The Year of the Sex Olympics and Other TV Plays contains the scripts to three science fiction plays written by Nigel Kneale.
Script Writer
Nigel Kneale
Television DetailsNigel Kneale
The Road
29/09/63 / 55 Minutes / BBC / Black and White
The Year of the Sex Olympics
29/07/68 / 105 Minutes / BBC2 / Colour
The Stone Tape
25/12/72 / 90 Minutes / BBC2 / Colour
Archive Details / DVD Releases
The Road no longer exists in the BBC archives. The Year of the Sex Olympics exists as a black and white film recording and has been released on Region 2 DVD in the UK (Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com). The Stone Tape still exists in its original format and has also been released on Region 2 DVD in the UK (Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com).
The Year of the Sex Olympics and Other TV Plays
Publisher Ferret Fantasy Format Hardback Publication Date 1976 ISBN UNKNOWN Original Price UNKNOWN Country UK
General Notes
- The Road and The Stone Tape were both ghost stories, with The Road being produced for the First Night series and The Stone Tape being produced as a one-off story for Christmas 1972. The way in which they differed from many other ghost stories on television, however, was in not being set in a traditional Victorian or Edwardian setting. The Road in particular tipped the ghost story format on its head by being set in the 18th century, with the haunting actually being the echoes of the deaths caused by a nuclear holocaust in the future. The Stone Tape added a scientific note to proceedings with the notion that events could quite literally be "recorded" by a building and then replayed when the appropriate stimulus is applied. The production proved to be so effective that it actually made it into the BFI's top 100 TV programmes, and is often hailed as one of the best ghost stories ever produced for television.
The Year of the Sex Olympics was a futuristic drama in which the population is controlled by television, and one which now looks extremely prophetic in light of the rise of programmes such as Big Brother and I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here.
PDF files containing the scripts to The Stone Tape and The Road were included as DVD-Rom extras on the BFI's DVD release of The Stone Tape when it was released in August 2001. The script to The Year of the Sex Olympics was included on the BFI's release of that title in a similar manner. - Nigel Kneale is best known for writing the ground-breaking Quatermass serials for the BBC in the 1950s. Other notable telefantasy series and dramas he has been responsible for include the sci-fi sitcom Kinvig, the anthology series Beasts, the 1989 television adaptation of Susan Hill's ghost story The Woman in Black, and the legendary 1954 BBC production of Nineteen Eighty-Four starring Peter Cushing.
