HG Wells’ The First Men in the Moon is one of Wells’ lesser known sci-fi books. While The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and even The Island of Dr Moreau get remade all the time, The First Men In the Moon had a rather lovely 1964 film adaptation starring Lionel Jeffries and co-written by Nigel Kneale, but that’s been it.
Now, there are few UK TV writers today who are bigger sci-fi fanboys than Mark Gatiss. If he’s not writingDoctor Who, starring inDoctor Who, appearing in documentaries about Doctor Who, presenting documentaries about horror movies, appearing in documentaries about Nigel Kneale, writing Lucifer Box stories that pastiche 19th century fiction, updating Sherlock Holmes, et al, he’s thinking about it. I know he is. I can sense it.
So leave it to Gatiss to not only realise there’s this gap in the HG Wells adaptation record but to fix it by writing a 90 minute TV movie based on the book – and, naturally enough, starring in it.
Now, BBC4 isn’t exactly big budget, so you might be expecting something put together with some local theatre stars, a couple of pieces of string and a bit of papier mache. But The First Men in the Moon follows on from previous low budget, high gloss sci-fi productions, such as The Quatermass Experiment (which also starred Gatiss), A for Andromeda and Parallel Quest, by being very good looking, having a great cast (Rory Kinnear) and some quite extensive CGI, all while staying reasonably faithful to the source material – both the book, and because this is Gatiss, the movie.
It’s just a pity everything was done with such a knowing wink in its eye. Here’s a trailer:
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