Nigel Kneale (1922 - 2006) was a popular and influential Manx screenwriter whose work had a lasting effect on television drama. Many of his works contain SF and horror elements, though he fiercely resisted being labelled as "a science fiction writer". (Considering some of the company his work would be keeping in the annals of TV sci-fi writing, one can understand his reluctance.)
His television works include:
- The Quatermass serials.
- A famous adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four starring Peter Cushing.note The Room 101 scene is notable as the cause of one of the first big controversies over violence/horror in British TV history, with a motion in the House of Commons denouncing it, and the Daily Express accusing the programme of frightening a woman to death.
- The Creature, later adapted as the Hammer Horror film The Abominable Snowman (both also starring Peter Cushing).
- The Year of the Sex Olympics, prescient drama set in a dystopian future where the population is kept docile with a diet of low-brow reality shows.
- The Stone Tape, in which scientists bite off more than they can chew while attempting to figure out the scientific basis of a haunting.
- The Road, in which a 18th century village tries to come to some understanding of the strange haunting that affects the titular road into their village. When finally heard, it's clear to the audience but not the characters that the haunting is not from the past, but the future - the death agonies of a city about to be struck by a nuclear weapon. Sadly, only the script survives.
His film screenplays include:
- The 1964 film version of First Men in the Moon
- The Witches (1966).
- Halloween III: Season of the Witch (the one with no Michael Myers) — wrote the original screenplay, but left in protest of Executive Meddling.
Him and children's author Judith Kerr (The Tiger Who Came to Tea) together made an unlikely Creator Couple.
Works by Nigel Kneale with their own trope pages:
