The Quatermass Experiment (The 1953 BBC Version): Part 1
I have a few posts planned about 1950s TV and unfortunately one of them is going to have to wait for Christmas but they're all about great things.
Everybody sit up straight, comb your hair and take your gum out of your mouth because the subject of this first one is what can only be described as the Shakespeare of British television. Actually, no, tell a lie, its significance to TV is perhaps greater than that of Shakespeare to literature (I've had to start like this, because merely gushing over Quatermass would get people thinking that I was exaggerating). This show is like the Shakespeare, Homer, Chaucer, and Virgil of British television and I'm not exaggerating.
Let's go back to 1953 for a moment. We were all flushed with our new young queen and her coronation revolutionised television by being the first fully televised in June of this year. Rationing from the Second World War had only ended the year before and it was only two years after the Festival of Britain. We were flushed with peace, prosperity, and ready to step into the brave new world and white heat of scientific progress which is so often the background of the television shows I blog about. Yes, I know as if I'm talking as if I was alive, but don't forget we're still celebrating the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.
Into this brave new world entered a writer called Nigel Kneale, whose influence on establishing television as an independent medium from film and theatre cannot be overstated. While it wasn't his first script for the BBC, The Quatermass Experiment was the first science fiction production ever to be written for an adult television audience.
The show's significance for television is such that its later influence and the legend that surrounds it has perhaps overshadowed the show itself. It's the first appearance of Professor Quatermass and opens with him awaiting the return of his rocket, which is the first massed spaceship into space. Unfortunately when the ship returns, it is found that inexplicably only one of the personnel has come back and it has also brought back something from space which wasn't expected and isn't understood. It is up to Professor Quatermass to defeat the thing which has come back from space in the ship.
Of course this places Quatermass at a key point in the history of science fiction. It already has so many of the themes which dominate later science fiction. The show has left a considerable dent in British culture.
For one thing there was the number of viewers, peaking at 5 million for the final episode. Perhaps I should say that the Times estimated there were 4 million television sets in the country in 1952, and the BBC reported the *average* audience of the BBC in the evening in 1953 at 2.25 million. Those who were around at the time remember streets and pubs being eerily empty while Quatermass was being broadcast. Quatermass can only be described as huge. The coronation and Quatermass were the two main hinges of the national consciousness in summer 1953, and of course the Thing from space took root in Westminster Abbey where the young queen had been crowned. Quatermass himself has also been described as Britain's first television hero. Such was the impact that sequels were made in 1957, 1967, 1979, and The Quatermass Experiment was remade by the BBC in 2005.
The BBC made the show again because as is usual for the time the show was broadcast live, with only a few pre-filmed film inserts. Unusually, however, two of the six episodes were telerecorded before the idea was abandoned, and so two out of the six episodes remain. Of course the show has to get in another first and those two episodes are the oldest surviving multi-part British television dramas to survive.
Honestly, this show creaks like an old gate (this is not a criticism). Even though it is only a decade before so much of the television that I love so much, it is very clear that both technically, and in attitude and society, things had changed very much in that decade. It feels much older, and although the events it is depicting are obviously hallmarked by modernity, the world it shows is very different from the Britain of the sixties. That said, the affair aspect of the plot feels very modern, and in fact was carried over into the 2005 remake unchanged (I have personally never been able to watch the 2005 version all the way through to the end, but I think this might just be me reacting to the way that you just can't remake Quatermass). However the overriding impression, even if you don't know all the history, of what significant and really great television this is. I actually don't think I was overdoing it when I called this the Shakespeare of television, because it is. Despite feeling very old fashioned, being recorded in a quality which is truly terrible, moving quite slowly and having the odd slip, if you watch a lot of television, you know you are in the presence of something special with this. No wonder Nigel Kneale went on to such a glittering career.
A final aspect of the show which really dates it is in the accents of the actors. There are some characters intended to be working class who are as gor blimey guvnor as you can get, but generally the actors use the famous 'BBC accent'. In 1922 the decision was made to use Received Pronunciation of the BBC and essentially not to broadcast regional accents at all. There is a fascinating interview on YouTube of Malcolm Muggeridge and Lord Reith talking about this. The irony is that Muggeridge has a BBC accent but Lord Reith doesn't, and has a regional accent. He gives two reasons for using RP on the BBC: one that it wouldn't be made fun of (not true) and that it isn't associated with a particular region of the country (also not true). So this show embodies the accent which was the soul of BBC broadcasting until they loosened up a bit.
In fact the accent is the cause of the one criticism of this show I have. Quatermass is claimed to be a real surname which Kneale said he got out of a London telephone directory. The problem I have is that some (but not all) of the actors with the BBC accent pronounce it Quatermarss, which just bugs me and I'm convinced is wrong. I think that if you want to say Quatermass very poshly indeed you would make it sound more like Quatermess. I see from the Received Pronunciation page on Wikipedia that there was an older custom of pronouncing the name of the Roman Catholic religious service called mass as marss, but it says it was only for that service and not for mass as in a mass of people. I don't personally speak Received Pronunciation and don't tend to move in those circles so couldn't ask people to say it but luckily it was the work of only a few minutes to find someone who was brought up speaking Received Pronunciation in the early twentieth century who was perfectly willing to say it for us and let us know what was right:
Let that be an end to any idea that Quatermass would be pronounced Quatermarse, even at the heights of heightened Received Pronunciation. The BBC's pursuit of talking posh has left it having its actors talking ridiculously.
You will rightly say that if that's the only criticism I've got this is still truly great television, and you should see its two episodes as soon as possible if you haven't. There is a script book available to catch up on the four episodes not recorded or the 2005 remake is commercially available.
This blog is mirrored at
culttvblog.tumblr.com/archive (from September 2023) and culttvblog.substack.com (from January 2023 and where you can subscribe by email)
Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an incomplete index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog
There is an index to posts on the Substack version here: https://culttvblog.substack.com/p/index-of-posts?r=1q6qo6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
About this blog: https://culttvblog.substack.com/about