Mog the Forgetful Cat by Kerr, Judith at AbeBooks.co.uk - ISBN 10: 0007341563 - ISBN 13: 9780007341566 - HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks - 2010 - Hardcover
With the centenary of his birth, screenwriter Nigel Kneale is being celebrated for his varied work – including his landmark dramas about an alien-infested UK, writes Adam Scovell.
The BBC's adaptation of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four shocked the nation when it was first broadcast on a Sunday night in 1954. The work of the Quatermass team of Nigel Kneale (writer) and Rudolph Cartier (director), it stars Peter Cushing as Winston Smith, who rebels against Big Brother by embarking on a clandestine love affair; André Morell, meanwhile, is Room 101 torturer O'Brien. This landmark play has been one of the most wished-for classic TV releases for decades, and now it's finally here, beautifully restored by the BFI for a dual-format Blu-ray/DVD edition. The film sequences look immaculate! Extras include an informative commentary by Nigel Kneale experts Jon Dear, Toby Hadoke and Andy Murray; a featurette dispelling some of the myths about the production; a 1965 edition of Late Night Line-Up looking back at the production; and a recording of a recent lecture about Kneale's life and
"Disgusting", "depressing", "sheer horror from start to finish", a "filthy, rotten, immoral play". Such were the comments from viewers published across a spectrum of British newspapers following the BBC transmission, on 12 December 1954, of Nigel Kneale’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The papers themselves were similarly critical. "A Tory guttersnipe’s view of Socialism" was the assessment of the socialist Daily Worker. The Daily Express opted for sensationalism.