Publisher:
Headpress
Paperback
Street Date: October 5, 2023
Size: 229mm x 152mm
Pages: 434
Illos: 64 B&W stills and ads
ISBN: 978-1-915316-09-7
RRP: UK £22.99
Review by
Adrian Smith
One
of the most important and influential television writers of the twentieth
century, Nigel Kneale has enjoyed something of a resurgence in popularity of
late. Headpress published the biography Into the Unknown by Andy Murray
(not the tennis player) a few years ago, Electric Dreamhouse published a lavish
collection of essays on his legacy called We Are the Martians, Comma
Press reissued his collection of short stories Tomato Cain last year,
and now Headpress again brings us this dense, information-packed study of his
1970s folk horror-inflected (before the term ‘folk horror’ had been invented) anthology
show Beasts. This attention is well deserved: Nigel Kneale wrote the
screenplay for the groundbreaking 1954 BBC production of 1984 before creating
The Quatermass Experiment, a show that was so popular that pubs across
the country would empty as people ran home to watch it. Quickly followed by Quatermass
II and what was arguably the best of the three, Quatermass and the Pit,
these shows were hugely important in the early history of television, and Nigel
Kneale’s name was forever associated with science fiction and horror. The
sixties proved to be a bit more difficult for him after some issues he had with
the BBC, but there was still some amazing work, such as The Year of the Sex
Olympics, which effectively predicted the rise of Big Brother and Survival-type
reality shows.
In
the mid-1970s he was commissioned by ATV, one of the independent commercial
stations that formed part of the ITV network, to write a show loosely connected
by a single theme. There were many such shows in the 1970s, often hung on one
writer’s work and with a horror focus, such as Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected
or Brian Clemens’ Thriller. The six episodes of Beasts, plus
pilot episode ‘Murrain,’ had some form of animalistic connection and explored
strange and unexplained phenomena; a couple besieged by rats, a ghostly
dolphin, an actor becoming obsessed with the monster he plays in a film, a pet
shop owner conducting werewolf experiments, a shopgirl whose telekinesis
manifests as a destructive rodent, and a family who discover a mummified animal
in the walls of their new home. These were unique, disturbing and memorable
television dramas that undoubtedly made for memorable viewing experiences, and
they have remained influential to this day.
Screen’s
new book on Beasts is a well-researched piece of work. The author has
had access to production records, scripts and other ephemera, and he also
covers the wider social and historical context around the subject of each
episode as well as the critical and public response. It’s an incredibly deep
dive and one which will keep fans of the show, and of strange 1970s British
television in general, thoroughly engrossed. It is not a book to read if you
have yet to see Beasts however, so do seek out the DVD collection, enjoy
its equal levels of nostalgia and creeping dread, and then dig into The Book
of Beasts to discover everything you could ever want to know about this
series and its impact on popular culture.
Click here to order from Amazon UK
Click here to pre-order from Amazon USA (Ships December 1)