The Quatermass Memoirs - Reception

Reception

Nigel Kneale himself was largely dismissive of the serial in the years following its broadcast; "God knows it wasn't a very important sort of thing," he told his biographer. "The BBC didn't care tuppence about what they were doing, because they really don't know what they're doing, certainly not in radio... must have been pretty ill when this nonsense was going on."

Reviewing the first episodes of both The Quatermass Memoirs and In the Fifties—another programme running as part of The Fifties season—The Times's reviewer Peter Barnard was impressed. Despite thinking that such a season of programming was "a necessarily premature commemoration", he felt that both series had "demonstrated how radio's better moments often take conventional pegs and hang some original clothing on them".

The Independent's radio critic Robert Hanks was unimpressed with Kneale's script for the dramatic sections, but praised the performance of Andrew Keir in the title role. "Lesser actors would treat Kneale's downbeat script with a certain detachment, but Keir is prepared to charge even the most banal lines with a terror that's both a treat and a lesson." Hanks also felt that The Fifties season as a whole, as demonstrated by The Quatermass Memoirs, had a somewhat misleading focus. "You get the sense that a vogue for science fiction is being interpreted as the spirit of the Fifties, with emphasis being put on a handful of sci-fi films. If you really wanted to read the age through its movies, you'd have to include Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, late Ealing and early Norman Wisdom, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. It's a lot to accommodate; perhaps sticking to terror is just less intimidating."