Written and created by Nigel Kneale, the four Quatermass serials following the exploits of Professor Bernard Quatermass have long been singled out as being amongst the finest science fiction dramas ever to be produced in the UK.

The first six-part serial, The Quatermass Experiment, involving the first manned rocket designed by Quatermass and the strange disappearance of two of the crew members when it returned to Earth, was broadcast live on the BBC in 1953, with the lead role being taken by Reginald Tate. The story was subsequently filmed by Hammer in black and white as The Quatermass Xperiment (US title The Creeping Unknown) and released in 1955. Unfortunately, the episodes were performed live and as the ability to videotape programmes only became available towards the end of the 1950s, only the first two episodes of the television version still exist — in this case as poor quality film recordings which were made as the episodes were broadcast.

The second six-part serial, Quatermass II, appeared in 1955, a year after Nigel Kneale and producer Rudolph Cartier had collaborated on a controversial and highly successful adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. This new production saw John Robinson step into the lead role at short notice after the death of Reginald Tate, and involved another alien invasion, this time via a mysterious chemical plant built to the same design as a planned base on the moon, and a hail of meteorites. The series concluded with Quatermass launching the Quatermass II rocket and travelling to a nearby asteroid — the source of the alien invasion. This was also filmed by Hammer and released in 1957 as Quatermass 2 (US title Enemy from Space) with Canadian actor Brian Donlevy again assuming the role of Quatermass. Unlike the first serial, Quatermass II exists in complete form in the BBC archives as a set of telerecordings — the third episode being repeated in a slightly edited form in 1991 as part of BBC2's Lime Grove Day.

The third and final of the BBC's Quatermass stories, Quatermass and the Pit, was broadcast in 1958, again with a new actor in the lead role — André Morell who had appeared as O'Brien in Kneale's adaptation of Nineteen Eighteen-Four some four years previously. This final black-and-white production involved the excavation of an alien craft which ultimately results in an unusual discovery about mankind's ancestry and provides a number of scenes which are still chilling when viewed today. Yet again Hammer produced a film version (US Title Five Million Years to Earth), but it wasn't made until 1967 when Andrew Keir was cast in the lead role in the first Quatermass production to be made in colour.

Like Quatermass II, all of the episodes from Quatermass and the Pit still exist, and all of the existing episodes from the three BBC serials were released as a DVD box set during 2005 to great acclaim, havng been extensively restored from the original negatives.

The success of the Quatermass and the Pit movie prompted Hammer to consider making an original production, but when their plans fell through it was then the turn of the BBC to botch a revival attempt, with a planned series in the early 1970s being axed, despite some modelwork being carried out

It wasn't until 1979 that the fourth and final Quatermass story was produced for television, this time starring Sir John Mills and produced by Euston Films for ITV. Using the scripts written for the abandoned BBC series, Quatermass showed a civilisation on the verge of collapse, with an elderly Quatermass searching for his missing granddaughter while battling against an alien force that, for unknown reasons, is harvesting the younger members of the population. Quatermass finally met his end as a nuclear bomb was detonated to destroy the alien menace.

The four-part story was broadcast in the October and November of 1979 and essentially used to re-launch the channel after the epic eleven-week strike which had crippled the network from mid-August onwards. An edited version, re-titled The Quatermass Conclusion, was given a cinema release, and included some alternative footage to the original television version.

Since the conclusion of the ITV serial, Professor Quatermass has had several more outings.

A five-part story on BBC Radio 3 in 1996, titled The Quatermass Memoirs, provided a look back at his early adventures and featured Andrew Keir in the lead role. It was finally released on CD in 2006 and has since been made avialable as an MP3 download.

Back on television, a ninety-minute production of The Quatermass Experiment was produced for BBC Four during 2005. In a bold move, the production was performed live, and despite a number of minor hiccups proved to be extremely popular. The lead role was played by Jason Flemying, with a DVD of the production (minus several fluffed lines and mistakes) being released later in the year.