Category: Oliver Wake

Level Seven (1966)

OLIVER WAKE

Out of the Unknown Writer: J.B. Priestley; Adapted from (novel): Mordecai Roshwald; Producer: Irene Shubik; Director: Rudolph Cartier

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Set within a survival bunker and missile control base deep underground, Polish writer Mordecai Roshwald’s 1959 novel Level Seven was a grim depiction of the spiralling cold war leading to nuclear apocalypse. The story made no reference to specific nations engaged in the conflict but was cheekily dedicated “To Dwight and Nikita” in reference to Eisenhower and Khrushchev, then the premiers of the USA and USSR respectively.1 On publication, the novel was highly lauded by the likes of Bertrand Russell and Fred Hoyle, and J B Priestley called it “the most powerful attack on the whole nuclear madness that any creative writer has made so far” and began work on a film adaptation.2

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Making enquiries in 1962, Irene Shubik, the story editor on ABC Television’s science fiction anthology Out of this World, found that the film option on the novel precluded any television version. The film version was announced in 1963, to be made by Eliot Martin and Philip Langner in association with the Theatre Guild of New York.3 It’s not clear if this was to use Priestley’s script or an alternative, but either way the project came to nothing. A few years later, Shubik was producing Out of this World’s BBC successor Out of the Unknown, when she was reminded of the novel. The film option had expired and Shubik wrote to Roshwald to express her interest in staging a television adaptation. Having re-read the novel, she told the author that she was “moved practically to tears by it. I do think it is an absolutely marvellous piece of work”.4

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  1. Mordecai Roshwald, Level Seven (London and Redhill: Ace Books, 1962), p. 2. ↩

  2. Quoted on rear cover of Roshwald, Level Seven. ↩

  3. John Montgomery, ‘Studio News’, The Stage and Television Today, 9 May 1963, p. 14. ↩

  4. Quoted in Mark Ward, Out of the Unknown: A Guide to the Legendary BBC series (Birmingham: Kaleidoscope Publishing, 2004), p. 197. ↩

Peter Luke

OLIVER WAKE

Peter Luke was a writer, story editor and producer on several of British television’s most influential drama anthology series, working at both ITV and the BBC, during a period of particular creative development for the medium. His television work was, however, only one part of a varied life.

Peter Ambrose Cyprian Luke was born on 12 August 1919, the son of British diplomatic Sir Harry Luke. The Luke family was originally of Hungarian descent (the name Lukach being Anglicised to Luke) and Luke’s upbringing was cosmopolitan. In his younger years he accompanied his parents on his father’s postings around the world, during which he learned about language, culture, art and literature, before returning to England to be enrolled at Eton. On completing his schooling with the minimum of academic rigour, Luke decided he wanted to become a painter and went to art school in London and then studied at the atelier of André Lhote in Paris. He enlisted in the British army shortly after the Second World War began, leading him to Egypt and combat on the first day of the second battle of El Alamein, in which he was wounded. After recovering he was deployed in the European theatre of war, serving in Italy, France and Germany. He was awarded the Military Cross for his actions in Normandy following D-Day. He ended the war a Major, acting Lieutenant-Colonel.

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Cedric Messina

OLIVER WAKE

Cedric Messina must be one of British television’s most prolific producers and directors of dramatic programmes, with at least 250 drama and opera productions to his name. He worked extensively in television for 25 years, always for the BBC as he was committed to the principle of public service broadcasting.

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Ian Curteis

OLIVER WAKE

Television career overview

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This piece was revised and updated in 2014 and 2015.

Ian Curteis is an fascinating figure in the world of British television drama. He achieved great success in the 1970s as a writer of plays exploring real events and historical figures but thereafter found his work sometimes frustrated, with cancelled projects and related controversies. Accounts differ as to whether these frustrations were the result of political censorship or the more mundane reasons common in broadcasting. This essay presents an overview of Curteis’s television career, incorporating material from a variety of contrasting sources, including Curteis himself, which illustrates why his work is so interesting and, sometimes, divisive.

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