 Kneale was invited to write for the successful American science @-@ fiction series The X @-@ Files ( 1993 – 2002 ) , but declined the offer . His final professional work was an episode of the ITV legal drama Kavanagh QC , starring John Thaw . Kneale 's episode , " Ancient History " , was about a Jewish woman who during the Second World War had been subjected to horrific experiments in a concentration camp . Transmitted on 17 January 1997 and cited as one of the programme 's finest episodes , it brought Kneale 's writing career to a close after more than fifty years . 
