BBC brings HG Wells Moon story to the small screen

/Home/Science Fiction and Fantasy Television

BBC brings HG Wells Moon story to the small screen
October 17,2010
Kent News

Notorious ladies' man and well-known science fiction author HG Wells is being celebrated with two major BBC TV shows.

Wells spent much of his life in Sandgate, near Folkestone, having been born in Bromley in 1866, and made his early money from playing cricket before eventually becoming known as the ‘Father of Science Fiction'.

Now a new TV film version of his First Men in the Moon will be shown on BBC Four.

The story has been adapted for TV by League of Gentlemen star Mark Gatiss.

It is followed by a drama based on Wells' life, which stars Michael Sheen as the writer. The actor specialises in portraying real-life people and has previously starred as Tony Blair, David Frost and Brian Clough.

Wells wrote and published First Men in the Moon in 1901 during his early days in Sandgate. It is set in a cottage near the Military Canal by Lympne Ridge, Hythe.

It was a follow-up to his science fiction work The Time Machine written in 1895, which inspired the Doctor Who series.

Its two characters are Bedford and Cavor; the latter invents a form of anti-gravity paint which he then coats on a sphere. This takes them to the Moon where they find it already occupied by a race of insectoids.

The previous film adaptation was in 1964.

Ray Duff, from the Folkestone-based HG Wells Festival Committee, said: "There was also a 1919 silent film of First Men which is now considered lost, but the British Film Institute recently included it on a search list in case someone still has a copy somewhere."

Wells was also well known for his sexual conquests as well as his incredibly writings in Sandgate, which also included War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man.

A festival is held every year in Folkestone to celebrate the author, who, despite being married, fathered children by other women in the town. In the end he had to flee Sandgate for London to escape the scandal.

The new 90-minute film First Men in the Moon will be shown on Tuesday, October 19, on BBC Four. Rory Kinnear stars as Julius Bedford and Mark Gatiss as the Edwardian scientist Professor Cavor.

It is followed by the 90-minute drama profile called HG Wells: War with the World.