 Following the cancellation of Crow , Kneale moved to work for another of the ITV companies , Thames Television , who in 1977 commissioned the production of the scripts of Kneale 's previously abandoned fourth Quatermass serial , to be produced by their Euston Films subsidiary film company . The production was structured to work both as a four @-@ episode serial for transmission in the UK , and a 100 @-@ minute film version for cinema release overseas — something Kneale later regretted agreeing to . Starring John Mills as Quatermass and with a budget of over £ 1 million — more than fifty times the budget of Quatermass and the Pit in 1958 — the serial was not as critically successful as its predecessors . " Thematically no less awesome than Mr Kneale 's earlier science @-@ fiction essays for BBC Television , his ITV debut has proved only a so @-@ so affair , " was the verdict of The Times when previewing the final episode . Tying in with the series , Kneale returned to prose fiction when he wrote his only full @-@ length novel , Quatermass , a novelisation of the serial . 
