Britain’s First Television Hero: Next time the streaming service gives suggestions, one of them may well be “Shot On Phone Cameras.” Directors have been choosing them for not only cost effectiveness but for the creative and technical flexibility they offer. None of the search results may sound familiar, however, though the technique has been in use since 2015. Technological creativity can’t replace a good script or hide a lackluster performance.
Producers and writers faced an identical challenge seventy years ago, filling time on the new medium called Television. Time and budget constraints were no different then as they are now, but modern directors couldn’t work with what little was available in the mid-1950s. The shows that survived from that era are sometimes hard on the eyes, but they are a testament to the ingenuity and talent that was available.
YouTube suggested a particularly good example one hot August night recently. All the available Hammer films having been exhausted (including the theatrical versions that were released a few years after the television show), the algorithm found the original BBC television series “Quatermass” (pronounced QUAY-te-mass). The second “serial” (BBC shows didn’t have “seasons” like their American counterparts) appeared on the BBC in 1955, two years after the very successful first series entitled “The Quatermass Experiment.”
Quatermass was the best-known character of his creator, Nigel Kneale, an author whose career spanned 50 years. Kneale was personally involved with the character through its many incarnations, including a “prequel” radio production before his retirement in 1997. When Kneale passed away in 2006, the BBC hailed Quatermass as “Britain’s first television hero,” while other media outlets compared him to Sherlock Holmes.
“Quatermass,” was remade as a feature film in 1957 (shown in the US as “Enemy From Space”) with American actor Brian Donlevy. Even those who have seen the film will still find the original series worth watching (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiosbmsuNSU). The familiar music of Gustav Holst’s “Mars, The Bringer Of War” immediately jars the viewer’s attention, as the title appears on the screen. John Robinson (who replaced Reginald Tate from the first serial) portrays Quatermass to great effect, right up to the final nerve-wracking scene. Listening to Kneale’s compelling story makes it easy to overlook the visual quality and production values. Years before CGI and digital effects, years before even chroma-key became widely available, the visuals carry the story without detracting from it, often heightening the tension. All this was due to the efforts of Rudolph Cartier, who produced and directed all three television serials.
Quatermass, in many ways, surpasses a certain other British science fiction hero (who Kneale himself disliked), and viewers are left to imagine what other threats the Professor may have encountered. When the final serial “Quatermass and the Pit” was produced in 1958-59, Kneale reflected in an interview that “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.” The role was then portrayed by André Morell, who many fans consider the definitive Quatermass actor.
