no censorship or inhibitions; and Bam! Pow! Zap! (1969), about teenage delinquents, all of which fed into the world depicted in the new Quatermass serial. Kneale said, "I looked at the alarming aspects of contemporary trends. Since then, we'd seen 'flower power' and hippies, so all I did was bring them into the story. It was written in 1972 and it was about the sixties really". Another theme that had crept into Kneale's writing at this time—as seen in Wine of India, about compulsory euthanasia for the elderly, and later the Beasts episode "During Barty's Party", about an elderly couple terrorised by rats—was the consequences of growing old. Kneale later recalled, "The theme I was trying to get to was the old redressing the balance with the young, saving the young, which I thought a nice, paradoxical, ironic idea after the youth-oriented 60s." Following Quatermass, writer Nigel Kneale developed the sitcom Kinvig (1981) for London Weekend Television. During the 1980s he was courted for scripts by admiring Hollywood directors and producers such as John Carpenter, John Landis and Joe Dante, but with limited success. Returning to television, he adapted Susan Hill's novel The Woman in Black (1989) and wrote episodes of Sharpe and Kavanagh QC. He died in 2006. Casting and crew John Mills was chosen to play Quatermass (the fourth different actor to play the role in four serials on television), who had appeared in significant roles in many high-profile British films, including The Way to the Stars (1945), Great Expectations (1946) and Ice Cold in Alex (1958), and had won an Academy Award for his role in Ryan's Daughter (1970). Mills, whose only previous television credit at the time was The Zoo Gang (1974), was reluctant to take the part but was persuaded by his wife, who liked the script. Following Quatermass he appeared in Gandhi (1982), Martin Chuzzlewit (1994) and Hamlet (1996), working right up to his death in 2005. Joe Kapp was played by Simon MacCorkindale, who had previously appeared in "Baby", one of the episodes of Nigel Kneale's Beasts series. MacCorkindale was delighted with the part of Joe Kapp, finding it a break from the typecast romantic roles he was used to playing. Following Quatermass, MacCorkindale appeared in The Riddle of the Sands (1979), and subsequently moved to the United States where, after playing a few guest roles on television, he secured a part in