It’s been a little while since anyone last took on Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass, so we’re very excited to hear that The League Of Gentlemen co-creator Jeremy Dyson will be working on a new version of the doom-laden sci-fi for BBC America.
Variety reports that a Quatermass remake is part of BBC America’s slate of new shows. Details are minimal beyond Dyson’s involvement, and the plot synopsis stretches as far as telling us that it’s about “a professor and his daughter who investigate an alien invasion.”
Professor Bernard Quatermass was the creation of the incredible Nigel Kneale (The Stone Tape), and appeared in films and TV series of sometimes varying quality. When everything came together (the brilliant serial Quatermass And The Pit, for example, which was also turned into a brilliant film), these stories were compelling, terrifying, and human, with the driven scientist Quatermass at their centre.
Starting life on television, Quatermass was a big hit for Hammer in the 1970s, and was revived for a one-off live BBC drama in 2005. The character has been played on screen by Rudolph Cartier, John Robinson, Andre Morell, Brian Donlevy, Andrew Kier, John Mills and Jason Flemyng.
There have been rumblings for a while that the revived Hammer was looking to make another big-screen Quatermass, but we definitely like the idea of a writer like Dyson working on the character, and we’ll be very interested to see who is cast in the title role.
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