The Book of Beasts: Folklore, Popular Culture and Nigel Kneale’s ATV TV Series

INTRODUCTION

‘It is not what we see that frightens most of us. It is what we don’t see and know...’1

THE YEAR THAT BEASTS WAS broadcast would see the scripts of three of Kneale’s plays for the BBC — The Road, The Year of the Sex Olympics, and The Stone Tape — published by small press Ferret Fantasy. Kneale wrote the introduction to the collection, The Year of the Sex Olympics and other TV Plays, which opened with the statement, ‘I find it hard to think of these three television plays as science fiction. My primary interest was in the characters, in developing them as real people. In each case they were faced with some extraordinary situation, of course, but they had first to be brought alive and rendered actable.’2

This same statement could apply to the writing and creation of the series Beasts. Kneale never considered himself purely a writer of either science fiction or horror. He was first and foremost a dramatist dealing with characters and the tensions between them. He placed them in the midst of extraordinary or, in the case of Beasts, supernatural events, but like his other work the stories are driven by the characters and not the concepts. ‘During Barty’s Party’ isn’t about the idea of a swarm of man-eating super intelligent rats, it’s about the Truscotts and how the balance of power between husband and wife slides from one to the other during the crescendo of tension the play generates. On the surface ‘What Big Eyes’ is about an RSPCA officer uncovering macabre experiments in a local pet shop, but underneath the drama explores the shared madness of a father and daughter.

Kneale discussed the creation of Beasts in a 1986 interview with Andrew Pixley:

I think it was in 1975. I had written a play [‘Murrain’] for the same producer, Nick Palmer, and during the stages of production it was suggested I should do a set of half-a-dozen plays with a very simple connecting link, which was that there should be an animal element, the beast, that could be implemented in any way at all. In fact the aim was to make them as different as possible: one comedy, one horror, one straight drama, one mystery... all sorts. And this from the point of view of commercial television was probably a tactical mistake because they like things firmly labelled and if you’ve got six, they want six the same, not six all different. So when these things had been made, and pretty well made, the programming became an awful problem because they had six quite different pieces of an anthology. There was no easy trademark and I think this proved a problem with networking.3

Kneale always produced his best work when he was partnered with a producer he could trust. Having established a successful working relationship with Rudolph Cartier during his early days at the BBC, he was lucky enough to later find a kindred spirit in Nicholas Palmer after he left the corporation. Kneale firmly believed in the writer and producer relationship as being the basis of his work. He once noted that his scripts should ‘always give intelligent camera directions. It helps to know camera techniques. In this way, there will be more rapport between producer and writer, and therefore the effect of two minds on any problems of production’.4

As a nine-year-old in 1976 I was unaware of the above, but I do recall several things about the year. I remember the sunshine, lots of sunshine. Evenings without end. One thing I don’t really remember is the heat. It didn’t seem exceptional, but I could easily cope with heat back then. I began this book in 2018 in the middle of a summer that had some comparison to the record-breaking summer of 1976, hours of sunshine, level of temperature, and extent of drought notices amongst them. In 1976 the roads melted. Ladybirds swarmed. The long, hot, dry summer is what most people recall when prompted. Elsewhere in the news that year, beleaguered Prime Minister Harold Wilson resigned from office, Concorde made its first commercial flight, and punk was born with the release of The Damned’s single New Rose and the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK. Carry On star Sid James died whilst performing on stage and the most popular British films of the year were Confessions of a Driving Instructor and Adventures of a Taxi Driver, both films that would inform the background to Beasts episode ‘Buddyboy’.

My dad, a civil engineer, worked away from home for months at a time and my older sisters had fledged the nest only recently, so for the majority of my childhood there was just me and mum. She was never very strict over bedtimes, I think she enjoyed the company, but I usually went to bed no later than 9:00PM during the week. Friday nights and weekends were a different matter as I could stay up as late as I wanted and get to watch TV that was more daring, adult, and scary. It was here that I gained my love of horror films via the late-night double bills on the BBC. I was familiar with Nigel Kneale from early viewings of The Stone Tape (1972) and the Hammer film version of Quatermass and the Pit (1967) and would often scan through the television listings magazines for anything else by him. This was how I discovered that ITV was due to transmit a horror series written by Kneale. The episodes that made the most profound impression on me were ‘During Barty’s Party’ and ‘Baby’. Both scared the hell out of me and seared themselves into my memory. These memories never faded and would be rekindled as I grew older and met people who also recalled the series. One friend was even able to make the sinister cawing sound from ‘Baby’.

James Donald and Andrew Keir in the film, Quatermass and the Pit (1967).

The series has always fascinated me, stuck in my head. Over the years when watching the episodes again I found myself wondering where the stories came from. Where does the premise of a phantom dolphin spring from? What inspired Kneale? Like many other writers he probably drew upon his own interests and what was happening in popular culture of the time, but I have also found evidence that he drew upon his own Manx folklore heritage and events in his own family history. We shall never know for certain, but this is probably as close as we can get to what ignited the ideas for the diverse range of stories that make up the series. If you don’t know who Nigel Kneale is, then this book will hopefully be an education. Without him British television drama, let alone countless stories, films, and television series, simply would not be the same or even exist. Despite his influence he was by all accounts a shy and retiring man and did few interviews during his life, preferring to cherish his privacy. If, as a child or a parent, you have ever read The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr, then you would have seen him. He’s there on the page as the father of the family rendered in the drawing. Kerr was Kneale’s wife.

As I write this on my laptop I have the online streaming service Shudder open in a browser tab. Shudder specialises in horror films, both current and classic, and I occasionally have it playing in the background as I write. I recognise the plummy tones of classic British character actor Richard Wattis in the background. I look up, and unspooling in the browser tab is the Hammer film version of The Abominable Snowman (1957). I wondered what Nigel Kneale, who wrote the script and the original TV play, would make of this technology? In a 1981 interview with The Observer newspaper, Kneale pondered the way that people, especially children, were using the then relatively new technology of videotapes: ‘A child can skip an upsetting scene as though it were a page in a book. The video machine even goes to the extent of watching things for you. We aren’t at the mercy of television in quite the same way.’5 I hope he would have a chuckle to himself in the knowledge that this decades-old iteration of his story is still finding new audiences by new media and new means. I also suspect he would not be a fan of our visually-led culture of YouTube, memes, and social media. In the same 1981 interview Kneale revealed his belief that television has the ability to traumatise its audiences by associating violence with pleasure: ‘We switch on not out of curiosity to see what’s happened but because we bought the set to get fun out of it. If you then see a person being shot on the news, you convert that into a pleasurable experience.’6 If we swap the TV set for a phone and news for newsfeed, we can see that what Kneale suggests is still utterly valid in our digital multimedia age.

This book would not have been possible without the support of Matthew and Tacy Kneale and access to Kneale’s papers preserved at the Manx National Heritage Library and Archives. Kneale preserved all his original scripts and supporting documentation for Beasts in a folder which is currently held at the archive.

1Nigel Kneale quoted in Jonathan Rigby, ‘Ancient Fears: The Film and Television Nightmares of Nigel Kneale’, Starburst 265 (September 2000), p.48.

2Nigel Kneale, The Year of the Sex Olympics and other TV Plays (Ferret Fantasy Ltd, 1976), p.10.

3Andrew Pixley, ‘Beyond the Dark Door’, Time Screen 8 (December 1986), p.9.

4Kneale quoted in Anon., ‘Spotlight on Scripts: Nigel Kneale’, The Stage and Television Today (May 7, 1959), p.15.

5Jennifer Selway, ‘Genial Prophet of Doom’, The Observer (September 6, 1981), p.26.

6Ibid.

Una Brandon-Jones in ‘Murrain’.

‘I would have no compassion on these witches. I should burn them all.’ — Martin Luther

‘Actually, it was a ghost story, a simple ghost story about a farmer who thinks his pigs are being witched, and the witch was a neighbour lady. A very reasonable modern veterinarian arrives to look at the pigs and can’t find out what’s wrong with them. The farmer says it’s her, she has done it, so the vet goes to interview the old lady, who’s having a bad time because nobody in the village likes her. She’s excluded from everything. So, the young man decides to take pity on her. He does all the proper things, he goes off to town and gets her registered with the medical authorities, and brings her a lot of food. The next day, he finds not only are the pigs down, but the people are feeling ill, which is worrying. But, he feels, there’s obviously a rational explanation for this, until finally the pig farmer, to the vet’s indignation, charges around to interview the witch himself, and personally threatens her with a pitchfork. She just points at him and he drops dead of a heart attack, and reasonably so; he had a weak heart. What can you prove? And that was all.’ — Nigel Kneale on ‘Murrain’1

‘Crich, a young vet, can’t identify the virus which has attacked the pigs on Beeley’s farm. But Beeley and his friends have no doubt about who’s responsible.’ — TV Times listing2

THE ANTHOLOGY SERIES

AND AGAINST THE CROWD

DURING THE 1970S THE anthology drama was ubiquitous on both the BBC and ITV channels, though the format’s influence was waning. The long-running premier drama platform Armchair Theatre (1956–1974) had brought prestige to ITV, though it had recently been retired, whilst the BBC’s flagship drama anthology BBC Play of the Month (1956–1983) still had the legs to stagger into the next decade. Play of the Month was part of a range of anthology drama from the corporation which also included The Wednesday Play3 (1964–1970) and Thirty Minute Theatre (1965–1973). Play for Today (1970–1984) filled the void left by the demise of both these series, but this only managed to last a year longer than Play of the Month. The appetite to make and consume single plays was starting to fade amongst producers and viewers and this type of programming would become less popular over the coming decades.

Horror and suspense had always been a popular arena for the anthology drama format, which has a long and rich history dating back to the 1940s, on both sides of the Atlantic. Many of these programmes operated under umbrella titles that gave viewers a clue to the type of tales offered, such as House of Mystery (1957), Tales of Mystery (1961–1963), or Mystery and Imagination (1966–1970), all from ITV. Theming a series of plays under an umbrella title was also common beyond genre material, with early British examples including the ABC series Tales from Dickens (1957) and Saki (1963), both of which adapted the stories of famous writers. Notable BBC anthologies included Moonstrike (1963), detailing acts of resistance in WWII Europe, and The Indian Tales of Rudyard Kipling (1963), hopefully self-explanatory. One of the most enduring ITV anthology drama series was ATV’s Love Story (1963–1974) which clocked up over 120 episodes over eleven years. The BBC took the anthology drama programme to an extreme with the over-ambitious Churchill’s People, a series of twenty-six historical dramas based on the Winston Churchill books, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.4 Broadcast between December 1974 and June 1975, the series was widely perceived as a failure due to the studio-bound production offering little in the way of spectacle or realism, despite the BBC investing numerous resources and top-drawer casting. Opening with an audience of around two million, the series plummeted to less than half a million by transmission of the fifth episode and was quickly shunted to a late-night slot for the rest of the run. Guardian critic Nancy Banks-Smith famously described the series as having ‘little to offer us but blood, horsehair and history. Though a hell of a lot of each’.5

TV listing and article that appeared in the TV Times the week of transmission.

A few weeks after Churchill’s People ground to a halt on the BBC, Against the Crowd began, a themed anthology series of seven plays made by ATV under-producer Nicholas Palmer. The umbrella theme for the series had people in situations where their viewpoint was in a minority — against the crowd, as it were. At the time Palmer commented, ‘The series focuses on the plight of the individual who, either through circumstances or his own convictions finds that he is the odd man out, with the majority of his particular group ranged against him. It is also an attempt to return to examining some aspects of the society of 1975.’6

The production was announced in trade paper The Stage on Thursday February 6, 1975 with an article previewing the series:

Review in The Stage and Television Today – published 31/07/1975, page 13.

Nicholas Palmer is producer of a major drama series with the title Against the Crowd. The seven fictional stories — each forming a separate play — deal with man’s struggle against overwhelming odds with subjects such as mongol babies and the colour problem being featured. The first of the series is ‘Poor Baby’ by Fay Weldon and this has already been recorded by director Paul Annett, with Amanda Murray and Paul Hardwicke in the cast. The remaining six will be made between now and the end of April.7

Palmer struggled to source plays that fitted the theme of Against the Crowd and commented on the difficulties of finding writers suitable for the series: ‘Once we had decided on the idea I realised I was against the crowd. We live in a consensus period, where writers are turning out material which always fits into conventional thinking. It proved to be difficult to find people who were out of step with popular thought.’8 Enter Nigel Kneale, who had grown tired of working for the BBC. By 1974 he had spent considerable time and effort developing a fourth Quatermass serial only to see it shelved due to a growing budget and fears of it being too dark for viewers. He had also attempted, alongside director Michael Elliott, to get a non-genre play entitled Cracks off the ground.9 The project had got as far as being commissioned as a Play for Today, but soon after submitting a completed script Kneale was told it would not be put into production. His only completed project for the broadcaster in recent years had been a version of Jack and the Beanstalk (March 24, 1974) for the anthology series Bedtime Stories which reinterpreted fairy tales for an adult audience. Kneale began to cast around for other sources of work and looked towards ITV where he was announced as one of the contributors to the anthology series Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries, produced by Anglia. His script was entitled ‘Special Offer’ and for unknown reasons never made it into production. The script didn’t go to waste, however, as it would eventually form part of Beasts. Instead, Kneale was commissioned by Nicholas Palmer to supply a supernatural-themed script for the series Against the Crowd.

The series was due to start broadcasting from June 29, 1975, but was delayed by a fortnight due to industrial action over a dispute regarding payments which resulted in a blackout for three days at the end of May. A nineteen percent pay rise had been agreed between the unions and ITV before a government-imposed pay freeze came into force, but the union argued that hundreds of pounds in back pay should not be affected by the freeze.10 The series eventually debuted with Palmer’s own script, ‘Tell It to the Chancellor’ (July 13, 1975), a satirical comedy drama starring Donald Sinden and Donald Gee in a tale about a man making a stand against corruption and embezzlement in his workplace. Palmer detailed the theme of the series in the TV Times. ‘The six plays11 look at people... who have the courage to stand up and say, I disagree.’12

The second episode was Fay Weldon’s ‘Poor Baby’ (July 20, 1975), a drama about a couple who have a child with Down syndrome, directed by Paul Annett who had previously steered the episode ‘Two in the Morning’ (December 10, 1972) for BBC2’s horror anthology Dead of Night. ‘Murrain’ (July 27, 1975) was the third instalment to be broadcast, on a Sunday night, sandwiched between the 10:00PM news and the evening’s documentary strand. American playwright Howard Schumann supplied ‘Carbon Copy’ (August 3, 1975), featuring Don Warrington as a man who has an interracial affair with his boss’s daughter. Hugo Chateris provided ‘Blind Man’s Bluff’ (August 10, 1975), the last play he wrote before his death from cancer in December 1970. This had a cast that included John Woodvine as Sir Lionel Frobisher, who seems to be the only one concerned that his daughter (Tessa Wyatt) is having an affair with her university lecturer. The penultimate play was ‘We Are All Guilty’ (August 17, 1975), written by Kingsley Amis and directed by Don Leaver who would later work on Beasts. Terence Budd plays a petty criminal who injures a night watchman (Peter Vaughan) when breaking into a warehouse. The final episode was ‘Bread and Circuses’ (August 31, 1975), penned by Roger Marshall: a politically-themed drama starring William Russell and Martin Wyldeck. ‘Murrain’ was the only episode with any supernatural or horror elements so it certainly stood out from the crowd.

Apart from being the single supernatural-themed instalment, the play has endured in popularity due to the fact that it was written by Kneale and acted as a gateway for Kneale to work with Nicholas Palmer13 on Beasts. ‘Murrain’ can be seen as the backdoor pilot to Beasts, though it would be difficult to include it under the umbrella title of Beasts as it lacks an animal focus as the driving force. It does have several thematic links to the later series; curses, witchcraft, and vets are present in the ‘Baby’ episode, which also features a cursed land or area. ‘Murrain’ also fits within the ancient or supernatural force versus modern science motif found within Kneale’s wider work.

WHAT IS A MURRAIN?

The title of Kneale’s play is steeped in mystery as well as references to supernatural beliefs. Murrain is an archaic term, both in the sense of being a very old word as well as one that is no longer in everyday parlance. It is often mispronounced: it is not Mur–rain, but Muh–rin. The word can be found in some older Bible translations when explaining the fifth plague that fell upon Egypt in Exodus 9:3: ‘Behold, the hand of the LORD is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camel, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain.’ The word also occurs in Edmund Spenser’s 1590 work The Faerie Queene, where it is used to define a disease that attacks humans:

For heauen it selfe shall their successe enuy,

And with them plagues and murrins pestilent

Consume, till all their warlike puissance be spent

Within the works of Shakespeare it occurs in several forms. In his play A Midsummer Night’s Dream it is employed as an adjective:

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrion flock

It is spelt ‘murren’ in both the folio editions of two further Shakespeare plays. In The Tempest it is offered as a curse, ‘A murren on your Monster, and the divell take your fingers’. In Troilus and Cressida it occurs as ‘Thou canst strike, canst thou? A red Murren o’th thy Iades trickes’.

The roots of the actual word itself are buried in the Old French word morine, meaning pestilence, which in turn comes from mourir (to die), which has its roots in the Latin word mori. It literally means death and was in common usage during medieval times to represent that exact event. As time passed the word became commonly associated with infectious diseases affecting sheep and cattle, an umbrella term that included several diseases that would now be identified as foot and mouth disease, rinderpest, or anthrax, among others. Several of these diseases can leap from cattle to humans, and so murrain was also used as a term for epidemics in the human population. History refers to the great sheep and cattle murrains that occurred in Europe during the fourteenth century. These murrains, combined with a record drop in temperature called the Little Ice Age, resulted in the Great Famine of 1315–1317 which weakened the European population before the outbreak of the Black Death. Possibly inspired by the Black Death is The Murrain Maiden,14 a fabled demon in old Polish folklore who resembled an old hag, or a thin pale woman dressed in white who carried pestilence with her. This personification of death by unknown plague could bring about death just by the wave of a handkerchief.

During the nineteenth century cattle plagues were often still referred to as murrains, even in official reports to the government. National newspapers would carry articles on the latest outbreaks with headlines such as ‘The Murrain Among Cattle — Report of the Board of Health’.15 This particular article details an outbreak in the Paddington area in which ‘no less than nineteen percent of the whole of the cows kept in Paddington have died within three months ending the 7th of March of the present year’. The article also notes that the disease was prevalent in other areas of the country and was commonly known amongst ‘veterinary practitioners, graziers and cow keepers by the name of ‘lung disease’’.16 The disease was identical to the ‘pulmonary murrain of German winters. In this country it is called the new disease, to distinguish it from an eruptive disease which preceded it, popularly known as the ‘foot and tongue disease’, and now commonly spoken of by cattle dealers as the ‘old epidemic’. This latter disease first appeared in England in 1839, and became generally diffused in the course of that year’.17 It is noteworthy that reports avoided any mention of witchcraft, designating the murrains as diseases rather than the result of maleficium. In some areas of Cumbria and the Isle of Man up until the 1970s and 1980s murrain was still in use among farmers as a term for a curse placed upon land or livestock. Kneale was likely aware of the word’s usage with his Cumbrian/Manx ancestry when he used it for his Against the Crowd episode.

He may have also been drawing upon his personal family history when looking for inspiration for the story. Kneale’s father, William Thomas Kneale, wrote a memoir of his childhood which was kindly provided for me to read by Kneale’s son, Matthew. William’s memoir discusses how his father took charge of running Laurel Bank Farm in 1903 after his business as a saddle maker went bust when a Manx bank failed. He invested what resources he could muster. Despite being descended from farming stock, he had little practical knowledge of running a hill farm. The venture seemed doomed from the start, compounded by his lack of experience, but in the main due to a run of bad luck. It almost seemed as if the farm and the land surrounding it were cursed.

The family made their first investment with a single cow bought on the advice of a friend, but it quickly became apparent that it was riddled with tuberculosis (TB) and it died soon afterwards. The animal left behind an invisible legacy which came to light when further livestock became infected with TB. The disease had tarnished the cattle sheds and farm buildings, causing the cows to suffer contagious abortion due to TB.18 Other livestock also succumbed to disease. Sheep’s udders hardened, making it impossible for them to provide milk for their lambs, resulting in several deaths. The weather, one of the wettest seasons on record up to that point, caused corn to rot in the field. A young calf that escaped infection choked to death on a piece of rope. A newly purchased heifer was uncontrollable, fatally injured itself trying to escape, and had to be sold at a loss to a local butcher. The pressure became too much for William Kneale’s mother and she suffered a stroke from which she never recovered. By 1907 the family was exhausted and practically penniless and so cut their losses, sold the farm, and returned to live in the island’s capital, Douglas. With these family events in mind, it is interesting to speculate that Kneale may have drawn upon some of these when shaping the story of ‘Murrain’.

MURRAIN AND WITCHCRAFT

As time passed the term murrain became synonymous with witchcraft: those convicted of such practices would be accused of blighting crops and making cattle or women miscarry. Witchcraft is said to be as ancient as civilisation; Palaeolithic cave paintings depicting a man with a stag’s head and a pregnant woman standing in a circle with eleven other figures are believed to depict a fertility ritual, thanking the gods and goddesses for the blessing of life. However, the Christian church helped to redefine such horned deities as resembling the Devil and this eventually resulted in the demonisation of pagan practitioners as Devil worshippers. Up until the late medieval period, witchcraft was dismissed as relatively harmless and termed by St Augustine of Hippo as an ‘error of pagans’. At the start of the thirteenth century Pope Innocent III began to criticise the belief that both God and the Devil had supernatural powers, leading to an increase in attacks on witches. These continued to increase towards the end of the century, when the idea that demons did actually exist became more popular within Christianity. During the 1400s witch trials and persecution became so prevalent across Europe that Pope Innocent VIII ordered a report into suspected witchcraft which informed the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches). This was the document used to define the basis for determining who was a witch during trials, and led to many people being prosecuted and executed. Estimates suggest approximately 80,000 people were found guilty of witchcraft across Europe. The biggest concentration of cases was in Germany, with approximately 26,000 people persecuted and killed.19 Over eighty percent of cases were women, usually older single women like Mrs Clemson in ‘Murrain’.

In 1590, King James VI of Scotland (later King James I of England) and his wife were nearly lost at sea in a violent storm which the ship’s captain blamed on witchcraft. Eventually, six women admitted to causing the storm and were burned at the stake for their crime. Spurred on by this, the King authorised the torture and execution of witches across Scotland, an episode that became the largest witch hunt in the history of Britain. At its height every sickness that befell a family member, or every poor harvest, was believed to be caused by a witch’s curse. Matthew Hopkins was appointed as Witchfinder General and ordered to seek out all forms of heresy and witchcraft. Often his deductions were based on personal appearance or endurance of physical torture. Those with a ‘witch’s mark’ such as a large mole, wart, or birthmark were easily identified, along with Hopkins’ belief that a witch was impervious to pain. To ‘support’ his persecutions he would use an implement with a long needle that retracted into a sheath when pressed against the skin of suspects so they would not feel the prick of the needle. Another of his tests saw a suspect have their thumbs tied to their big toes and then tossed into a river. If they floated they were a witch and would be burned, if they drowned they were innocent. Executions and convictions for being a witch dropped dramatically as the English Civil War approached; the last person to be executed for practising witchcraft in England was in 1682. Ten years later the infamous Salem Witch Trials occurred in Massachusetts, USA, where a group of young girls claimed to be possessed due to a number of women in the area practising witchcraft. As a result, a special court condemned nineteen people to be hanged.

By 1735, Britain had repealed earlier acts condemning witches and replaced them with a single act that reflected changes in societal perspectives. The Witchcraft Act stated that magic and witchcraft were no longer part of the fabric of society and that such rituals were performed by the ignorant and superstitious. Softer punishments were introduced, such as fines and imprisonment. At the start of the nineteenth century the image of the witch as an old woman was reinforced in such material as Grimms’ Fairy Tales (1812). This was to become the prevailing image of evil witches in the minds of the general public and in popular culture. Mrs Clemson in ‘Murrain’ fits this image perfectly and Kneale also weaves in a backstory for her that reveals a childless union, possible mental health issues, extreme loneliness, and isolation. These exact qualities usually affected thousands of older women who were persecuted as witches at the height of the European witch hunts.

Economic hardship seems to play an active part in why communities look to blame others for their hardship. Economist Emily Oster discovered that the most active period of witch hunts coincided with the ‘Little Ice Age’. In her research paper ‘Witchcraft, Weather and Economic Growth in Renaissance Europe’,20 she demonstrated that as the climate varied from year to year, lower temperatures that affected crop harvests showed a direct correlation with higher numbers of witchcraft accusations. Her theory is a solid illustration of the ability of mankind to look for scapegoats when events beyond their control worsen living standards. To unite in the face of adversity we need someone or some group of people to hate; George Orwell knew this and used it in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) with the Two Minutes Hate device, which allowed the population to vent their existential anguish. Kneale used it with the Martian hunt sequences in Quatermass and the Pit (1967). Politicians and political regimes use it to this day with the hate directed towards the ‘invading other’, such as immigrants crossing the Channel from France to England. In ‘Murrain’ farmer Beeley uses this hate to unite the villagers against Mrs Clemson, who is held responsible for the blight affecting the livestock and the village’s resulting economic hardship.

Many rituals have evolved as remedies to protect against blight from witches. In the earlier part of the twentieth century rural dwellers in Cornwall and Devon would stick pins into the heart of a dead bullock to help banish a curse on land and livestock. The pins driven into the heart would apparently result in the person who placed the curse feeling the stab of each pin in their own heart:

One tale from Yorkshire tells how a labourer’s wife was ill for many months, considered bewitched by an old local widow. In order to identify the true witch, the heart of a slaughtered ox was stuck with pins, an incantation said over it, then the heart was roasted in the fire until midnight, at which time the culprit would feel the pain of the pins in her own roasting heart, arriving at midnight to pay penance and ask for forgiveness. The old widow never appeared, and the party who had gathered to witness this sympathetic magic rite felt very foolish indeed!21

In ‘Murrain’ the men perform various rites to protect themselves from witchcraft — the brushing of the crossroads, for example, to gather the sweepings.

The ability for humankind to quickly succumb to a good witch hunt is still with us. The persecution of asylum seekers, travellers, and potential paedophiles is the modern-day equivalent to Matthew Hopkins and his fellow witchfinders of yore. Kneale uses this mob mentality in Quatermass and the Pit when those affected by the psychokinetic energy from the reactivated Martian spaceship hunt down those not genetically descended from the aliens — a Martian witch hunt. Beyond the industrialised world the persecution of those believed to use magic for their own malevolent ends still occurs. In the decade between 1985 and 1995, there were an estimated 200 hangings of people accused of witchcraft in South Africa’s Northern Province.22 The Congolese province of Ituri saw a single witch hunt dispatch over 800 individuals in June 2001 and it is estimated that up to 200 women are killed each year in India after being labelled as witches.23 The events seen in ‘Murrain’ are still being enacted across the globe, but usually with a tragic end for the women accused rather than the accuser.

Scan of the cover of the original camera script for Murrain.

MURRAIN SCRIPT TO SCREEN

The camera script for ‘Murrain’ is undated and runs to fifty-five pages including a front page titled ‘Murrain: A Television Play by Nigel Kneale’. There are differences to the transmitted programme from the very first page of the script, where the opening scene specifically states that a mini estate car is being driven down a North Cornwall road. The transmitted play was relocated to the Derbyshire Peak District, with ‘Murrain’ filmed entirely on location on the Staffordshire/ Derbyshire border on two individual days: Sunday March 9 and Saturday March 22, 1975.

The play was produced by Nicholas Palmer (1937–1995), who had entered the television industry as an assistant floor manager at ATV and was just twenty-one-years-old when he wrote his first TV screenplay, an adaptation of the Noël Coward play Private Lives (January 16, 1959). He would go on to become a respected writer and producer of plays and drama over the next few decades at ATV, and later Central, and was admired throughout the industry. Palmer knew quality writing and was able to help bring to the screen not only some of Nigel Kneale’s greatest work in the field of horror, but also later commissions that reflected Kneale’s lesser-known, earlier social realism work.24 Palmer considered himself one of the viewing public and was able to commission without the committee style of making drama that we see in modern television. This meant he was able to take creative risks: ‘he was his own executive, assistant, associate and producer, as well as story editor, and could keep the time short between commission and production’.25 Palmer died on May 6, 1995 at the age of fifty-seven, from cancer. Actor David Simeon, who plays Crich in ‘Murrain’, knew Palmer well from their time on the police drama series Hunter’s Walk and told me: "Nick Palmer was the first script editor on the first series of Hunter’s Walk. A very nice man always willing to listen to any suggestions or problems. He was only young when he passed away. I saw him at a party shortly before and that was the last time I saw him."26 The director was Derbyshire-born John Cooper (1927–2017) who had worked for the BBC in both the sound and camera departments before joining independent TV franchise ABC in 1955. Becoming a director in 1958, he worked on many of ATV’s prestigious dramas. Prior to ‘Murrain’, perhaps his most famous credit was as producer for the children’s sci-fi series Timeslip. David Simeon recalled, I remember him very well. A nice man. Old fashioned is the best way of describing him.27

The play opens with a wide shot of a bridge spanning a road as a vehicle comes into view and drives past the camera. The buildings the car passes, based at Hindlow, are now part of Lhoist UK and form part of a quarry and processing plant that produces lime-based products for the farming and medical industries. This is a section of the Buxton Road (B5053), the direct route between Cheadle and Buxton in Derbyshire. It is over eighteen miles in length, with many rural sections, and leads directly to the next location seen on screen. Kneale designates these sequences as ‘Telecine 1’, meaning he expected them to be filmed on 16mm film.28 Instead, the production used videotape for the location-based shoot after this technique and format had been successfully used on several ATV productions including Hunter’s Walk. Both Palmer and Cooper had also worked on this series and so were able to familiarise themselves with the limitations of using video equipment on location before making ‘Murrain’.

Kneale introduces us to his main character, a vet named in the script as Alan Tregear, but called Crich in the transmitted programme. Tregear is an old Cornish surname, dating back to the thirteenth century, and has its own coat of arms granted to the family by Henry VIII. The family held seats of office as Lords of the Manor of Tregear and were therefore in a position of power. The surname is derived from a geographical locality from many of the places named in the county with the Cornish ‘tre’. It has been defined as meaning the town of love and friendship.29 With these details in mind, we can see that the character of the vet in ‘Murrain’ was intended to be a figure of authority and a person of rational thought, having scientific training; his name is a metaphor for tolerance and love to others. In rural communities he is a man of science who is readily accepted in order to utilise his skills and understanding. However, the filming of the play in the Peak District probably necessitated the changes in the script and so Tregear became Crich instead. Crich is also the name of a village in Derbyshire, situated just over twenty miles from the filming location for ‘Murrain’, and the location for the fictional village of Cardale featured in the TV series Peak Practice. Similarly, Tregear is a small hamlet in Cornwall, near the city of Truro, away from the tourist hotspots on the coast and in a very rural area.

The script describes Crich as being in his mid twenties, thin, intelligent with a friendly and pleasant manner. He is socially conscious and takes the responsibilities of his role seriously. He was played by David Simeon (b.1943), a sandy-haired actor with an open, honest face, who trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before graduating in 1964. He became a regular television guest actor and viewers may recall his role as Mr Mackenzie in the first Fawlty Towers episode, ‘A Touch of Class’ (September 19, 1975), and as news reporter Alastair Fergus in Doctor Who adventure ‘The Daemons’ (May 22, 1971). He took on the recurring role of Detective Constable Mickey Finn in the ATV police drama Hunter’s Walk in 1973, where he first worked with director John Cooper and producer Nicholas Palmer; this led to him being cast in ‘Murrain’. David recalls that he did not audition for the role and was offered it directly by John Cooper. When I asked if it was due to his role on Hunter’s Walk David commented, Oh yes, unquestionably yes. That would have been entirely up to him. Whether I was right for it I don’t know.30

The script describes the car’s journey, indicating the setting as being near Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. David Simeon recalled how the driving scenes were shot on video using one of ATV’s outside broadcast vans usually reserved for covering sporting events or news coverage:

I remember having to drive after the big lorry,31 which held all the video cameras and recorders inside, for the sequence near the beginning of ‘Murrain’ so they could get some shots of me driving. I had to somehow or other, with my terrible driving, keep reasonably close to the lorry as they were filming.32

The car being driven by David is a blue Austin Mini Clubman Estate, registration MJP 915K, first registered in April 1972 (it was last registered in June 1983). The car comes to a crossroads where the vet sees a group of three men at work. On screen we see signposts indicating the way to Axe Edge one way, and Earl Sterndale and Monyash in the other direction. This location is firmly within the Peak District in the northern end of the Upper Dove Valley, approximately five miles south of spa town Buxton. The farm workers activity puzzles Crich as they sweep the surface of the road with brushes. As they see him approach, they stop what they are doing. The car passes them and Kneale notes in his script that they act ‘as if caught in the middle of some guilty act’.33 The scene is performed in an underplayed fashion and the viewer does not at first get a feeling that this is an unusual activity or that there is an air of mistrust from the road sweepers. Only later does the viewer connect this scene as important to the events of the drama and fully understand what it is that the men are doing.

The vet arrives at the entrance to his destination, an old farm in the middle of a quiet village. He stops his vehicle, dons his wellies, and walks through the disinfectant-soaked straw barrier at the farm gate. In the script Kneale noted that this would be the end of the telecine sequence. Kneale describes the farm as being ‘brutalised with tin and concrete’34 in order to turn it into a small-scale piggery. As realised on screen Crich stands at the gate to a concreted yard, surrounded by farm buildings and with several pigs roaming freely in the yard, before asking the whereabouts of the owner. A figure comes out of one of the buildings. This is Coker, given a short thumbnail description in the script as ‘a tall man with a pronounced limp’.35 He is played by John Golightly (b.1936), a Welsh-born character actor slim in stature and stern of face, who graduated from RADA in 1964. Among his peers at RADA was Ian Ogilvy, who recalls in his memoir, Once a Saint, that during a RADA stage production of Measure for Measure it was discovered that

Golightly had a strange talent. John had a double-jointed back and could bend himself backwards disconcertingly further than seemed possible. With that in mind, (we) devised a horribly violent scuffle in the jail where John Golightly and I were both prisoners. This entire superfluous-to-the-plot fight ending with me bending John slowly and sadistically over my knee. With him screaming in agony — and when it looked like his back could take no more stress without breaking — John would suddenly let everything go, flopping into an impossibly tight upside-down U shape — and at the same moment a stage manager in the wings snapped a piece of wood with a horrible cracking sound. There were screams from the audience and there was a rumour that somebody had even fainted.36

Fans of genre TV may recall Golightly as the father who is snatched away by time in the first untitled Sapphire and Steel adventure (July 10–26, 1979). His film credits include a patrolman in Michael Radford’s take on Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), and an army colonel in the so-bad-it’s-good Lifeforce (1985), a movie that unashamedly riffs on Kneale’s Quatermass and the Pit.

Bernard Lee (1908–1981) appears from behind a building. Lee’s character is beautifully described in Kneale’s script: ‘He is a heavy-faced man whose strength is rapidly running to fat, a process he would admire in his pigs. His breathing is bad, rustling constantly through parted lips. But his eyes are sharp and his attention quick.’37 After reading this you realise that Lee was perfect for the role as he was a large and imposing figure, instantly recognisable to the public from countless roles in film and TV. Born as John Bernard Lee on January 10, 1908, in either County Cork, Ireland, or Brentford in London (depending on which source you take), the tall, stocky, honey-voiced character actor appeared in over 100 films and TV shows. Adept at playing policemen, military men, or similar authority figures, he is best remembered for his role as M in eleven James Bond films. David Simeon recalls that he was in awe of Lee’s reputation as an actor and as a man who lived life to the full:

Like his character Bernard Lee wasn’t a very well man at the time. He’d had huge fun in life and he’d had some pretty awful things happen to him as well. But there was something about him and his sense of humour and his way of looking at life. Unfortunately this is not like me as I’ve a tendency to take things too seriously and get rather down about things sometimes. Whereas he didn’t seem to be down about things. He was always wanting to do things... let’s go and do this, let’s go and do that. Wanting to have fun. I remember I’d call him after we finished and say let’s meet up and he’d always say There’s a wonderful pub we can go to and of course he loved going to the pub. When we first met on ‘Murrain’ and were on location he said I promise you I’m not going to have a drink at all and of course eventually he did and so we ended up in the pub after filming one day. Needless to say he got very drunk and chatted up the barmaid.38

Lee would have a lifelong struggle with alcohol which began to manifest itself during the early 1960s. The Daily Mirror newspaper, on December 7, 1961, revealed that Lee was banned from driving for a year after he had admitted to drink driving.39 Just over eighteen months later Lee made a further appearance in court charged with drink driving. The Daily Mirror reported on the case, which was found in favour of Lee.40 He was awarded 100 guineas costs after he was found not guilty of driving his car in an unfit state. The case was overturned following Lee being declared fit to drive by a doctor following his arrest.

The year of 1972 would be an extremely difficult one for Lee following the death of his first wife, Gladys, who perished in a fire that gutted their Kent cottage in January. Lee was admitted to hospital for a short while, suffering from smoke inhalation and shock. In March Lee was beaten up and robbed and the Daily Mirror featured an interview with the actor following the incident.41 Lee was on his way to his Mayfair club when he was attacked by two men who took £15. Following the mugging Lee spent the night in Charing Cross Hospital where he was treated for bruising, cuts, and a black eye. He also lost two teeth in the attack. The assailants were tried at the Old Bailey where they pleaded not guilty. After these events Lee entered a depressive state and began to drink even more heavily. These days he would now be termed a functioning alcoholic, able to keep his drinking separate from his work. However, he began to build up debts and struggled to stay solvent. Things looked grim, but he bumped into fellow actor Richard Burton one day in a pub. He told Burton of his troubles and the actor responded by writing Lee a cheque to enable him to clear his debts. Following this, Lee overcame his depression and got his life and career back on track, but he would always ‘enjoy a drink’. Lee fell in love with director’s assistant Ursula McHale and after a whirlwind romance, the couple married on January 27, 1975. However, Lee’s issues with alcohol continued and in September 1978 he was banned from driving after failing to pass a breathalyser test. His hard living did eventually catch up with him, when he was admitted to hospital in November 1980 suffering from stomach cancer. He died there, six days after his seventy-third birthday, on January 16, 1981. David Simeon noted, When I discovered he had died I wrote his wife a long letter and she replied with a wonderful letter back talking about exactly how Bernard was. He was wonderful with people. He was an extraordinary person.42 Lee’s acting legacy continues to this day with his role as M granting him an enduring fan base with James Bond aficionados.

The change of Lee’s character name in ‘Murrain’ can be viewed in a couple of ways. It may simply be a pun on the actor’s initials — Bernard Lee — B. Lee — Beeley. However, it is also the name of a village in the Peak District and an adjoining moor, near Bakewell, so Kneale was likely using local place names for his characters. Though spelled slightly differently, Mabli (pronounced mahb-lee) is a traditional Welsh girl’s name meaning loveable. An English bastardisation of the name could have ended up as the surname of Bernard Lee’s character,43 ironic given the nature and character of the farmer who is anything but loveable.

Kneale’s script outlines the start of the encounter between Crich and Beeley and notes a curious atmosphere which makes the vet feel uncomfortable. The air of discomfort is played out through the terse and deadpan delivery of dialogue by Beeley and Coker which adheres to Kneale’s writing. The vet enquires if any of the pigs have died and is told another two have signs of sickness. The vet makes his way to examine the pigs whilst the farmer and his farmhands remain, engaging in a mysterious discussion with Beeley and Coker, agreeing that He’ll do. A third man, Tom Start, notes he is a stranger and is given short shrift by the farmer who tells Start not to be thick as he has to be the one. Start is played by Raymond Platt, another RADA graduate, who had recently appeared alongside John Hurt in Little Malcolm and His Struggle against the Eunuchs (1974).

Beeley asks Crich about samples that have been taken for testing. In the script this analysis is carried out in Truro though on screen this becomes Bakewell, a Derbyshire town known for its eponymous tart. Both swine vesicular disease (SVD) and hog fever have been discounted by the tests. SVD is a highly contagious disease which causes fever and ulcers around the mouth, snout, feet, and teats of the infected animal and presents the same clinical signs as foot and mouth. It was identified and classified as recently as 1966 and there is no known vaccine or cure. Whilst SVD does not usually result in death, Beeley is right to be concerned about his livestock. As part of the control measures to prevent the spread of the disease he would have to destroy and dispose of the infected animals as well as deep clean and disinfect his entire premises. Hog or swine fever is equally contagious and can have a high rate of mortality. Again, Beeley would have to slaughter his animals and disinfect his premises thoroughly. During their conversation Crich mentions he saw men sweeping the road with brushes, believing it is part of the infection control that the farmer has put in place. He says this is not the slightest bit of use in combatting the disease and that the workers should continue to use the treated straw and disinfectant dips on their boots.

Crich says his goodbyes, but Beeley says he needs him for something else, requiring his ‘expert opinion’. Beeley picks up an axe and strikes a galvanised steel pipe on the wall of one of the buildings. The pipe is severed, but instead of gushing water it is dry. Beeley rages that the water has dried up despite putting in piping from the fields. The group of men question what has dried up the supply and Crich states that the farm still has an adequate alternative supply; however, this needs to be pumped from the nearby river and incurs a cost to the farmer. The vet, unsure of what is being asked of him, assures the group of men that it is not a contaminated water supply that is responsible for the infection amongst his pigs. At the time of filming in 1975 the location for ‘Murrain’ was not connected to the mains water supply, reflecting Beeley’s lack of water in the TV show. All the water was drawn from springs and a local water trough until the village was finally connected to the mains water supply in 1984.44 I mentioned this fact to David Simeon and he was surprised: Crikey! I wonder if John Cooper himself knew about that. Maybe he did and that’s what prompted the use of the location?45 The decision to relocate the events of the play from Cornwall to Derbyshire was in part a budgetary and logistical decision. Filming in Cornwall would mean that cast and crew would have to travel further, straining the production’s budget. Director John Cooper therefore decided to place the events closer to ATV’s Midlands production base, as David Simeon recalled: He decided on the area that ‘Murrain’ was going to be filmed in was the area he came from. He had a slight Derbyshire accent and that was his main reason for changing the location from Cornwall to going up into the Peak District.46 Cooper was born in Edale,47 a small village in the Peak District less than twenty miles away from the filming location of Hollinsclough.

The remote Derbyshire village of Hollinsclough,48 about four miles south of Buxton, is based in the upper reaches of the River Dove, not far from the eastern side of Axe Edge Moor. Hollinsclough’s name comes from Howel’s ravine. Several historical documents cite variations in the name such as Hollescloughe in the seventeenth century and Holling Clough in the eighteenth. The Methodist Chapel built in 1801, seen in the background of some shots in ‘Murrain’, is now abandoned for worship and used as a residential centre for tourists and walkers. The village is situated against the imposing backdrop of Chrome Hill, known locally as The Dragon’s Back, and Parkhouse Hill. Together, they dominate the scenery in the area. Hollinsclough was the only location and both the interiors and the exteriors for the pig farm, shop, and Mrs Clemson’s house were completed there. All the locations are laid out exactly as seen in the programme, with Beeley’s farm placed across the road from the shop. Across from the shop is a brook and a clump of trees, with the building used for Mrs Clemson’s house beyond. All the buildings are still standing today.

This is the location for the crossroads where the vet sees men sweeping the road (near the start of the play).

Beeley demands Crich comes with him and his men to Leach’s place and the following sequence of the group walking to Leach’s shop is designated in the script as ‘Telecine 2’. When Crich walks through the village with Beeley and his men they are walking along the Hollingsclough Rake towards the village of Hollinsclough. Here they pass a building with a post box and a distinctive blue barn door.