from 1953 to 1963. The television series and the radio program that preceded it were both sponsored by the United States Steel Corporation....
anthology series, the script was severely cut back in length. It was Kneale's only involvement with American television, and he was not pleased with the result. "I made up my mind I would never ever again have anything done on a television network in America," he later commented.
For the next few years, Kneale concentrated mostly on film screenplays, adapting plays and novels for the cinema. Described by The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
as "one of the few writers not to fall out with John Osborne
John Osborne
John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre....
," Kneale adapted Osborne's plays Look Back in Anger
Look Back in Anger
Look Back in Anger is a John Osborne play—made into films in 1959, 1980, and 1989 -- about a love triangle involving an intelligent but disaffected young man , his upper-middle-class, impassive wife , and her haughty best friend . Cliff, an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace...
and The Entertainer
The Entertainer (film)
The Entertainer is a 1960 film adaptation of the stage play of the same name by John Osborne, which told the story of a failing third-rate music hall stage performer who tried to keep his career going even as his personal life fell apart....
in 1958 and 1960 respectively, both for director Tony Richardson
Tony Richardson
Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson was an English theatre and film director and producer.-Early life:Richardson was born in Shipley, Yorkshire in 1928, the son of Elsie Evans and Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist...
. Kneale knew Richardson through having previously adapted a Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
short story for the BBC, which Richardson had directed. Kneale was nominated for the British Film Award
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...
(later known as a BAFTA) for Best Screenplay for both films. Film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
Harry Saltzman
Harry Saltzman
Harry Saltzman was a Canadian theatre and film producer best known for his mega-gamble which resulted in his co-producing the James Bond film series with Albert R...
, who had produced the two Osborne adaptations, approached Kneale about scripting a project he was working on to adapt Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
's James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
novels for the cinema; Kneale was not a fan of Fleming's work and turned the offer down. Further adaptations Kneale did work on were H.M.S. Defiant (1962, from the novel Mutiny by Frank Tilsley) and First Men in the Moon (1964, from the novel by H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
).
Less successfully during this period, Kneale completed screenplays for adaptations of the novels Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding about a group of British boys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, with disastrous results...
by William Golding
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
and Brave New World
Brave New World
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
. Neither of these scripts ever saw production, as the companies making them went out of business—Kneale commented in a 2003 interview that "I reckon I closed down at least two film companies." Another screenplay that went unproduced was a Kneale original, a drama involving a wave of teenage suicide
Teenage suicide
Teenage suicide in the United States remains comparatively high in the 15 to 24 age group with 4,000 suicides in this age range in 2004, making it the third leading cause of death for those aged 15 to 24...
s called The Big Giggle, or The Big, Big Giggle. Written in 1965 while Kneale was suffering from a mystery illness and forced to stay in bed for a long period, the concept started life as a drama serial for the BBC, before the corporation had second thoughts about the nature of the storyline and the possibility of copycat suicide
Copycat suicide
A copycat suicide is defined as an emulation of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about either from local knowledge or due to accounts or depictions of the original suicide on television and in other media....
s; Kneale later agreed that they were probably right not to make it for television. The production was nearly made as a film by 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
, but John Trevelyan, Chief Executive of the British Board of Film Censors
British Board of Film Classification
The British Board of Film Classification , originally British Board of Film Censors, is a non-governmental organisation, funded by the film industry and responsible for the national classification of films within the United Kingdom...
, forbade the script's production.
In 1966 Kneale worked again for Hammer Film Productions when he adapted Norah Lofts
Norah Lofts
Norah Lofts, née Norah Robinson, was a 20th century best-selling British author. She wrote more than fifty books specialising in historical fiction, but she also wrote non-fiction and short stories...
's 1960 novel The Devil's Own into the horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
The Witches
The Witches (1966 film)
The Witches is a 1966 British horror film made by Hammer Films. It was adapted by Nigel Kneale from the novel The Devil's Own by Norah Lofts, under the pseudonym Peter Curtis...
. Kneale had first worked on the screenplay for the adaptation in 1961, the same year in which he had begun to adapt Quatermass and the Pit for Hammer. Like The Witches, the film version of Quatermass and the Pit
Quatermass and the Pit (film)
Quatermass and the Pit is a 1967 British science fiction horror film. Made by Hammer Film Productions it is a sequel to the earlier Hammer films The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2. Like its predecessors it is based on a BBC Television serial – Quatermass and the Pit – written by Nigel Kneale...
took several years to reach the screen, eventually being released in 1967. Roy Ward Baker
Roy Ward Baker
Roy Ward Baker , born Roy Horace Baker, was an English film director, credited as Roy Baker for much of his career. His best known film is A Night to Remember which won a Golden Globe for Best English-Language Foreign Film in 1959...
directed, with Andrew Keir
Andrew Keir
Andrew Keir was a Scottish actor, who rose to prominence featuring in a number of films from Hammer Film Productions in the 1960s. He was also active in television, and particularly in the theatre, in a professional career that lasted from the 1940s to the 1990s...
starring as Quatermass. Kneale was much happier with this version than the previous Hammer Quatermass adaptations, and the film was described by The Independent in 2006 as "one of the best ever Hammer productions." Quatermass and the Pit was Kneale's final credited film work; 1979's The Quatermass Conclusion
Quatermass (TV serial)
Quatermass is a British television science fiction serial produced by Euston Films for Thames Television and broadcast on the ITV network in October and November 1979. Like its three predecessors, Quatermass was written by Nigel Kneale...
was only released to cinemas in overseas markets after having been made for television in the UK, and he had his name removed from the credits of Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a 1982 science fiction horror film and the third installment in the Halloween film series. It is the only Halloween where the story does not revolve around Michael Myers. Directed and written by Tommy Lee Wallace, the film stars Tom Atkins as Dr. Dan Challis,...
(1982).
Kneale had returned to writing for television with the BBC for the first time since Quatermass and the Pit when his play The Road was broadcast in September 1963. The play concerned the population of an 18th century village who become haunted by visions of a future nuclear war
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
, and was followed by several further one-off dramas for the BBC over the following decade, including two entries into BBC1
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
's The Wednesday Play
The Wednesday Play
The Wednesday Play was an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. Every week's play was usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured...
anthology strand. During this period he was regarded as one of the finest writers working for the BBC. Kneale did his first work for the ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
network during this time, writing one-off play The Crunch for the ATV company in 1964.
A particular critical success was The Year of the Sex Olympics
The Year of the Sex Olympics
The Year of the Sex Olympics is a 1968 television play made by the BBC and first broadcast on BBC2 as part of Theatre 625. It stars Leonard Rossiter, Tony Vogel, Suzanne Neve and Brian Cox. It was directed by Michael Elliot...
, broadcast as part of BBC2
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
's Theatre 625
Theatre 625
Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line...
series in July 1968. Kneale's first television work to be made in colour—although only a black-and-white
Black-and-white
Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
copy now survives—the story was based in a future where the majority of the population are kept in a docile state by constant broadcasts of pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
and other low-brow reality television
Reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...
programming. The Live Life Show, in which a family are watched twenty-four hours a day as they struggle to live on an isolated rural
Rural
Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...
island, becomes a massive success, especially when a murderer is introduced into the set-up.
The Year of the Sex Olympics has been praised for its foreshadowing of the rise of reality television programmes such as Big Brother
Big Brother (TV series)
Big Brother is a television show in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras. Each series lasts for around three months, and there are usually fewer than 15 participants. The housemates try to win a cash...
(1999–present) and Celebrity Love Island (2005–2006). The critic Nancy Banks-Smith
Nancy Banks-Smith
Nancy Banks-Smith is a British television critic; she began writing for The Guardian in 1969. In 1970 she was recommended for the Order of the British Empire, which she declined.*1951- 1955: Northern Daily Telegraph, reporter...
wrote in 2003 that: "In The Year of the Sex Olympics [Kneale] foretold the reality show and, in the scramble for greater sensation, its logical outcome... This is satire from a TV insider, but it mutates into something far more desolate and disorientating." The island locations scenes for the production were filmed on the Isle of Man, Kneale's homeland.
In 1965 Kneale had been approached by the producer of the BBC2 science-fiction anthology series Out of the Unknown
Out of the Unknown
Out of the Unknown is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between 1965 and 1971. Each episode was an independent dramatisation of a separate science fiction short story...
to write a new one-off 75-minute Quatermass story for the programme. Nothing came of this, but seven years later he was commissioned by the BBC to write a new four-part Quatermass serial, based in a dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n near future world overrun with crime, apathy, martial law
Martial law
Martial law is the imposition of military rule by military authorities over designated regions on an emergency basis— only temporary—when the civilian government or civilian authorities fail to function effectively , when there are extensive riots and protests, or when the disobedience of the law...
and youth cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
s. The serial was announced as a forthcoming production by the BBC in November 1972, and some model filming was even begun in June 1973, but eventually budgetary problems and the unavailability of Stonehenge
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...
—a central location in the scripts—led to the project's cancellation. "It lingered through the summer and slowly died as a project," he later commented.
Kneale's next script for the BBC was The Stone Tape
The Stone Tape
The Stone Tape is a television play directed by Peter Sasdy and starring Michael Bryant, Jane Asher, Michael Bates and Iain Cuthbertson. It was broadcast on BBC Two as a Christmas ghost story in 1972...
, a scientific ghost story
Ghost story
A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, or an account of an experience, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. Colloquially, the term can refer to any kind of scary story. In a narrower sense, the ghost story has...
broadcast on Christmas Day 1972. Lez Cooke praised the production, when writing in 2003, describing it as "one of the most imaginative and intelligent examples of the horror genre to appear on British television, a single play to rank alongside the best of Play for Today
Play for Today
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted...
." His final BBC work was an entry into a series called Bedtime Stories, adapting traditional fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
s into adult dramas. Kneale's script, Jack and the Beanstalk, was transmitted on 24 March 1974, and marked the end of his BBC writing career.
ITV and Hollywood
Kneale's remaining television work was written for ITV. His first script for ITV was the one-off play MurrainMurrain
Murrain is a highly infectious disease of cattle and sheep. It literally means "death" and was used in medieval times to represent just that. The population of that era had no way of identifying specific diseases in their livestock so they simply put all illnesses under one heading...
, made by the network's Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
franchise holders Associated TeleVision
Associated TeleVision
Associated Television, often referred to as ATV, was a British television company, holder of various licences to broadcast on the ITV network from 24 September 1955 until 00:34 on 1 January 1982...
(ATV) in 1975. The play, a horror piece based around witchcraft
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
, led the following year to a series called Beasts
Beasts (TV series)
Beasts is a series of six television plays by Manx writer Nigel Kneale, unconnected but for a bestial horror theme, made by ATV for ITV in the United Kingdom and broadcast in 1976.-Episodes:-External links:* at the BFI's Screenonline...
, a six-part anthology where Kneale created six different character-based tales of horror and the macabre. Beasts did not gain a full network run on ITV; different regions transmitted the episodes in different timeslots and some in different sequences.
In the mid-1970s, Kneale made his only attempt at writing a stage play. Called Crow, it was based upon the memoirs of real-life Manx slaver Captain Hugh Crow. Kneale was unable to find backing to produce the play for the stage, but sold the script to ATV who put it into pre-production for television. However, shortly before filming it was cancelled by order of ATV's managing director, Lew Grade
Lew Grade
Lew Grade, Baron Grade , born Lev Winogradsky, was an influential Russian-born English impresario and media mogul.-Early years:...
—Kneale was never told why.
Following the cancellation of Crow, Kneale moved to work for another of the ITV companies, Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
, who in 1977 commissioned the production of the scripts of Kneale's previously abandoned fourth Quatermass serial, to be produced by their Euston Films
Euston Films
Euston Films was a British film and television production company. It was a subsidiary company of Thames Television, and operated from the 1970s to the 1990s, producing various series for Thames, which were screened nationally on the ITV network...
subsidiary film company. The production was structured to work both as a four-episode serial for transmission in the UK, and a 100-minute film version for cinema release overseas—something Kneale later regretted agreeing to. Starring John Mills
John Mills
Sir John Mills CBE , born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills, was an English actor who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.-Life and career:...
as Quatermass and with a budget of over £1 million—more than fifty times the budget of Quatermass and the Pit in 1958—the serial was not as critically successful as its predecessors. "Thematically no less awesome than Mr Kneale's earlier science-fiction essays for BBC Television, his ITV debut has proved only a so-so affair," was the verdict of The Times when previewing the final episode. Tying in with the series, Kneale returned to prose fiction when he wrote his only full-length novel, Quatermass, a novelisation of the serial.
Kneale's next television series was a departure from his usual style—Kinvig
Kinvig
- Synopsis :Des Kinvig runs an electrical repair shop in the small town of Bingleton.One day his store is visited by Miss Griffin , who is from the planet Mercury and in need of Des' help...
, his sole attempt at writing a sitcom, produced by London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...
and broadcast on ITV in the autumn of 1981. Although his first out-and-out comedy, Kneale was keen to stress that there had always been elements of humour present throughout his scripts, and some of the press reaction to Kinvig
Kinvig
- Synopsis :Des Kinvig runs an electrical repair shop in the small town of Bingleton.One day his store is visited by Miss Griffin , who is from the planet Mercury and in need of Des' help...
was positive. "If you like the idea of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
but found its realization tiresomely hysterical you may well prefer Kneale's relaxed wit. Cast splendid, direction deft," was The Timess preview of the first episode. However, the series was not a success, although Kneale later remained personally pleased with it.
In 1982, Kneale made another one-off diversion from his usual work when he wrote his only produced Hollywood movie script, Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a 1982 science fiction horror film and the third installment in the Halloween film series. It is the only Halloween where the story does not revolve around Michael Myers. Directed and written by Tommy Lee Wallace, the film stars Tom Atkins as Dr. Dan Challis,...
. Kneale had initially been approached by the director John Landis
John Landis
John David Landis is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. He is known for his comedies, his horror films, and his music videos with singer Michael Jackson.-Early life and career:...
to work on the screenplay for a remake
Remake
A remake is a piece of media based primarily on an earlier work of the same medium.-Film:The term "remake" is generally used in reference to a movie which uses an earlier movie as the main source material, rather than in reference to a second, later movie based on the same source...
of Creature from the Black Lagoon
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Creature from the Black Lagoon is a 1954 monster horror film directed by Jack Arnold, and starring Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, and Whit Bissell. The eponymous creature was played by Ben Chapman on land and Ricou Browning in underwater scenes...
, and he and his wife spent some time living at the Sheraton Hotel in Hollywood while Kneale worked on the project. The Black Lagoon script never went into production, but while in America Kneale met the director Joe Dante
Joe Dante
Joseph "Joe" Dante, Jr. is an American film director and producer of films generally with humorous and science fiction content....
, who invited him to script the third film in the Halloween series
Halloween (franchise)
Halloween is an American horror franchise that consists of ten slasher films, novels, and comic books. The franchise focuses on the fictional character of Michael Myers who was committed to a sanitarium as a child for the murder of his older sister, Judith Myers...
, on which Dante was working. Kneale agreed, on the proviso that it would be a totally new concept unrelated to the first two films, which he had not seen and did not like what he had heard of.
Kneale's treatment
Film treatment
A film treatment is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline , and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits...
for the film met with the approval of John Carpenter
John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
, the producer of the Halloween series, although Kneale was required to write the script in only six weeks. Kneale got on well with the director assigned to the film, Tommy Lee Wallace
Tommy Lee Wallace
Tommy Lee Wallace is an American film producer, director and screenwriter.He is best known for directing Halloween III: Season of the Witch and It.-Early life:...
, but when one of the film's backers, Dino De Laurentiis
Dino De Laurentiis
Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis was an Italian film producer.-Early life:He was born at Torre Annunziata in the province of Naples, and grew up selling spaghetti produced by his father...
, insisted upon the inclusion of more graphic violence and a rewrite of the script from Wallace, Kneale became displeased with the results and had his name removed from the film.
He returned to writing scripts for British television, including Gentry with Roger Daltrey
Roger Daltrey
Roger Harry Daltrey, CBE , is an English singer and actor, best known as the founder and lead singer of English rock band The Who. He has maintained a musical career as a solo artist and has also worked in the film industry, acting in a large number of films, theatre and television roles and also...
for ITV in 1987, and the 1989 adaptation of Susan Hill
Susan Hill
Susan Hill is an English author of fiction and non-fiction works. Her novels include The Woman in Black, The Mist in the Mirror and I'm the King of the Castle for which she received the Somerset Maugham Award in 1971....
's novel The Woman in Black
The Woman in Black
The Woman in Black is a 1983 thriller fiction novel by Susan Hill about a menacing spectre that haunts a small English town.It was adapted into a stage play by Stephen Mallatratt...
for transmission on ITV on Christmas Eve. Lynne Truss
Lynne Truss
Lynne Truss is an English writer and journalist, best known for her popular book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.-Early life:...
, reviewing a repeat
Rerun
A rerun or repeat is a re-airing of an episode of a radio or television broadcast. The invention of the rerun is generally credited to Desi Arnaz. There are two types of reruns—those that occur during a hiatus, and those that occur when a program is syndicated. Reruns can also be, as the...
broadcast of the production on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
for The Times in 1994, wrote that: "Clip-clop is not usually a noise to get upset about. But it will be an interesting test, today, to go up behind people and whisper 'clip-clop', to find out whether they saw The Woman in Black last night. People who made the bold decision to watch this excellent drama will respond to any 'clip-clop' by gratifyingly leaping in the air and grabbing the backs of their necks." The adaptation nearly went unmade; Kneale had written the script in ten days but been advised by his agent to wait before submitting it to the producers Central Independent Television
Central Independent Television
Central Independent Television, more commonly known as Central is the Independent Television contractor for the Midlands, created following the restructuring of ATV and commencing broadcast on 1 January 1982. The station is owned and operated by ITV plc, under the licensee of ITV Broadcasting...
so that they would not think he had rushed it. When he did submit the script three weeks later, he discovered that Central had been about to cancel the production as they had assumed that Kneale, then 67, had not been able to complete the work due to his age.
Susan Hill herself did not like some of the changes that Kneale had made to The Woman in Black. It has been observed that Kneale on some occasions operated a double-standard with adaptations; being unhappy when others made changes to his stories, but willing to make changes to stories he was adapting into script form. Referring to The Woman in Black adaptation, the writer and critic Kim Newman
Kim Newman
Kim Newman is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history...
noted that: "He was very offended at the notion of Susan Hill using the name of Kipps from HG Wells as the hero of The Woman in Black, and so he decided not to use it and to change the hero's name to Kidd. I'm sure if somebody thought that Quatermass was a silly name and changed it, he'd be furious!" However, an adaptation he wrote in 1991, a four-part version of Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...
's novel Stanley and the Women, met with approval from the original author, with Amis regarding it as the most successful adaptation of any of his work.
Kneale also adapted Sharpe's Gold
Sharpe's Gold (TV programme)
Sharpe's Gold is a 1995 British television drama, part of a series screened on the ITV network that follows the career of Richard Sharpe, a British soldier during the Napoleonic Wars. The drama has almost nothing in common with the novel of the same name by Bernard Cornwell. Scriptwriter Nigel...
for ITV in 1995, as part of their series of adaptations of Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell
Bernard Cornwell OBE is an English author of historical novels. He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe which were adapted into a series of Sharpe television films.-Biography:...
's Sharpe
Sharpe (TV series)
Sharpe is a British series of television dramas starring Sean Bean about Richard Sharpe, a fictional British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Sharpe is the hero of a number of novels by Bernard Cornwell; most, though not all, of the episodes are based on the books...
novels. This was an assignment that surprised his agent; "We didn't think he'd want to bother with them but he did. That was probably because he liked the producer." He returned to writing for radio for the first time since the 1950s in 1996, when he wrote the drama-documentary The Quatermass Memoirs
The Quatermass Memoirs
The Quatermass Memoirs is a British radio drama-documentary, originally broadcast in five episodes on BBC Radio 3 in March 1996. Written by Nigel Kneale, it was born out of his Quatermass series of films and television serials, which had first been broadcast in the 1950s...
for BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...
. Partly composed of Kneale looking back at the events that led to the writing of the original three Quatermass serials and using some archive material, there was also a dramatised strand to the series, set just before the ITV Quatermass serial and featuring Andrew Keir
Andrew Keir
Andrew Keir was a Scottish actor, who rose to prominence featuring in a number of films from Hammer Film Productions in the 1960s. He was also active in television, and particularly in the theatre, in a professional career that lasted from the 1940s to the 1990s...
, star of the Hammer version of Quatermass and the Pit, as the Professor.
While recording an audio commentary
Audio commentary
On disc-based video formats, an audio commentary is an additional audio track consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with video...
for that film in 1997, Kneale speculated about a possible Quatermass prequel set in 1930s Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. According to The Independent, Kneale conceived a storyline involving the young Quatermass becoming involved in German rocketry experiments in the 1930s, and helping a young Jewish woman to escape the country during the 1936 Berlin Olympics
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona, Spain on April 26, 1931, at the 29th IOC Session in Barcelona...
.
Kneale was invited to write for the successful American science-fiction series The X-Files
The X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
(1993–2002), but declined the offer. His final professional work was an episode of the ITV legal drama Kavanagh QC
Kavanagh QC
Kavanagh QC is a British television series made by Carlton Television for ITV between 1995 and 2001. It has been shown on ITV3 as recently as August 2011; series 1–6 are available on Region 2 DVDs....
, starring John Thaw
John Thaw
John Edward Thaw, CBE was an English actor, who appeared in a range of television, stage and cinema roles, his most popular being police and legal dramas such as Redcap, The Sweeney, Inspector Morse and Kavanagh QC.-Early life:Thaw came from a working class background, having been born in Gorton,...
. Kneale's episode, "Ancient History", was about a Jewish woman who during the Second World War had been subjected to horrific experiments in a concentration camp. Transmitted on 17 January 1997 and cited as one of the programme's finest episodes, it brought Kneale's writing career to a close after more than fifty years.
He continued to appear as an interview subject in various television documentaries, and also recorded further audio commentaries for the release of some of his productions on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
. In 2005, he acted as a consultant when the digital television
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...
channel BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
produced a live remake of The Quatermass Experiment. He lived in Barnes, London, until his death on 29 October 2006 at the age of 84, following a series of small stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
s.
Legacy
The writer and actor Mark GatissMark Gatiss
Mark Gatiss is an English actor, screenwriter and novelist. He is best known as a member of the comedy team The League of Gentlemen, and has both written for and acted in the TV series Doctor Who and Sherlock....
, paying tribute to Kneale on the BBC News Online
BBC News Online
BBC News Online is the website of BBC News, the division of the BBC responsible for newsgathering and production. The website is the most popular news website in the United Kingdom and forms a major part of BBC Online ....
website shortly after his death, indicated that he was among the first rank of British television writers, but that this had been overlooked. "He is amongst the greats—he is absolutely as important as Dennis Potter
Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...
, as David Mercer, as Alan Bleasdale
Alan Bleasdale
Alan Bleasdale is an English television dramatist, best known for writing several social realist drama serials based on the lives of ordinary people.The Bleasdales live in prescot,liverpool,wales and london.-Early life:Bleasdale is an only child; his father worked in a food factory and his mother...
, as Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
, but I think because of a strange snobbery about fantasy or sci-fi it's never quite been that way." Similarly, his obituary in The Guardian commented that:
"Kneale was by no means the only author to have been largely wasted by television, and to have seen his status overtaken by soap operaSoap operaA soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
hacks. But his place is secure, alongside Wells, Arthur C. ClarkeArthur C. ClarkeSir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...
, John WyndhamJohn WyndhamJohn Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was an English science fiction writer who usually used the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes...
and Brian AldissBrian AldissBrian Wilson Aldiss, OBE is an English author of both general fiction and science fiction. His byline reads either Brian W. Aldiss or simply Brian Aldiss. Greatly influenced by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society...
, as one of the best, most exciting and most compassionate English science fiction writers of his century."
Writing about The Year of the Sex Olympics in 2003, Nancy Banks-Smith felt that Kneale was one of the few television writers whose work was particularly memorable.
"Once upon a time, Lord HailshamViscount HailshamViscount Hailsham, of Hailsham in the County of Sussex, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1929 for the lawyer and Conservative politician Douglas Hogg, 1st Baron Hailsham, who twice served as Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom...
, proceeding to the chamber of the HouseHouse of LordsThe House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
in black stockings and full-bottomed wig as Lord High ChancellorLord ChancellorThe Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, or Lord Chancellor, is a senior and important functionary in the government of the United Kingdom. He is the second highest ranking of the Great Officers of State, ranking only after the Lord High Steward. The Lord Chancellor is appointed by the Sovereign...
, spotted a friend and cried lustily, "Neil!" They say a whole party of American tourists fell to their knees. At the name of Kneale, I feel, every knee should bow. How much TV do you remember from last night... last year... last century? Quite. Curiously, I can remember clearly the first time I saw The Year of the Sex Olympics by Nigel Kneale. It was 35 years ago."
Kneale was admired by the film director John Carpenter
John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
, who hired Kneale to write the screenplay Halloween III. Carpenter also wrote the screenplay for his 1987 film Prince of Darkness
Prince of Darkness (film)
Prince of Darkness is a 1987 horror film directed, written, and scored by John Carpenter. The film is the second installment in what Carpenter calls his "Apocalypse Trilogy", which began with The Thing and concludes with In the Mouth of Madness .-Plot:The movie opens with a dying priest clutching...
under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
"Martin Quatermass" (a reference to Kneale's work). The horror fiction
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
writer Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
has also cited Kneale as an influence, with Kim Newman suggesting in 2003 that King had "more or less rewritten Quatermass and the Pit in The Tommyknockers
The Tommyknockers
The Tommyknockers is a 1987 horror novel by Stephen King. While maintaining a horror style, the novel is more of an excursion into the realm of science fiction for King, as the residents of the Maine town of Haven gradually fall under the influence of a mysterious object buried in the woods.In his...
." Other writers to have acclaimed Kneale as an influence on their work have included comics
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
writer Grant Morrison
Grant Morrison
Grant Morrison is a Scottish comic book writer, playwright and occultist. He is known for his nonlinear narratives and counter-cultural leanings, as well as his successful runs on titles like Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, The Invisibles, New X-Men, Fantastic Four, All-Star Superman, and...
and television screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
Russell T Davies, who described the Beasts episode "Baby" as "the most frightening thing I've ever seen... Powerful stuff." Film screenwriter and director Dan O'Bannon
Dan O'Bannon
Daniel Thomas "Dan" O'Bannon was an American motion picture screenwriter, director and occasional actor, usually in the science fiction and horror genres.-Early life and career:...
was also an admirer of Kneale's writing, and in 1993 wrote a potential remake of The Quatermass Experiment, of which Kneale approved, but the film was never made.
High profile entertainment industry figures have publicly expressed admiration for Kneale's work, including The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' drummer Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
, members of the rock group Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
and Monty Python's Flying Circus
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Monty Python’s Flying Circus is a BBC TV sketch comedy series. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines...
writer/performer Michael Palin
Michael Palin
Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....
.
Kneale never saw himself as a science-fiction writer, and was often critical of the genre. He particularly disliked the BBC series Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
(1963–89; 1996; 2005–present), for which he had once turned down an offer to write. "It sounded a terrible idea and I still think it was," he commented in 1986. "The fact that it's lasted a long time and has a steady audience doesn't mean much. So has Crossroads and that's a stinker". He also slammed Blake's 7
Blake's 7
Blake's 7 is a British science fiction television series produced by the BBC for its BBC1 channel. The series was created by Terry Nation, a prolific television writer and creator of the Daleks for the television series Doctor Who. Four series of Blake's 7 were produced and broadcast between 1978...
, which he described as the lowest point of British television science-fiction: “I think the low point for me would be the very few bits I've seen of a thing called Blake's 7
Blake's 7
Blake's 7 is a British science fiction television series produced by the BBC for its BBC1 channel. The series was created by Terry Nation, a prolific television writer and creator of the Daleks for the television series Doctor Who. Four series of Blake's 7 were produced and broadcast between 1978...
which I found paralytically awful. The dialogue/characterisation seemed to consist of a kind of childish squabbling” and Doomwatch
Doomwatch
Doomwatch is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC, which ran on BBC One between 1970 and 1972. The series was set in the then present-day, and dealt with a scientific government agency led by Doctor Spencer Quist , responsible for investigating and combating various...
: “I was approached to write Doomwatch
Doomwatch
Doomwatch is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC, which ran on BBC One between 1970 and 1972. The series was set in the then present-day, and dealt with a scientific government agency led by Doctor Spencer Quist , responsible for investigating and combating various...
. That didn't seem to be much good either.” Doctor Who was heavily influenced by Kneale's Quatermass serials, in some cases even using specific storylines that were very similar to those from Quatermass.
Family
In the early 1950s Kneale met fellow BBC screenwriter Judith KerrJudith Kerr
Judith Kerr is a German-born British writer and illustrator who has created both enduring picture books such as the Mog series and The Tiger Who Came To Tea and acclaimed novels for older children such as the autobiographical When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit which give a child's-eye view of the...
, a Jewish refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
, in the BBC canteen. They married on 8 May 1954 and had two children; Matthew
Matthew Kneale
Matthew Kneale is a British writer, best known for his 2000 novel English Passengers, which won the prestigious Whitbread Book Award and was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He went to school at Latymer Upper School and then studied Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford, and afterwards...
, who later became a successful novelist, and Tacy, an actress and later a special effects designer who worked on the popular Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
series of films. Kerr became a successful children's writer, with the Mog
Mog (Judith Kerr)
Mog the cat is the main character in a series of children's books written by Judith Kerr. Other regularly occurring characters include Mr and Mrs Thomas and their two children Nicky and Debbie. In each book Mog gets into a different conundrum with a new character or event...
series of books and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is a children's novel, by Judith Kerr, first published in 1971. It is a semi-autobiographical story of a young Jewish girl who is forced to flee her home in Germany in 1933 with her family to escape the Nazis, whom her father, a writer, had campaigned against...
, which was based on her own experiences of fleeing Nazi Germany in her youth. Kneale worked with Kerr on an adaptation of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit in the 1970s, but the eventual makers of the film version disregarded their script. Similarly, in 1995 Kneale scripted a four-part adaptation of one of Kerr's sequels to the book, A Small Person Far Away, but this also went unproduced.
Kneale was proud of his son's success as a writer. When his novel English Passengers
English Passengers
English Passengers is a 2000 historical novel written by Matthew Kneale, which won that year's Whitbread Book Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Award...
won the Whitbread Book of the Year
Costa Book Awards
The Costa Book Awards are a series of literary awards given to books by authors based in Great Britain and Ireland. They were known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2005, after which Costa Coffee, a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship....
award in 2001, his father commented that: "Matthew's much better than I am. I just wrote screenplays."
Kneale's younger brother is the renowned artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
Bryan Kneale
Bryan Kneale
Bryan Kneale RA is a Manx artist and sculptor, described by BBC News Online as "one of the Isle of Man's best known artists."-Biography:...
, who was Master and then Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
from 1982 to 1990. Bryan Kneale painted the covers for the Quatermass script books released by Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
in 1959 and 1960. He was also responsible for a painting of a lobster
Lobster
Clawed lobsters comprise a family of large marine crustaceans. Highly prized as seafood, lobsters are economically important, and are often one of the most profitable commodities in coastal areas they populate.Though several groups of crustaceans are known as lobsters, the clawed lobsters are most...
from which special effect
Special effect
The illusions used in the film, television, theatre, or entertainment industries to simulate the imagined events in a story are traditionally called special effects ....
s designers Bernard Wilkie and Jack Kine drew their inspiration for the Martian
Martian
As an adjective, the term martian is used to describe anything pertaining to the planet Mars.However, a Martian is more usually a hypothetical or fictional native inhabitant of the planet Mars. Historically, life on Mars has often been hypothesized, although there is currently no solid evidence of...
creatures they constructed for the original television version of Quatermass and the Pit.
External links
- Article by Mark Holcomb from The Believer, March/April 2010
- Nigel Kneale – An Appreciation
- British Film Institute biography
- Nigel Kneale at BBC FourBBC FourBBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
, including clips from their 2003 documentary on him. - The Quatermass Trilogy – A Controlled Paranoia
- Quatermass.org.uk – Nigel Kneale & Quatermass Appreciation Site