Death of Nigel Kneale

[David Mosley]

It appears that Nigel Kneale, creator of Quatermass and writer of tv dramas such as The Year of the Sex Olympics, The Stone Tape as well as the seminal Rudolph Cartier-produced BBC dramatization of Nineteen Eighty Four starring Peter Cushing, died on Sunday 29th October, aged 84.

Kneale's contribution to British SF is immense, with much of his television work being eclectic, prophetic and intelligent, and remains part of a 'Golden Age' of TV drama. Last year BBC4 broadcast The Kneale Tapes as part of a retrospective of his work, in which the writer Mark Gatiss remarked: "I think Nigel should have a 5-minute slot on TV where the Epilogue used to be, entitled 'I Told You So...'"

[GuyLawley]

It appears that Nigel Kneale, creator of Quatermass and writer of tv dramas such as The Year of the Sex Olympics, The Stone Tape as well as the seminal Rudolph Cartier-produced BBC dramatization of Nineteen Eighty Four starring Peter Cushing, died on Sunday 29th October, aged 84.

Sad news. I have particularly fond memories of Quatermass and the Pit. (Both the TV series and the Hammer film.)

[Marca]

Can't find any mention of Kneale's death anywhere David. Where did you hear of it?

[David Mosley]

The news apparently originates from Hammer Films, who not only produced the three Quatermass movies in the '60s, but for whom Kneale wrote the screenplay for The Abominable Snowman (based on his earlier tv play).

I came across the announcement via the Doctor Who Technical forum, some of whose members worked on the restoration of the Quatermass Trilogy DVD set last year.

ETA: (01/11/2006): News of Kneale's death now being reported in BBC News website. Hopefully there might be a 'Retrospective' season of Kneale's work on BBC4 in due course. (Any excuse to re-screen the 'not-quite-as-good-as-the-original' remake of The Quatermass Experiment. :))

[Michael Moorcock]

I was, I have to admit, under the impression I'd heard of his death a while ago. He was an excellent, intelligent playwright/TV writer. Quatermass always struck me as the first smart bit of TV SF.

[xidrep]

A sad loss indeed; I have a huge affection for all of Kneale's work. He epitomised the post-war/ Cold War neuroses (all too real, of course) brought on by the hopes vested in technological expansion in tension with the terrors that nuclear power and the Great Outside might bring. His great talent was to have most of the fear and horror brougt about by the people in his stories - Quatermass and The Pit and Beasts being the best examples of this 'The Devil Within' concept. Hugely effective drama, as the horror is all implied, and made all the worse by the low-key/ everyday dialogue and settings. As he said himself, there were minimal special effects because they couldn't afford them, and the programmes (teleplays, really - a much-missed genre) were the better for it. The 1996 Quatermass Memoirs on R4 (now on CD) which cleverly fused the previous four tales into one retrospective, low-key drama (three events in the play's past; one catastrophic story imminently to be played out) which was set against newsreel excerpts of the real events of the times - well, it was a tour de force of radio! Like our site host, Kneale appealed to both scientists and 'the general public' because he took the trouble to make his tales 'internally consistent', with a believable set of physics and possibilities, regardless of how outre those potentialities might be, yet always kept the STORY as paramount.
Particularly poignant, his loss, as I have a draft of a letter to his agent on the 'PX3' file, asking for the possibility of an interview. Oh, well. He really was brilliant.

[Michael Moorcock]

Very good piece, P. Says it all a lot better than most of us could.

[devilchicken]

Sad loss - Nigel Kneale had some fantastic ideas and was very ahead of his time.

I loved Quatermass and the Pit, though for years the BBC only showed the half the movie (up until the ship is opened and you see the alien mummies) and as a kid I thought that's all there was to it.

Was quite surprised on picking up the complete mini-series on VHS at a local boot sale a few years back and discovering that the complete series was 3 hours long.

The second half is extremely unsettling and actually very frightening (which is an outstanding achievement for a super low-budget BBC effort from the 1950's) - as Perdix say the horror is all implied (which is the most effective type).

[Michael Moorcock]

There's a lot to be said for having a low budget. I always argued that the old Universal horror movies were all the better for having small budgets and forcing everyone to work at their best. Sometimes a big budget is the worst thing that can happen to a project. I think this was also true of early TV where the writers and directors had to come up with genuinely imaginative solutions to narrative demands, having to use light (and shadow) and the power of suggestion to make your imagination do a good deal of the work. I've always argued that you can often get the best result by using the audience's own imagination. I reckon, for instance, that the early half-hour b&w Avengers episodes were superior to the hour-long colour episodes which they began to make after the series was so successful. Bigger budgets can make you lazy. In general I'd still rather watch a James Whale Universal picture than a modern horror movie. Kneale's genius was to know how to make the most of relatively little. The TV versions were always better than the movies, for instance.

[Michael Moorcock]

Strange...What's going on here ? Professor ? Professor ? Where are you ?

There's a lot to be said for having a low budget. I always argued that the old Universal horror movies were all the better for having small budgets and forcing everyone to work at their best. Sometimes a big budget is the worst thing that can happen to a project. I think this was also true of early TV where the writers and directors had to come up with genuinely imaginative solutions to narrative demands, having to use light (and shadow) and the power of suggestion to make your imagination do a good deal of the work. I've always argued that you can often get the best result by using the audience's own imagination. I reckon, for instance, that the early half-hour b&w Avengers episodes were superior to the hour-long colour episodes which they began to make after the series was so successful. Bigger budgets can make you lazy. In general I'd still rather watch a James Whale Universal picture than a modern horror movie. Kneale's genius was to know how to make the most of relatively little. The TV versions were always better than the movies, for instance.

[Michael Moorcock]

Deja vu ?
Now that was spooky.

[xidrep]

Oo-er!
Mark Gatiss has an excellent piece on Kneale in The Guardian's G2 today: it transpires that Gatiss tried to interest The South Bank Show in a Kneale retrospective, but was told he (Kneale) wasn't a 'major enough figure'. This from the stable that gave us a South Bank Special on....George Michael. I mean, nice chap I'm sure, but to see Melvyn (surely the king of circumlocutory language-mangling, and that's the pot calling the kettle black...) 'Pudding Basin Quiff' Bragg giggling sycophantically whilst this anally-retentive (ahem) self-analyst revealed how he - wait for it - smokes dope...>Shock! Horror! Pop Star Takes Drugs!< well, I leave you to your own conclusions on the state of arts programming. Dismal.
Let's start a British Rocket Group!

[xidrep]

You're spot on about the B&W early TV epidodes being better than the later colour efforts (both Quatermass and Avengers). It's that literal film noir quality. Another great example of this is, of course, King Kong.
Of course, at Prototype X ('at': ha!) we've taken the historical hint, and gone from colour to monochrome. I bet it's a lot scarier now. There are at least three skellingtons in this issue.

[xidrep]

Read: 'episodes' not 'epidodes'; the latter are what Sony are going to call the intracranial probes that one will be able to implant in one's occipital cortex in a few years, to download music and video.

[Michael Moorcock]

Melvyn was clearly a bit awkward, too, around Ballard on that recent South Bank Prog. Could be that Ballard disdained Honours List saying it was a sham etc. and Melv has scooped up everything they throw his way... Or that Ballard had, not that long ago, said that MB exemplified what was bland about arts journalism on TV...