Sunday 24 October 2021

The Danny Roberts Show

Wyrd Britain reviews 'The Danny Roberts Show' from Dramarama Spooky.
The ITV children's television series 'Dramarama' launched itself into a nations nightmares with it's inaugural 'Spooky' series of seven chillers including the fabulous Alan Garner scripted haunted house story 'The Keeper' and an episode, 'The Exorism of Amy'  which I must admit terrified a young me.  This episode, the series' third, subjects a deeply unpleasant late night radio DJ, played with smarmy abandon by Nicholas Ball (Hazell) to a series of phonecalls from quite literally the caller from Hell (Christopher Reich) while his harrassed and bullied producer, played by Gwyneth Strong (Nothing But The Night), remains oblivious to these calls assuming him to be simply cracking under the weight of his own ego and of course she may well be right.

Wyrd Britain reviews 'The Danny Roberts Show' from Dramarama Spooky.
There's some great soundwork here - and a groovy eighties pop soundtrack including Japan's 'Ghosts' over the end credits - and strong performances throughout including by Godfrey James, who had a great career in movies and TV beloved of us here including Witchfinder General, The Oblong BoxThe Blood on Satan's ClawThe Land That Time Forgot, At the Earth's Core and Doctor Who: Underworld, as the security guard Vernon and a tiny cameo from Edward Judd (The Day the Earth Caught Fire) as the announcer.  Despite this the episode never really quite manages to elicit any real sense of trepidation which with it's confined setting it could have done so easily and as can be seen from some other episodes from the 'Spooky' series the producers had no real qualms about traumatising their young audience so a bit of a miss but still an engaging curio.

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