THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT 2005 : PUBLICITY INTERVIEWS

THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT 2005

BBC4 - 2nd April 2005
8.20pm - 10.20pm
a live broadcast

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PUBLICITY INTERVIEWS

BBC Publicity interviews:
You'll be seeing these cut up in different forms in most of the trade papers and magazines. Thanks to Kate Adams at BBC Publicity for allowing us to publish these pieces in their entirity...

Prepare to be scared - Quatermass is back!

Richard Fell - producer
The original small-screen sci-fi chiller that gripped the nation when it first appeared in 1953 has been brought bang up to date in a new two-hour adaptation especially for BBC Four's TV On Trial event - where viewers vote to give their verdict on which was the true golden decade of television. And, just like the original, The Quatermass Experiment will be broadcast live, making it the first live TV drama on the BBC for some 20 years. "It was on page one of the TV drama canon and it's a great story,"explains producer Richard Fell on the choice of Quatermass. "It's tense and scary, so the adrenalin, the tension and the excitement generated by it being live will really suit it. And its creator Nigel Kneale is one of the great TV writers. He's in his eighties now but he\rquote s been very supportive - I just hope he likes it!"

He certainly should because, as Richard reveals, they haven't tampered too much with the original tale of an astronaut who returns from space and turns into an alien. "We barely needed to update the characters or story - they are timeless. It's not inconceivable today to think that we could bring some deadly virus back from space - or release something by accident. So we just needed to update some of the language and the peripherals around it.

"And viewers today compared with 1953 are much more sophisticated. People expect more pace, and more storyline quicker, so the adaptation [done by Richard himself] reflects this."

Of course technology has also got a lot more sophisticated in the past 50 years although, as Richard points out, that doesn't mean simpler!

"We cover live events all the time, be they football matches, concerts, news events or whatever, and we're good at it. But look at how the coverage of, say, football has moved on - they must have around 20 cameras at a game these days. It's a bit the same with TV drama - we now have many more cameras to give us more flexibility. The big US sitcoms shoot with seven cameras and a live audience - admittedly they can then edit that, but it's similar to what we're doing with Quatermass.

"But then we need to have a very tight camera script. We obviously can't do any tweaks on the night so we have to have everything plotted out to the last centimetre as to where the cameras will be and where the actors will be in relation to them," explains Richard, who has recent experience of televising live theatre with BBC Four's two Shakespeare plays from The Globe, and whose credits also include The Alan Clark Diaries and Kenneth Tynan - In Praise Of Hardcore.

"That's been the main difference between this and ordinary TV drama - we've needed much more rehearsal time to work everything out, and much more rigorous planning, working upfront with the cast and crew on all the nuances of the script. It's not some hybrid of theatre and TV drama, it's a genre all of its own with its own challenges."

Another difference is in the effects - often the longest part of the process for sci-fi films, but which present a far bigger challenge when needing to happen live. The original monster was created by a photo back-drop with a black rubber glove poking through, but presumably there'll be something a little more slick this time as astronaut Victor Carroon (played by Andy Tiernan) transforms into an alien?

Richard grins. "We won't reveal how we're going to do the monster," he says tantalisingly, "but we're not going to have a big 40-ft rubbery thing! Anyway, special effects are less important than the tension and suspense in the story and script. This story is more human, more humane than just straightforward sci-fi with wobbly monsters." It is rocket science

Jason Flemying - Professor Quatermass
Though producer Richard Fell jokes that "actors are used to live work - they call it theatre!", Jason Flemyng -who plays rocket scientist Professor Quatermass, responsible for launching the space mission that goes disastrously wrong - admits to being more than a little nervous about his first foray into live TV drama.

"I'm trying to cover it up as much as possible though!" he smiles. "We're all pretending to each other that we're fine - no one wants to look like an idiot. You look at the other actors and you think, he's all right, he can take it, but if you've got scenes with someone and you think, what happens if they dry, if they go to pieces -all the actors have got this slight blanket of bravado where they're proving to the others they're going to be fine, so it's quite funny from that point of view. It's when we sit down and admit we're all terrified... "

He laughs. "But my motivation for work is 'if it frightens me I'll do it' - so there was no option but to take it on."

Fortunately for Jason there's also a sense of excitement mingling with the nerves. "I've never done live TV before so it immediately becomes exciting. I'm very lucky in that I've done 49 movies so anything now that puts me in a position where I'm doing something which is new or different, whether it be the style you're doing a film in, or the country you're doing it in, or like this, is immediately appealing. And the buzz so far has been really great, people are really interested and really excited about it."

Part of that, he admits, is that live means dangerous.

"It's like watching Formula One car racing - there are a lot of people who love the sport but there are a lot of people who go to see the carnage, and watching live telly there's a certain similarity between that."

With some 15 sets and a cast of 16 plus crowd scenes, there's ample opportunity for things to go wrong.

"There's a real unpredictability to it," agrees Jason. "The space that we're doing it within is not as contained as a theatre, which is restricted by the size of the stage. With us here, with the use of golf buggies and trick photography and the odd filmed insert, we can rush from one set to the other. I'm really enjoying that, how we're going to do this and how can we make that work; it's very stimulating, it really is. And if we rehearse it long enough and hard enough then we'll get it really secure."

Security of another kind was on Jason's mind when offered the part of the iconic Professor Quatermass, a role, he says, he needed to feel confident enough for.

"If I'd been out of work for 18 months and then got Quatermass I'd have pooped my pants!" he laughs. "But it's all about confidence - I think an actor's confidence is way above his talent, it's is the most important thing an actor can have and if anyone tries to muck with it you have to defend it. But I feel quite good, I've done 11 films in the past two years so I feel ready for it. "

Ready for a rest, you'd think. "That's what my girlfriend keeps saying - it's actually quite a sore point!" he sighs. She's probably seen London-born Jason more in those films - which include Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Snatch and Rock Star - than in real life lately, but hopefully she'll approve of Professor Quatermass, who, after all, was TV's first hero.

"He's a kind of cerebral, but worried - he created this whole situation and so there's a sense of underlying guilt that goes through it," says Jason of his character. "He battles with his ego - he's a man who's very proud of what he's done and yet when it turns so horrible he takes that responsibility on himself. There's a kind of dark, foreboding guilt to him which I really like.

"And this is part of TV history. It's one of those jobs that's just impossible to turn down."

TV history also has a place for Jason's dad, as the actor explains.

"My dad directed the film Doctor Who And The Daleks and he did the noise of the spaceship taking off. No one else on the planet can do that noise except his son, who he passed it to before he died. When I heard that Doctor Who was coming back I actually phoned the production office like a complete crazy actor and said 'I need to speak to the producer, I do the noise of the Daleks' spaceship!' They were like, 'Right, okay' and they didn't even phone me back, so I'm absolutely devastated and I'm desperately trying to get my father's Dalek spaceship noise into Quatermass!"

Interactivity is at the core of the TV On Trial week - we want viewers to tell us what they think and make their votes count.

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VOTING OPENS ON SUNDAY 27 MARCH

20th March 2005

page last updated: 29/03/05