rhyme "Huffity, Puffity, Ringstone Round" devised by Kneale in his scripts. Broadcast ITV intended Quatermass to air in September 1979 as the flagship of its autumn season; advertising posters announced, "Earth's dark ancestral forces awaken to a summons from beyond the stars. The legend returns on ITV – Wednesdays at 9 pm throughout September". However, industrial action began at ITV on 3 August 1979 and escalated into a full-scale blackout from 10 August 1979, leaving the channel—and Quatermass—off the air for 75 days. Transmissions were finally restored on Wednesday, 24 October 1979, and the first episode of Quatermass was duly broadcast that night at 9 pm. Episode two was promoted in the TV Times with a full-page article by Kneale introducing the new series and looking back on the original 1950s serials, as well as a lifestyle piece with Barbara Kellerman moving house, while episode four was promoted with a full-page profile of John Mills. Ratings, averaging 11 million viewers over the four-week run, were below expectations; the serial failed to crack the top 20 programmes in the weeks it was broadcast. Reception Quatermass met with a generally unenthusiastic critical response. Sean Day-Lewis wrote, "Although Piers Haggard's direction achieves much verisimilitude and the story is certainly enough to command some addiction; I did not feel exactly grabbed; the genre has moved some way since the 1950s and the Professor moves a little slowly for the 1970s". The reviewer in The Daily Telegraph found Professor Quatermass "far too unheroic and unresourceful to carry much interest" while The Times found the serial to be "a so-so affair". John Brosnan, writing in Starburst magazine, found the serial to be "a bitter reaction by a member of an older generation to the younger generation whose apparently irrational behaviour makes them appear to belong to a totally different species. Naturally in the traditions of sf, these failings are exaggerated to the nth degree. Thus muggers and juvenile delinquents become armed gangs and the hippy movement with its emphasis on mysticism, becomes the Planet Church. It's very much a story of Age versus Youth and significantly it's the older people who are impervious to the malign alien influence". This view is echoed by filmmaker John Carpenter who said, "Nigel was very embittered about the way of the world, as was shown, I think, in The Quatermass Conclusion". Reflecting on the serial, Nigel Kneale said, "Frankly, I