Bernard Quatermass

Professor Bernard Quatermass is a fictional character, created by the writer Nigel Kneale originally for BBC Television, who appeared in three influential BBC science fiction serials of the 1950s, and made his swansong in a final serial for Thames Television in 1979. A re-make of the first serial appeared on BBC Four in 2005. The character has also appeared in films, on the radio and in print over a fifty-year period. Kneale picked the character's unusual surname from a London telephone directory when stuck for an interesting name for the leading character in the script he was writing. Quatermass is an intelligent and highly moral British scientist, who continually finds himself confronting sinister alien forces that threaten to destroy humanity. In the initial three serials, he is a pioneer of the British space programme, heading up the British Experimental Rocket Group.

Radio

Finally, in 1996 a radio drama/documentary called The Quatermass Memoirs was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Written by Kneale, it mixed the fiction of the character writing his memoirs with the reality of the history of the series. Andrew Keir - star of the Hammer version of Quatermass and the Pit - played the Professor, thus becoming the second actor to play the role twice. Memoirs was repeated on BBC7 in 2005.

Related Topics:
1996 - The Quatermass Memoirs - BBC Radio 3 - Andrew Keir - BBC7 - 2005

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Kneale had previously scripted a potential radio version of Quatermass and the Pit for the BBC in the 1960s, but this was not eventually produced.

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