REGARDING BENRY

Now that 'Lost' is winding down to a close with tonight's episode (Fear not! They'll be back February, 2007.), can we PLEASE stop using the cutesy name of "Benry" when referring to Ben Linus? He was using "Henry Gale" as an alias last year, but it's not his name and now that he's dropped it, we should drop any reference to it.

I swear I think commenters in various other online sites and blogs do this sort of thing to "mark their territory". It's right there in the Bible from the time of Adam - you name something, you have power over it. That's why I think some of these people are doing when they continue to use that stupid combination.

(Then again, I also hate Brangelina, Vaughniston, JAM (for Jim and Pam), TomKat, Bennifer I & II.......)

When 'Lost' returns in February of 2007, maybe Hurley should be the one slinging the new nicknames.

So how about a new name for ex-druggie Charlie?

Might I suggest "Swarley"?

Best of all, by using it in 'Lost', then it would trump its use on 'How I Met Your Mother' by at least two years!

Abbysinia, "Benry".

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

(HEADLINE) RIPPING YARNS

US actress Adrienne Shelly, best known for her roles in the Hal Hartley films "The Unbelievable Truth" and "Trust", has been found dead in her New York office. The 40-year-old was discovered by her husband Andy Ostroy on Wednesday night, according to her agent Rachel Sheedy.

Ostroy found her hanging in the shower of her office, and everyone jumped to the conclusion that she hanged herself... even though she was a new mother, and had a movie which she directed soon to debut.

Maybe I had seen too many 'Murder, She Wrote' episodes - especially one with Buddy Hackett and Steve Lawrence, - but the first thought that came to me was that it was murder. Of course, I - like the police who grilled him for five hours - at first suspected the husband.

A teenage construction worker has been charged with the murder of US actress Adrienne Shelly. A footprint found in her Manhattan home led police to 19-year-old Diego Pillco, originally from Ecuador.

You know that this will be the stuff from which quickie episodes of 'Law & Order' sprout. Of course, they'll put their own little twist to the tale; for alls I know, in their version, it will be the husband.

Or perhaps, the financial backer of the movie.....

BCnU....
Tele-Toby

CHRISTMAS WITH THE SHREKS

In December, ABC will air a half-hour holiday special spun off from the "Shrek" movies - 'Shrek The Halls'. Shrek, Fiona, Donkey, Puss In Boots, and probably the second-tier of the cast (like Pinocchio, Gingerbread Man, and the Three Blind Mice) will star. And as far as those top four characters, all of the original actors will be involved. (That would mean Mike Meyers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy, and Antonio Banderas, respectively.)

Donkey has already appeared in the Tooniverse, thanks to his appearance on 'Pride Of The Family', which aired on NBC. There are also a few appearances in commercials for various products from computers to fast food chains. So it's likely that of all the cast of characters, Donkey will be first to get inducted into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

BORN TO RERUN IN "JERICHO"?

"Shaun Daily" wrote this in TVSquad.com (11/2/06) about 'Jericho':

"Gracie is turning into the Mrs Olson (of 'Little House' fame) of 'Jericho'. While she does care, it does not stop her from doing business."

Makes you wonder - well, me anyway...... What if Gracie IS the reincarnation of Mrs. Olson? She's of a similar look (Many TV reincarnations are exact resemblances, but not always.)and they share a similar occupation.

Her personality may not be as shrewish as that of Mrs. Olson, but since the nuclear attack, she has "all the time in the world"....

Just sayin', is all.....

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

THE FLYING ZONK

"I bet nuns are awesome basketball players,
Especially the ones that can fly."
Randy Hickey
'My Name Is Earl'

No mention is made of 'The Flying Nun', the ABC sitcom starring Sally Field. Therefore we can safely assume that Randy is talking about the "real" Sister Bertrille, who at 90 lbs. would become aireborne when the wind got hold of her cornet.

It's a long way between Camden County and San Tanco, so it's unlikely that Randy knew Sister Bertille personally. There are so many TV shows and magazines about human interest stories nowadays.

"Doonesbury" once did a story about some guy being profiled by People magazine because he was the only person left in L.A. who had not been profiled by them. Sooner or later one of those magazines would have done a story on Sister Bertrille, so that's how Randy must have known about her.

(And People magazine does indeed exist in Toobworld. It's part of the Glenn Howard publishing empire.)

Besides, even if there was a TV show, that's no problem either. Just like with the Singing Nun, the image and story of the Flying Nun would have been sold to TV, the movies, perhaps even to a cartoon network.

So Randy could have seen the "Flying Nun" on TV. And Sister Bertrille would have donated that money from selling her rights to help save the orphans raised by the Sisters of San Tanco.

As well as the many bastard offspring sired by Carlos Ramirez......

'My Name Is Earl'
'The Flying Nun'
'The Name Of The Game'

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

"I saw her kick a nun once...."
Charles Kuralt
'Murphy Brown'

"History is last month's 'People' magazine...."
Miles Drentell
'thirtySOMETHING'

THE HAT SQUAD: WILLIAM FRANKLYN

Veteran actor William Franklyn has died at the age of 81. His 50-year career encompassed TV, radio, film and stage, appearing in episodes of 'The Avengers' and 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' among many others. He also appeared in television shows such as 'Top Secret' (in which he was secret agent Peter Dallas), 'Splitting Heirs' and 'Ooh, You Are Awful'. (I love that title!)

But for all of that, he is best known as the voice of the "Schhh... You Know Who" Schweppes commercials. Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with that. Blipvert immortality worked out great for Jesse White, Dick Wilson, and Jane Withers. We should all be so lucky to live on in the memories of strangers in such a way.

It was during the 1960s that Franklyn landed the role in the adverts for Schweppes tonic. He appeared on screen in 10 of the commercials between 1965 and 1973, and voiced 40.

In 2004 he took over from the late Peter Jones as the voice of the Book on Radio 4's 'The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy'. The Radio Universe is the original home for the HHG2TG, and this casting change doesn't need to apply to the TV version. However, an easy splainin can be found - the Book has simply been updated since the edition featuring Peter Jones' voice.

TV SERIES
"The Steam Video Company" (1983) TV Series .... Various
"Masterspy" (1978) TV Series .... Host
"Paradise Island" (1977) TV Series .... Cuthbert Fullworthy
"What's on Next?" (1976) TV Series .... Various (1976-1978)
"Whodunnit!" (1972) TV Series .... Voiceover
"No Cloak - No Dagger" (1963) TV Series .... Ian Lambart
"Top Secret" (1961) TV Series .... Peter Dallas
"No Wreath for the General" (1960) TV Series .... Dr. Roger Kenyon

MINI-SERIES
"G.B.H." (1991) (mini) TV Series .... Distinguished gent
"Curtain of Fear" (1964) (mini) TV Series .... Hans Liebert

TV MOVIES
London Suite (1996) (TV) (uncredited) .... Widley
Diana: Her True Story (1993) (TV)
The Legend of Young Dick Turpin (1965) (TV) .... Tom King
Quatermass 2 (1957) .... Dr. Brand

GUEST APPEARANCES
"The Courtroom"
- Dead in the Water (2004) TV Episode .... Judge Matthew Johnson
"Doctors"
- A Second Chance (2001) TV Episode .... Hugo Stephenson
"French and Saunders"
- Witless Silence (1999) TV Episode
"Lovejoy"
- Guns and Roses (1994) TV Episode .... Burgess
"The New Avengers"
- Hostage (1977) TV Episode .... McKay
"Doctor in Charge"
- That's My Uncle! (1972) TV Episode .... Jeremy de Quincy
"The Champions"
- The Gun-Runners (1969) TV Episode .... Hartington
"The Avengers"
- Killer (1968) TV Episode .... Brinstead
- Silent Dust (1966) TV Episode .... Peter Omrod
"Thirty-Minute Theatre"
- Something to Hide: The First Floor (1968) TV Episode .... Roy Haines
"The Baron"
- The Edge of Fear (1967) TV Episode .... Kent Jordon
"The Troubleshooters"
- The Bigger They Are (1966) TV Episode .... Michael Rennane
"Public Eye"
- You're Not Cinderella, Are You? (1966) TV Episode .... Kurt Heller
"Maigret"
- The Countess (1962) TV Episode
"International Detective"
- The Washington Case (1961) TV Episode .... Larry Sullivan
- The Bismarck Case (1960) TV Episode .... Conrad Schneider
"No Hiding Place"
- The Last Flight of the Eel (1960) TV Episode .... Paul Kendon
- Everybody Loves Jerry (1959) TV Episode
"Interpol Calling"
- Slow Boat to Amsterdam (1960) TV Episode .... Nevil
"The Flying Doctor"
- Time Bomb (1959) TV Episode .... Murphy
"Dick and the Duchess"
- The Club (1957) TV Episode .... Elegant Harry
"The Adventures of Sir Lancelot"
- The Mortaise Fair (1957) TV Episode .... Baron Mortaise
"Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Presents"
- The Ludlow Affair (1957) TV Episode .... Roger Benning
- The Way Home (1956) TV Episode .... Stanley
- A Likely Story (1956) TV Episode .... David Butler
"The New Adventures of Charlie Chan"
- Backfire (1957) TV Episode .... Richard Dawson
- The Death of a Don (1957) TV Episode .... Jack Pearson
"Lilli Palmer Theatre"
- Bride Wore an Opal Ring (1956) TV Episode .... Ted Harvey
"The Count of Monte Cristo"
- Burgundy (1956) TV Episode .... Phillipe
- The Carbonari (1956) TV Episode .... Du Broc
"The Scarlet Pimpernel"
- The Ambassador's Lady (1956) TV Episode .... Jacques Fleury
- Something Remembered (1956) TV Episode .... Jacques Fleury
"TV Playhouse"
- Mid Level (1955) TV Episode .... Bluey

THE LEAGUE OF THEMSELVES
"This Is Your Life"
- William Franklyn (1978) TV Episode .... Himself

BCnU.....
Tele-Toby

LINKIN' CASE

During the ten years I've been writing about Toobworld in one online forum or another, I've come up with some pretty wild theories gleaned from thinking inside the box.

Why Superman couldn't save the World Trade Center

How Mr. Rourke and Mr. Peabody are aliens from the same planet, but different dimensions

Why Dr. Loveless is still alive

But I have to say that Harry Knowles of "Ain't It Cool News" has really come up with a whopper, what with his musings about 'Heroes'.

I haven't read a pop culture theory as wild as this since Larry Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex"!

I'm not even going to hint at the gist of what he came up with, because I don't want to spoil it.

And I have this fear my fourth-grade nun, Sister Theresa Gertrude, will come back from the dead and rap me on the knuckles with a ruler for saying such things!

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

O'BSERVATIONS: OUT AND ABOUT

In the last week, Neil Patrick Harris and TR Knight both came out and proclaimed they were gay. (Not happy with that verb; sounds like they were boasting. "admitted" doesn't work either - that would sound like they were copping to a crime.)

Both actors play straight characters on their respective shows - Harris as Barney on 'How I Met Your Mother', Knight as George on 'Grey's Anatomy'.

Meanwhile, over at 'Brothers & Sisters', Matthew Rhys is straight, but he's playing the gay Kevin Walker. And then there's Eric McCormack who played Will on 'Will & Grace'.

However, Nathan Lane playing straight on 'Encore Encore' just didn't register. I guess we knew too much about him as a person by that point......

This is all how it should be in Toobworld. For the most part, nothing about the actor should really define the character. First off, the actor and the character are two separate identities in the TV Universe, and usually never encounter each other (unless of course we're talking about Sammy Davis, Jr.) It's when their personal life is incorporated into the storyline, then it tends to send the plot careening off the tracks.

The sitcom 'Ellen' comes to mind......

Although eventually we were able to overlook it, Christopher Eccleston's dialect was a bit disconcerting at first, coming as it did from the Doctor in 'Doctor Who'. Not even the dialogue to splain it away helped much, although it did make for a keeper:

Rose Tyler: "How come you sound like you come from the North?"
The Doctor: "Lots of planets have a North."

Eccleston's regenerated replacement's request to use his native Scottish accent was vetoed, but David Tennant did get to use it as part of his alias in the episode "Tooth & Claw".

One of the smart decisions on the part of RTD to veto the request. Bad enough when decades earlier, the Third Incarnation of the Doctor was regenerated with a tattoo.....

Not even an actor's age is apparently a factor when it comes to their character. Otis Young was 43 when he played Lawrence Melville in the 'Columbo' episode of "Identity Crisis". But Melville was supposed to be 28.

Young looked the 43.

When he played two roles in 'The Second Hundred Years', Monte Markham was supposed to be 33 as Ken Carpenter (which he was in real life), but he was 101 as Luke Carpenter, Ken's recently unfrozen grandfather. It's now 2006 - Markham/Ken Carpenter are both 71, while Grandpa Luke would be about 140.

Some things you just have to figure into the equation. Daryl Mitchell broke his spine in 2000, so he has to play most of his roles now in a wheelchair as he did in 'Ed'. (Not sure if his role in last year's "Inside Man" was just always seated, though.)

James Stacey lost an arm and a leg decades ago in an accident. So when he appeared as a guest star in a 'Wiseguy' arc, this was added into his character's back-story. And in fact, it played a major factor at a crucial point in the plot when the character of Mark Volchek's ultimate goal was revealed.

Michael Dunn's dwarfism was a major factor in the conception of Dr. Miguelito Loveless, and he played it to the hilt. As his nine episodes in the series progressed, it was only Loveless' own obsession with his stunted height that held him back from the true greatness he could have achieved.

But if one is a little person, that doesn't mean it has to be considered central to the character they play. Peter Dinklage's role in 'Threshold' really didn't have anything to do with the fact that he's a little person; it was the size of his scientific genius that mattered. However, the same can't be said for his role as Marlowe on 'nip/tuck'. It didn't have to come up in his position as the family's nanny, but now that he's obsessed with Julia McMahon, he's considering the option of having his legs lengthened.

I guess as it's a show with cosmetic surgeries as it's hook, that was to be expected.

Meredith Eaton as Rebecca Horowitz on 'Boston Legal' could have dealt with the fact that she's a little person being second to the fact that she's a lawyer, if it had not been for the blundering bluntness of Denny Crane.

And even then he was able to get past that for some "cheap, chubby sex".

Getting over the fact she may be his daughter is a little trickier.....

Still, I think that when she appeared on 'Family Law' as Emily Resnick, the fact that she was a little person was probably addressed and then put aside. I just wish she could have appeared on 'Boston Legal' as Emily rather than Rebecca, if only for the crossover!

Michael Dunn really paved the way for little people as actors so that eventually they will be cast as regulars on TV series and their height never becomes an issue (or splained away as them being aliens or non-human beings, as was the case with Danny Woodburn's Carl the Gnome on 'Special Unit 2'.)

If it does ever come up again, the offender can be shouted down with accusations of "heightism", like Jerry was on 'Seinfeld' in regards to Woodburn's Mickey.

Race doesn't even play a role anymore, really. It was played up for laughs when Rob Petrie thought his baby had been switched with that of Mr. and Mrs. Peters on 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'. And Chris Stephens had a black brother on 'Northern Exposure', but that was chalked up to their Dad bleepin' around with two different families.

Wayne Brady is about to show up as Barney's brother on 'How I Met Your Mother', but no splainin yet on how that came about. Personally, I think it would be cool if it never comes up at all, or at the very least, Barney never offers up an answer. That's how it played out in "Jurassic Park 2" when we met the daughter of Jeff Goldblum's character. We were left to fill in the blanks, if it was necessary.

Up in Elmo, Alaska, it appears that "ebony and ivory combine to make" Patrick, as it's been recently revealed that Buzz is his father. Nothing about the genetic makeup of the actor playing the role of Patrick would suggest that it was possible, but that's cool. (Of course it's cool! They're in Alaska! Ba dum bum! Try the veal!)

But getting back to Neil Patrick Harris and TR Knight announcing (ah! That's a better verb!) that they're gay, I hope the writers resist the temptation to ever play with that idea. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.

It's just that Barney is too deeply seated in the audience's minds as the irreparable reprobate of a womanizer to be seen even questioning his sexuality.

But I wouldn't put it past Shonda Rhimes when it comes to 'Grey's Anatomy'. That show is so far over the top when it comes to soapy complications in the characters' lives, and they burn through so many plotlines in a single season, that I would be surprised if they didn't have George do a bit of experimentation.

Just sayin', is all.....

Shows cited for this O'Bservation:
'How I Met Your Mother'
'Grey's Anatomy'
'Brothers & Sisters'
'The Wild, Wild West'
'The Second Hundred Years'
'Ed'
'Wiseguy'
'Family Law'
'Sienfeld'
'Special Unit 2'
'Men In Trees'
'Northern Exposure'
'Ellen'
'Encore Encore'
'Columbo'
'Doctor Who'
'The Dick Van Dyke Show'
'nip/tuck'
'Threshold'
'Will & Grace'

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

AMERICAN HOLMES, UNGUARDED

This week, Sam and Dean Winchester of 'Supernatural' took on a demonic spirit straight out of American History. In life, H.H. Holmes was the American version of Jack the Ripper in the late 1800s.

But in Toobworld, the man who was Jack the Ripper wasn't really responsible for his actions. Sebastian was possessed by the Redjack Entity and forced to commit those crimes until he was caught by the Vorlons.

Yeah, the British had to have aliens take care of their serial killer. We got rid of Holmes with good old fashioned American know-how.

Here's an introduction to H.H. Holmes, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Herman Webster Mudgett (May 16, 1861 – May 7, 1896), better known under the alias of "Dr. H. H. Holmes," was an American serial killer.

Holmes trapped, tortured, and murdered possibly hundreds of guests at his Chicago hotel, which he opened for the 1893 World's Fair. He confessed to 27 murders, though only nine have been confirmed.

The case was notorious in its time, and received wide publicity via a series of articles in William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. Interest in Holmes' crimes was revived in 2003 by "The Devil in the White City", a best-selling non-fiction book that juxtaposed an account of the planning and staging of the World's Fair with Holmes' story. In addition, Harold Schechter has written a biography of his life entitled "Depraved".

Although Holmes is sometimes referred to as America's first serial killer, his crimes occurred after those of others such as Thomas Neill Cream, the Austin Axe Murderer and the Bloody Benders.

If you want to read more about Holmes, you can check out his Wikipedia biography.

However, even though Holmes was hanged for his crimes in Pennsylvania*, his spirit came back to terrorize the building which was erected on the land where he was hanged.

What brought him back to the land of the living? I think there's more to the story, and I think the answer lies in another TV series. (Of course!)

Back in 1998, 113 souls escaped eternal damnation in Hell and resumed their mortal lives. The Devil called upon another of his infernal clientele, a former NYC cop named Zeke Stone, to hunt down these escapees and dispatch them back to Hell in exchange for his own freedom.

(Thanks to my friend and fellow Iddiot, Listener Mara, that Zeke Stone must still be on the case, because he has yet to bring back Angelus. Buffy Summers sent his soul to Hell, but Angel was able to escape and return to the land of the living, where he still exists to this day.)

As one of the 113 escaped damnees, Holmes apparently played it cool. He didn't resume full mortality, preferring a corporeal form only when he took his new victims. But that still proved his undoing as Sam and Dean trapped him in a circle of salt and then cemented all access to his prison so that he would be there - as Sam put it, - until Hell froze over.

If Zeke Stone still wants him, he'll have to dig the bastard out.

TV series cited for this post:
'Supernatural'
'Brimstone'
'Angel'
'Buffy The Vampire Slayer'
'Babylon 5'
'Star Trek'

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

*This would make H.H. Holmes a Yanked Damnee.

Sorry about that, Chief......

THE HAT SQUAD: 3 CREATAURS

That isn't actually a mis-spelling. I coined a new word to identify those people who have expanded the TV Universe through their writing, direction, artwork, etc. They are the Powers That Be.

"Creataur" has a mythic feel to it. And I just didn't want to use "Creator" with a Capital C, of course.

Being the oldest in my family, I didn't want to risk the curse of the firstborn.....

These three men represent all of those artistic traits - a writer, an artist, and a producer. May each of them rest in peace....

ED BENEDICT
(from the New York Times)

Ed Benedict, a legendary animator who put life, love and laughter in TV cartoon characters like Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble and Yogi Bear, has died at the age of 94.

Benedict died in his sleep on Aug. 28 in Auburn in Northern California, his longtime friend and fellow animator David K. Sheldon confirmed Tuesday.

"He was quite an interesting fellow, that's for sure," Sheldon said. "He was the main character designer for all the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw."

Benedict, who worked at MGM, Universal and other studios on short, theatrical cartoons, joined Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera soon after the pair launched their groundbreaking Hanna-Barbera TV animation studio in the late 1950s. Among his many designs for them were the characters for their first series, 1957's "The Ruff & Reddy Show."

For "The Flintstones," the story of a "modern Stone Age family," Benedict not only designed the hapless cavemen Fred and Barney, but also their long-suffering wives, Wilma and Betty, and the show's clever array of Stone Age houses and gadgets, including the characters' foot-powered cars.

"The Flintstones," one of the first cartoon series created for adults as well as children, debuted in 1960 and was an immediate hit. Forty-six years later, Fred and Barney remain squarely in the public consciousness as pitchmen for various products, including Flintstones' vitamins.

"It would not be an exaggeration to say that a large part of H-B's success in TV animation is owed to Benedict's incredibly appealing and fun character designs," cartoon historian Jerry Beck wrote in a tribute posted on the Web site cartoonbrew.com

And you gotta figure.... he must have been taunted as a kid as "Eggs Benedict".....

HERBERT LEONARD
(from the New York Times)

Herbert B. Leonard, a film and television producer who left an indelible mark on American popular culture with television series including “Route 66” and “Naked City,” died at his daughter’s home in Hollywood. He was 84.

One of his early television producing projects was “The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin,” which ran from 1954 to 1959. A hit with children, it made a western star and a pet of a German shepherd character originally featured in movies after World War I.

“Naked City,” adapted from the 1948 movie “The Naked City,” was shown from 1958 to 1963 and marked a sharp departure from his children’s western. The episodes, which followed two fictional New York City detectives, were shot on location throughout New York City, something that was rarely done for television in the 1960’s, and its stark urban realism sometimes approached that of cinéma vérité.

“Route 66,” which began in 1960, followed two men in a Chevrolet Corvette along what might have been America’s most famous highway. Each week, until the series ended in 1964, they encountered a different town and a different story. It was also shot on location, in about 25 states. A romance of the road that emphasized a sense of rootlessness, it stood out from many of the dramas and situation comedies that were its contemporaries.

Ron Simon, a curator at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City, said Mr. Leonard was one of the first to show that television did not have to be live and in the studio or shot on a Hollywood back lot.

“He was shooting America as it looked, especially ‘Route 66,’ ” he said. “It became a great symbol of America on the move.”

NIGEL KNEALE
(from the London Times)

In 1953 the BBC television drama department was faced with an unexpected gap in the schedule and at short notice commissioned Nigel Kneale, a young staff writer, to fill the gap. He came up with The Quatermass Experiment, a science-fiction thriller of power and originality that kept a large proportion of the viewing population gripped for six weeks.

Kneale had been with the BBC for a year or so, mainly working on adaptations of plays and novels. But The Quatermass Experiment was his own creation, and television had not shown anything like it before. In contrast to American science fiction, which then rarely rose above the level of children’s comics, Kneale was writing for an adult audience.

As in much of his subsequent work in science fiction and the supernatural, Kneale drew on contemporary anxieties to fashion bold, compelling and often prescient stories. Underlying The Quatermass Experiment were fears about the nuclear bomb and the Soviet-American space race, as the rocket scientist Professor Bernard Quatermass, confronts the survivor of an aborted space mission who returns to Earth and changes into a vegetable monster.

From The Quatermass Experiment [he] moved to another nightmare vision of the future, which drew on contemporary angst about totalitarianism, George Orwell’s 1984. Sombre and chilling, most memorably in the sequence where Peter Cushing as the hero, Winston Smith, is terrorised by rats, it was the BBC’s most controversial drama production to that date.

[Kneale] worked on two more Quatermass serials. Prefaced by a warning that it was “not for children or those of a nervous disposition”, Quatermass II (1955) again reflected Cold War paranoia, as a secret government chemical research station turns out to be an acclimatisation centre for an alien race that is trying to infiltrate the minds of the population. The challenge for Quatermass is to destroy the asteroid where the aliens are based.

In Quatermass and the Pit (1959) Kneale married science fiction with the supernatural. An ancient alien spaceship discovered beneath the streets of London is followed by Quatermass’s discovery that ghosts, demons and other phenomena can be traced back to a Martian invasion of Earth millions of years before.

It was probably the most satisfying of the Quatermass stories. Kneale’s script suggested that behind the apparently irrational there were real dangers, and the technology, too, had become more polished.

[H]is main outlet was television, which he continued to serve with intelligence and imagination.

By the end of the 1950s he, as much as any writer, had demonstrated the creative possibilities of television drama and he continued to produce challenging work, much of which, thanks to BBC regulations of the time to wipe and reuse tapes, has not survived. One of the lost plays was The Road (1963), which began as a ghost story set in an 18th-century village but ended in the future with people taking flight from a nuclear war.

His next important work was The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968), transmitted in the BBC’s Wednesday Play strand, which again combined contemporary concerns with a nightmare vision of the future by imagining a world in which appetites for sex and food are dulled by television. The screen experience becomes a substitute for the real thing. Saturated by pornography, people lose their urge to procreate and the population declines. The world food shortage is solved by showing non-stop images of gluttony which dull the appetite. The play contained scenes of violence and love-making which were explicit for the time and sparked a deluge of complaints.

In 1975, Kneale decided to move to ITV. There he wrote Beasts, a series of six dramas with the common theme of a fear of animals, and had a play about the slave trade dropped, before reviving the aborted Quatermass. With John Mills as the now elderly scientist, and the Stonehenge ban overcome with a stone circle built in polystyrene, Kneale portrayed a dystopian future where society had broken down, urban guerrillas were on the rampage and crowds of hippies, called Planet People, were being harvested by an alien force.

In 1981 Kneale combined science fiction with situation comedy in Kinvig, in which an electrical repairman is transported to the planet Mercury. He later adapted Susan Hill’s ghost story A Woman in Black and, in a return to the BBC, Kingsley Amis’s comic novel Stanley and the Women in which John Thaw departed from type to play the eponymous hero.

During the 1990s, by now well into his seventies, Kneale contributed episodes to Sharpe, the adventures of an English soldier fighting Napoleon, and Thaw’s legal series, Kavanagh QC. Kneale was much admired by American practitioners of horror and the supernatural, including Stephen King and the film director John Carpenter. He was asked, but declined, to write for the American television series The X-Files, which addressed themes of paranoia similar to those which he had explored 40 years earlier.

BCnU......
Tele-Toby