BERGCAST - Episode 36 - Brian Cox

 

We're back with a new co-host and an amazing new guest in the shape of the GIANT that is Brian Cox. Andy and Jon talk to Brian about making The Year of the Sex Olympics, how he was cast, why he remains so fond of something from the very beginning of his HUGE career, and the fact he'd really like to play Quatermass some day...

There's also an extended intro to meeting co-host Andy Murray, Nigel Kneale's biographer.

Episode 34 -- Things Recorded in the Walls, feat. Brontë Schiltz

(note: not a picture of Brontë)

It's another episode with a genesis almost as troubled as our Quatermass Conclusion Conclusion. This time, Jon was unable to make our discussion with Gothic expert Brontë Schiltz last November at very short notice, so Howard went it alone for the first time. But then, a bunch of uncontrollable life circumstances leading to a massive upheaval meant that the recording languished in the walls of Howard's laptop for three months. We hope that you feel it's worth the wait, as we discuss the TV studio with horror in its walls, 70s pop pseudoscience and The Tiger Who Came to Tea, along with a whole lot else.

Find Brontë's links here and find BERGCAST in all your usual podcast places.

Episode 29 – The Nigel Kneale Century

Contact is established!

It's what they call in media a Very Special Episode, because the BERGCAST team is celebrating the 2022 centenary of Nigel Kneale's birth. We're joined by friends of BERGCAST Andy Murray, Toby Hadoke (and also Toby's dog Bernard) to talk about only some of the things that have happened and will happen very soon to mark that.

The Nigel Kneale Centenary Celebration will be held at the Crouch End Picturehouse on April 23rd. You can find a full rundown of what's going on at nigelknealecentenary.com, or cut out the middlehuman and just buy your ticket here – but be quick, they're selling steadily. 

Did we mention Jane Asher will be there?

Toby's 7th Dimension special will air on Radio 4 Extra in the week running up to that – why not bookmark the schedules so you don't miss it? 

And you can pre-order your copy of Tomato Cain and Other Stories at the Comma Press site right now.

Oh, and let's not forget that we'll be posting frequent updates on our Twitter feed – follow us on @BERGCASTCalling.

Episode 23 – Stephen Gallagher

(We are very keen that you know that this isn't Stephen Gallagher. This is Chad.)

For this episode of BERGCAST, we were joined by veteran novelist and screenwriter Stephen Gallagher, who chatted with us about the trajectory of his career, and the influence of Nigel Kneale on his work. In a wide-ranging conversation, we talked about how a false memory of Quatermass and the Pit haunted Stephen for years, how Hollywood treats writer-creators, what Emma Peel and Bernard Quatermass would look like as a team, and whether more screenplays should be written using the Marvel Method.

You can find our podcast on Spotify and Apple, and on your favourite podcast app, or just listen below. 

Episode 16 – The Stone Tape with Una McCormack

 

(Jane Asher, having read the ending)

It's another very special episode of BERGCAST, as we're joined by our second-favourite Doctor in media, the tremendous Dr Una McCormack, with whom we're talking about the 1972 Kneale play The Stone Tape. In a discussion where we talk about the history of British manufacturing, the surprising role of Boromir, the value of fanfiction and parallels with classic Japanese horror, Una raises the very pertinent point of whether the story of a man's downfall really needs to be presented over the corpse of a woman, and we speculate as to what The Stone Tape would look like if it were feminist... and in space. 

 As ever, find us in all your favourite podcast venues. And remember that you can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter as @BERGCASTcalling.

Episode 15 – Mark Gatiss on the legacy of Nigel Kneale

Mark Gatiss referred to Nigel Kneale as “the man who invented popular television”. 

It can be a curse of a writer tagged as ‘genre’ that they may never been seen alongside the very best. As Mark said when Kneale died, “He is amongst the greats – he is absolutely as important as Dennis Potter, as David Mercer, as Alan Bleasdale, as Alan Bennett, but I think because of a strange snobbery about fantasy or sci-fi, it’s never been quite that way.”

In this episode, we chat with Mark about his love for Nigel Kneale’s work, his influence and his legacy. Mark recalls the one time he met the man himself and how he tried to get greater industry recognition for Kneale. He also talks about following in Nigel’s footsteps by adapting Wells’s The First Men in the Moon, and the experience of making The Quatermass Experiment in 2005.

As ever, You can find BERGCAST on your favourite podcast outlets, and you can give it a listen here. 

Episode 14 – The Lost Kneales, Part Two

In the concluding part of our look at the lost work of Nigel Kneale, Toby Hadoke talks about the practicalities of adapting The Road for radio, and Andy Murray examines the controversy of The Big, Big Giggle and its legacy in other Kneale works.

We also look at why his two Wednesday Plays are less well remembered than other missing work like Out of the Unknown: The Chopper & wonder, did Nigel invent joyriding?
Find us, as ever, in the usual podcast venues, or listen below.

Episode 13 – The Lost Kneales, Part One

In our latest lockdown special we welcome back Toby Hadoke and Andy Murray for the first of a two-part look at some of Nigel Kneale's lost stories. In this episode we examine Kneale's early radio plays, The Long Stairs and You Must Listen, Kneale's application to work at the BBC as well as classics like The Creature – and The Road, which Toby adapted for radio in 2018.

You can find us in all the usual places, as ever.

Episode 12 – The Year of the Sex Olympics

Appropriately enough for a time we’re all stuck in watching telly, the BFI has reissued Nigel Kneale’s The Year of the Sex Olympics.

After his adaptation of 1984 and the abortive Brave New World, this is Kneale’s attempt predict dystopia and the influence of those earlier works shine through.

So for this lockdown special we’ll don our gold paint and consult our custard pie experts as we examine the programme that predicted the rise of Love Island, Gogglebox and the Doctor Who story Vengeance on Varos. On the way, we’ll look at look at what Kneale is actually critiquing.

Is it the free love generation? It is mass media manipulation or does he just really hates TV execs? We have two guests this time, writers, film historians and curators Vic Pratt and William Fowler, whose work on the BFI Flipside series is vital in highlighting the weird and wonderful in British cinema. And we can highly recommend their book, The Bodies Beneath.

Episode 10 - Quatermass and the Pit (1958) - Part Two

This is the second part of our descent into the Pit, and again we're honoured to be joined by prolific writer Maura McHugh.

Along with our discussion of what may be Nigel Kneale's finest moment, we look at MONSTERS FROM THE ID, the Nazi rocket scientist no one wanted, great character surnames, the entire absence of a philosophical leviathan, and HP Lovecraft's debt to bad archaeology.

Listen here, at the BERGCAST site, or download from your favourite podcast outlets.

Episode 9 – Quatermass and the Pit (1958) – Part One

Today, the BERGCAST team finally heads for the only place really left to go: the Pit, source of terror, hauntings and that awful social Darwinist impulse that drives the people to suicidal mass action, which isn't remotely topical. In our exploration of 1958's original version of Quatermass and the Pit, we're joined by our guest, horror and fantasy novelist, playwright and Squaxx dek Thargo, the brilliant Maura McHugh.

The sky. The sky is purple.

Episode 5 - Quatermass II (1955) - Part Two

For the second part of our look at Quatermass II, we are once again with Andy Murray, writer of Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale, which you can purchase here. 

There's some dark stuff in the later episodes of Quatermass II, so we have to warn you that BERGCAST is not for children or persons of a nervous disposition.

Episode 4 - Quatermass II (1955) - Part One

Distract yourself from the political crisis and sinister machinations of the U.K. Government by letting Bernard Quatermass deal with it instead.

This episode we're joined by writer Andy Murray, whose book Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale is an absolute must read. You can get it here.

In the first of a two part chat, we look at what Nigel Kneale's been up to since The Quatermass Experiment, the casting of John Robinson and how the BBC felt the need to combat the launch of commercial television and a quick side step to the proposed Quatermass prequel, set in 1930s Berlin.


Howard's short story, The Austringer, can be found here.

Episode 2 - The Quatermass Experiment - Part Two

BERGCAST reaches the Hadoke conclusion as Toby and I finish our look at the original serial.

If you've ever wondered whether it was really true that Nigel Kneale didn’t know how he was going to finish The Quatermass Experiment when the first episode went out or if anything was recorded of episodes 3-6, I hope you'll find our conversation of interest.

As mentioned in the episode, here's the link to the common terms in fingerprint analysis. Fascinating stuff, even if I'm still not sure why Inspector Lomax needed Victor Caroon's so badly.

You can listen to BERGCAST here, at the BERGCAST site, and via iTunes. 

Episode 1 - The Quatermass Experiment - Part One

BERGCAST finally crashlands somewhere near Croydon with its inaugural episode, first of a two-part exploration with performer, writer, broadcaster and author of an upcoming Quatermass book, Toby Hadoke.

For gallivanting reasons, I couldn't make the recording session, so Jon and Toby go ahead without me, and in this episode they explore what the deal is with Inspector Lomax and the Loch Ness Monster, whether a cast member's beef with a cat got the poor thing sacked from the production, and whether everyone really came out and took a bow at the end of “State of Emergency”.

I find The Quatermass Experiment pretty haunting. It's not the show that was broadcast – it's a fragmentary copy of it. To see the original drama, you would have had to have been there in 1953, watching the actors play live. This is only the result of a camera pointing at the TV. In a sense, it's not a recording of the programme, it's a recording of the experience of watching the programme. It's largely lost to memory. It'd take a miracle to be able to see the rest of it, and it's gradually on its way to leaving the preserve of living memory. More or less everyone significant involved in its making is gone. We're watching a blurry facsimile of the work of the dead. It's a ghost of television.

But it's also really great. I suppose an expectation that something from 1953 is going to be a bit rubbish by modern standards, but really, no. Kneale's writing is poetic. It is alive, it is alive.

You can listen to BERGCAST here, at the BERGCAST site, and, when all the pings happen and contact has been established, via iTunes.