Out of Kneale's many contributions to British screen culture, it is arguably his creation of the Quatermass television serials for the BBC in the 1950s that has left the most profound mark. Directed by the legendary Rudolph Cartier, the first of the serials, The Quatermass Experiment (1953), was also the first original adult science-fiction drama that the BBC had produced for television. The serials centred on the intrepid scientist Professor Bernard Quatermass – whose name was inspired by a surname discovered by chance in the telephone book and the astronomer Bernard Lovell – as he faces down a range of unusual extraterrestrial threats.
