Based on the John Wyndham short - originally published as part of his 'Consider Her Ways' collection - Random Quest is the story of a physicist, Colin Trafford (Samuel West), shunted into a parallel dimension and into the body of his counterpart, a selfish, philandering novelist whose wife, Ottilie (Kate Ashfield), he slowly begins to fall in love with. On returning to his own life he undertakes a quest to reunite with Ottilie who seems not to exist in this universe.
What we get is a rather gentle sort of show slowed by lots of shots of Colin wandering around whilst being filmed from odd angles and through distorting lenses to a lazy, swirly trip-hoppy soundtrack. As a love story it hits it's beats well and the core cast (including David Burke, Shaun Parkes & Jemima Rooper) are all very watchable. The unusual premise does leave us with a number of questions though, most crucially the fate of the otherworld Ottilie - although I do think the film-makers included a large hint with regard to this.
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The 1977 BBC anthology
series 'Supernatural', created and almost entirely written by Robert Muller, was intended to be a return to old fashioned gothic tales and the classic creatures of horror. The series found new prospective members of the 'Club of the Damned' telling a sufficiently terrifying tale that would grant them membership or death.
This, the first episode, takes ageing Shakespearean actor Adrian Gall (Robert Hardy) whose maniacal rage at a theft only he remembers many years before during a performance in Venice returns him to that city to face the ghost of his past in the form of Leonora (Sinéad Cusack).
Filled with flowery monologues and a hysterically hammy performance from Hardy that will have you chuckling and cringing in equal measures. The studio bound setting of the production makes everything feel a little cheap and the script could certainly have done with some judicial editing to curb it's more floridly bombastic aspects. The series is generally regarded as a bit of a failure; already old fashioned in tone and in production values upon release it certainly hasn't aged well but personally I quite like a noble failure even if it's just for it's unintended comedy value of which there is plenty here.
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