Clifford Hatts obituary

Clifford Hatts, who has died aged 93, designed many landmark productions for BBC television – most notably the seminal science fiction serial Quatermass and the Pit (1958-59). Broadcast live from Riverside Studios, it was the most ambitious and memorable of Nigel Kneale’s trio of 1950s stories concerning the British scientist Bernard Quatermass. The production contained a number of pre-filmed inserts staged at Ealing Studios, most of which were set in the titular “pit” designed by Hatts – a building site in which the remains of palaeolithic humans are discovered next to a 5m-year-old Martian spaceship. Memorably horrific and thrilling, the serial tapped into such contemporary concerns as unexploded bombs, race riots and mankind’s propensity for war.