Wyrd Britain: TV Series

Showing posts with label TV Series. Show all posts

Sunday, 28 June 2026

Snap

Like one, that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turned round walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows, a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“The Rime of The Ancient Mariner”

Bookended by Tom Baker's recitation of the above extract from Coleridge's masterpiece this fifth series episode of the ITV series 'Dramarama' with it's folk horror aura would have been well at home in it's seminal 'Spooky' series.

Young Peter Ibbotson is dropped off for the day on Romney Marsh - the setting for Russell Thorndike's 'Doctor Syn' books and numerous E.F. Benson stories - where he roams the area taking Polaroid photos while, all the time, being followed by a hooded figure.

Written by Richard Cooper, who also gave us 'Knights of God', and directed by Michael Kerrigan (Knights of God', 'Spine Chillers', 'Doctor Who') it's an atmospheric and effective little chiller enhanced by some great use of it's eerie setting and some fantastic avant garde soundwork from Christopher Gunning ('The Day of the Triffids', 'The Last Train', 'Knights of God').

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Sunday, 7 June 2026

The Eye

The final episode of series 2 of the children's spooky anthology show Shadows, written by Ewart Alexander - who also wrote episodes in series one, 'After School', and three, 'Eleven O'Clock' - is a bit of a strange one.

George (Julia Lewis) is obsessed with the historical figures she's postered her room with and lost in the mosaic she's creating in the garage, while her brother Steve is freaked out by the grecian urn at the bottom of the stairs that has seemingly taken on a life of it's own, is hearing voices, being attacked by pictures of Napoleon and generally struggling to cope with life.

There's a real Sapphire and Steel vibe to the whole thing and a fabulous hissing, burbling, throbbing soundtrack. It's fantastically odd, makes very little sense and is all the better for it.

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Sunday, 26 April 2026

The Other Window

In 'The Other Window' was the final episode of the first series of the supernatural anthology series 'Shadows' scientist father John Woodvine ('Knights of God', 'Enys Men') brings home a fresnel lens to amuse his three children, Elizabeth (Gwyneth Strong), Mark (Roy Jacobs) & Jan (Sophie Ward). After taping it to the window the children begin to see figures from the past through it, visions from their family's history that begin to take on a sinister aspect.

Written by husband and wife, J.B. Priestley ('An Inspector Calls') and Jacquetta Hawkes ('The Lonely Shore'), it's a pretty insubstantial affair slowed down by an over long explanatory section in the middle that takes valuable time that could have been better used in the finale and there's some frightfully shrill drama school performances from the children but in it's naivety it has some charm.

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Sunday, 15 March 2026

The Man Who Hated Children

By it's third and final series, the ITV anthology 'Shadows' was running out of both scares and steam and was delving into the realms of fantasy with stories about Merlin, magic lands and, in this instance, Peter Pan.

At it's centre and hamming it up horribly is future 'Grange Hill' caretaker George A Cooper as the curmudgeonly councillor 'Higgs', determined to bring the wrath of the law down on the heads of the two kids, 'Willie' (Paul Watson) & 'Tom' (William Smoker) who've been bedevilling him. Recruiting fellow councillor 'Sliggs' (Brian Wilde - 'Porridge', 'Last of the Summer Wine'), he begins to enact a plan that unwittingly pits him against literature’s perpetually prepubescent prankster and brings him to a particularly odd ending.

To my mind this episode has very little to recommend it, Cooper is in full on pantomime villain mode and Wilde is still essentially playing 'Mr Barrowclough', a role he'd only left the previous year, but, right in the middle, there is one rather magical little scene that makes it all worth while but which will leave you wondering why the rest of the story couldn't have been like that.

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Sunday, 25 January 2026

The Old Banger

Susan (Pinkie Johnstone) and John Partridge (Terence Rigby) decide to dump their clapped out old Hillman rather than pay the scandalous ten quid scrapping fee only to discover that unlike their pigeons it has an unerring and uncanny homing ability as it's repeatedly spotted making it's way ever closer back to their house.

This, the fantastically daft, seventh and final episode of 'Tales of Unease', a series based around the anthologies edited by John Burke, was the sole writing credit of actor Richardson Morgan and was directed by Quentin Lawrence who had a bit of a Wyrd Britain pedigree having worked on the likes of 'Catweazle', 'The Avengers', 'Doomwatch', 'The Strange World of Planet X' and 'Danger Man'.

Coming across like the unintended consequence of a post pub, back alley fumble between 'Christine' and 'Herbie' it's not particularly played for laughs but it isn't entirely serious either. Worth watching, once, just to see where the car ends up, the cheeky little Minx.

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Sunday, 16 November 2025

Serenade for Dead Lovers

'Worlds Beyond' was an ITV series of the late 1980s that dramatised stories lifted from the archives of the Society for Psychical Research. They made 13 episodes and truthfully none of them are particularly very good but i'm kind of addicted to them and you'll find a few eposodes on the blog. It's an odd sort of series mostly of interest because, despite it's obviously miniscule budget, it featured some interesting casting choices, including faded Hollywood stars Eli Wallach, Karen Black and Louise Fletcher alongside the likes of Denholm Elliott, David Warner, Connie Booth, Mary Tamm & Natasha Richardson and in this case, perhaps less notably, 'Robin of Sherwood' Mk 2, Jason Connery and Nancy Travis who would later go ghost hunting again in the Stephen King mini series 'Rose Red'.

Written by legendary Wyrd Britain screenwriter Brian Clemens - who really should have done better - 'Serenade for Dead Lovers' - the best song title Bauhaus never used - revolves around an old village hall, a 40 year old romance and, for seemingly absolutely no resaon at all, a dud German bomb. Travis and Connery do their best but there's too little here for them to really work with and what could have been a delicately poignant ghostly tale of love lost and found falls pretty flat.

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Friday, 14 November 2025

The Night of the Doctor

"I'm a doctor, but probably not the one you were expecting"

On 14th November 2013 - which also happened to be Paul McGann's 54th birthday - some seventeen and half years after he woke up in a New York morgue the 8th Doctor finally appeared on TV again just in time for the shows 50th anniversary and to regenerate into The War Doctor.

"Physician heal thyself"

Having not survived a crash from space when an attempted rescue goes awry, The Doctor is offered a chance to choose his next regeneration by the Sisterhood of Karn, who hadn't been seen in the series since the 4th Doctor serial 'The Brain of Morbius'. With a mind to stopping the 'Time War' between the Time Lords and the Daleks he chooses to shed the mantle of healer and instead become a warrior.

"Doctor no more."

It's always been such a shame that we got so few glimpses of McGann's Doctor - there's been a third since, where we discovered he's averse to wearing robes - but with a battery of Big Finish audios to his name and those few televised performances that show he's only got better as he's got older he remains the longest serving Doctor and the one most deserving of a revival.

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Sunday, 2 November 2025

The Poacher

West Country Tales was an early 80s BBC 2 series that, at least in it's first series, purportedly dramatised stories of encounters with the supernatural submitted by the public. Episode 2, aired on February 1st 1982, 'The Poacher' tells of the unnamed titular character's meeting with the God Pan in the wood where he plies his trade.

Told primarily - as is the rest of the series - via a narrator (Douglas Leech) with minimal dialogue from the on-screen cast, the Poacher (Dave Royal) walks us through a life spent wandering the fields, woods and rivers of his locale, often, but not exclusively, under the cover of darkness, he is shown as an independent and fair minded man atuned to the rhythms of the woods, never taking more than he needs - we witness his disgust at the wasteful pheasant shoot - and as a repository of old lore. When he meets the Wild God (Michael Venner) it's a meeting marked with the characteristic fear that a meeting with Pan induces and presented in an appropriately oneiric manner that changes the Poacher in the most profound of ways.

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Tuesday, 16 September 2025

UFO

After spending most of the 1960s dangling their various cast members from bits of string, Gerry & Sylvia Anderson along with producer Reg Hill entered the 1970s with their first live action TV series, 'UFO'.

Over the course of one series we follow the trials and tribulations of SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation), a covert agency under the control of Commander Edward Straker (Ed Bishop) that is the planet's primary source of defence against organ harvesting aliens.

Behind Barry Gray's killer theme tune is the Anderson's deliberate attempt to move away from the kid focussed television that they were known for by incorporating more mature topics into the episodes that often feel like a cumbersome distraction from the whole alien invasion thing but, beyond that, we get lots of fabulously retro-futurist design, typically implausible vehicles and a moonbase populated by silver suited ladies wearing purple wigs for no, easily discernable reason.

It's all a bit of a mess, albeit an occasionally entertaining one, but 'UFO' is perhaps most keenly remembered for being the catalyst - via an abandoned second series - for the Anderson's next series, 'Space 1999', oh, and for the wigs.

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Sunday, 25 May 2025

Bad Bad Jo Jo

Roy Dotrice plays 'Kayo Hathaway', egomaniacal author of a hugely successful comic strip called 'Bad Bad Jo Jo' - about a giant, murderous white supremacist and his manipulative mother - who, on the eve of going into tax exile decides to accomodate two fans.

We've featured several episodes from 'Tales of Unease' here before, a series that attempted to unsettle rather than terrify and in this instance it certainly succeeds. Dotrice is fantastically vile and the two fans - Richard Pendrey & Ian Trigger - are wonderfully crazed as the episode grows ever darker and Hathaway gets what he gave. Be warned though, you will feel sorry for the poor little dog.

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Sunday, 20 April 2025

Poor Girl

Adapted from the short story by Elizabeth Taylor (the author not the actor) by Robin Chapman, who also transposed M.R. James' 'Lost Hearts' for the BBC, 'Poor Girl' is the story of Florence Chastity (Lynne Miller) hired as governess to the odd and precocious Hilary Wilson (Matthew Pollock) who finds herself beset by visions of lipstick marks, necklaces and a young couple in incongruous clothing whilst trapped in an unloving and strange haunted manor house.

The second and final episode of ITVs 'Haunted' thread, following 'The Ferryman' starring Jeremy Brett, was shown on December 30th 1974 and unlike Brett's episode opts for a period - late Victorian / early Edwardian - setting in keeping with the ghostly tradition of the BBC's more established annual spooky Christmas fare that it was shown in oppostion to.

There are distinct shades of Henry James' 'Turn of the Screw' / 'The Innocents' here as the reserve and the resolve of the adults begins to crumble and the libidinous pull starts to take hold but Taylor's story has an altogether different aim as the spectres of two different types of masculinity fight for dominance within the house, of the vainglorious, lascivious father or of the gentler, loving son and the man he'll grow to be. It's all a little slow and tentative but with a strong performance by Pollock as the odd and old beyond his years child and it's slowly unfolding narrative it makes for a gently satisfying watch.

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Sunday, 30 March 2025

The Corpse Can’t Play

The 1968 BBC series 'Late Night Horror', was the first horror show made in colour on the channel and featured stories by such luminaries as Robert Aickman (an adaptation of 'Ringing the Changes'), Arthur Conan Doyle, Richard Mattheson, Roald Dahl, H Russell Wakefield and John Burke. Lasting only six episodes before being cancelled due to complaints and subsequently wiped, only the Burke episode remains in the form of a black and white telerecording (subsequently re-released in a colourised version)

In 'The Corpse Can't Play' the thoroughly unpleasant Ronnie (Frank Berry) is ruling the roost at his birthday party when another boy, the unpopular, but impeccably dressed, Simon (Michael Newport), arrives unannounced and immediately becomes the target of Ronnie's spite whilst, hovering in the background, are three entirely ineffectual adults, one of whom has just brought home several new gardening tools, including an axe.

Featuring some solid performances from the two main kids it's a quick and effective little shocker ably directed by Paddy Russell, one of the first female directors employed by the BBC, who had an almost peerless Wyrd Britain pedigree having worked on the 'Quatermass' TV serials before directing episodes of 'Doctor Who' - including 'Pyramids of Mars' and 'Horror of Fang Rock' - as well as 'Out of the Unknown' and 'The Omega Factor'.

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Wednesday, 19 March 2025

Don’t Knock Yourself Out: The Making of the Prisoner

From 29 September 1967 to 1 February 1968 ITV bewildered their audience with 17 episodes of Kafkaesque sci-fi brilliance in the form of 'The Prisoner'. Created by actor Patrick McGoohan following his exit from the successful spy drama 'Danger Man', that he'd starred in for four series, 'The Prisoner' is the story of a former spy, known only, much to his chagrin, as 'Number Six' who, following his resignation, is drugged and imprisoned in 'The Village', a surreal, seaside holiday camp from which he cannot escape and where he's subjected to repeated psychedelic, surgical and psychological manipulation in the pursuit of information.

Made by the folks at Century 21 Films with not a marionette - super or otherwise - in sight it offers a comprehensive and fascinating, if slightly dry, overview of the making of this most enigmatic of TV shows featuring contributions, both archive and new, from the likes of Peter Wyngarde, Fennella Fielding, Darren Nesbitt, Leo McKern and, of course, McGoohan alongside various members of the production team including ITC head Lew Grade, producer David Tomblin, script editor (and possible series co-creator) George Markstein and writers Vincent Tilsley and Roger Parkes.

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Sunday, 9 March 2025

The Black Goddess

One of only two stories - the other being 'Superstitious Ignorance' - featured in both the book, 'Tales of Unease', and subsequent TV series, Jack Griffiths' tale is the story of a group of Welsh miners trapped deep underground after a pit collapse, one of whom has been having premonitions of disaster and visions of the dark spirit of the mine.

Featuring Ronald Lewis, David Lloyd Meredith and Talfryn Thomas (who would later play the loathsome Tom Price in 'Survivors') it tells a gentle story about a brutal topic which retains the original's deliciously ambiguous core.

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Sunday, 2 March 2025

The Ferryman

ITV's extremely short lived 'Haunted' thread seem to have been an attempt to create their own 'A Ghost Story for Christmas' and this, the first of the two films they aired under that banner heading, screened the same day as the BBC's 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas', the 23rd December 1974.

Based on a story by Kingsley Amis it stars Jeremy Brett as Sheridan Owen, the pompous and overbearing author of a hit "literary horror" novel, who, escaping with his wife Alex (Natasha Parry) from his promotional duties, finds himself seemingly trapped in the plot of his own novel.

The last time we met Brett on Wyrd Britain was with his dreadful scenery chewing performance in 'Mr Nightingale' but thankfully he's notably more restrained here and reminds of the actor he was to become in his most famous role. Parry, unfortunately has little to do but leads a strong supporting cast. Director John Irvin, who four years later would direct Alec Guinness in the superb 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy', shows a keen sense of pacing and a good eye for a gothic visual, despite everything being obviously shot in the daytime, and the story builds to a solid climax with a darkly cryptic coda.

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Sunday, 23 February 2025

The Death Watcher

Shadows Of Fear was an early 70s anthology series of ten hour long thrillers and one thirty minute one revolving around notions of 'fear'. Strangely for the time it was made and with such an apt core concept and such a supremely creepy animated opening sequence featuring Roger Webb's terrifying theme music only one of the eleven episodes had a supernatural theme, episode four, 'The Death Watcher'

Psychologist, Emily Erikson (Judy Parfitt), riding high on the publication of her book, accepts the invitation of a Dr Pickering (John Neville) to visit with him to observe his experiments. There she discovers his work is far further out there than she anticipated and finds herself held hostage by the deranged Doctor and his unwitting assistant Dawson (Victor Maddern) and destined to be not just an observer but his subject.

Screened on January 26th 1971 there are shades of Nigel Kneale in the melding of science and the supernatural but Pickering always feels more bonkers than brilliant with his botched together death trap and half baked theories, reminiscing about ballroom dancing as he becomes increasingly deranged, leading to a chilling denouement.

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Sunday, 12 January 2025

Superstitious Ignorance

The ITV (LWT) series 'Tales of Unease' ran for one series in 1970 taking it's stories from the books of the same name edited by John Burke. Only seven episodes were made, the first two of which - 'Ride, Ride' & 'Calculated Nightmare' - we've featured here before, this, the fifth episode, continues the series' remit of tales that unsettle but don't necessarily horrify.

Yellow beach buggy owning hipster couple 'Teddy' (Jeremy Clyde - 'Schalcken the Painter') and 'Penny' (Tessa Wyatt - 'Robin's Nest') visit a dilapidated house with vague plans to buy and renovate it but encounter the sitting tenant, 'Mrs Laristo' (Eve Pearce) who warns them not to stay.

Following it's sitcom like beginning there's a well-paced build up of tension as the pompous pair run roughshod over the increasingly panicked tenant and parade around the house planning their remodelling. Is there something evil in the house or is Mrs Laristo simply trying to scare them away from her home or, is it something, else?

For the most part it's a quick and effective little creeeper but unfortunately the pay-off, whilst unexpected, is rather silly and much of the hard work of the previous 30 minutes comes crashing down.

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Sunday, 5 January 2025

Dirk Gently

With their genesis in a, then, abandoned Tom Baker era, Doctor Who script - 'Shada' whose filming was stopped due to a production strike although it has since been novelised and adapted for audio - Douglas Adams wrote two and a bit Dirk Gently books that have since been spun off into two TV series, as 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' for BBC America in 2016 with Samuel Barnett and Elijah Wood, but before that, between 2010 and 2012, as 'Dirk Gently' for BBC4.

Adapted by 'Misfits' creator Howard Overman, with later scripts by Doctor Who alumni Matt Jones and Jamie Mathieson and starring Stephen Mangan as Dirk, Darren Boyd as Richard MacDuff, Helen Baxendale as Richard's exasperated girlfriend Susan Harrison, Jason Watkins as D.I. Gilks and Lisa Jackson as Dirk's perpetually unpaid secretary Janice.

The original pilot episode aired in December 2010 and is the one, of the 4 episodes made, which most closely relates to the first novel with it's tale of time travel but the others, shown in 2012, all maintain the science fiction elements that perfectly suit a detective whose investigative style is based on quantum physics and the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. The now ubiquitous Mangan, who was then mostly known for his starring role in the hospital based sitcom 'Green Wing', brings the perfect amount of manic untrustworthiness and crazed genius to the role whilst Boyd is the consumate everyman foil as Dirk's "averagely incompetent assistant" / partner.

Whilst there is a slightly cheap and cheerful aspect to the show, particularly when viewed against 'Sherlock', that was airing to global acclaim around the same time, it's charm is it's own and, had it been given the chance, feels like it could have grown into something lasting but, unfortunately the show was cancelled following it's sole series with the BBC blaming a funding freeze and a decision to consolidate it's original drama production to it's two principal channels.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

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Wednesday, 11 December 2024

Clangers

'Clangers' was a stop-motion puppet animation created in 1969 by (modelmaker and illustrator) Peter Firmin and (writer, animator and narrator) Oliver Postgate's who, through their company, Smallfilms, had previously produced animated shows such as Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog (in which a Clanger-like 'Moonmouse' had featured 2 years previously) and Pogle's Wood and who would go on to produce Bagpuss. The Clangers are a small family of pink mouse-like creatures - named Granny, Major, Mother, Tiny and Small Clanger - who live on a small, moon-like planet along with The Soup Dragon (and her baby), The Froglets, The Iron Chicken, The Cloud and The Music Trees.

Wyrd Britain celebrates the 'Clangers' by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate.Wyrd Britain celebrates the 'Clangers' by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate.

The Clangers spoke in a musical whistle created by using a slide (or swanee) whistle. Their dialogue however was all scripted and then reproduced through the instruments. This allowed Postgate to be rather more adventurous with the dialogue than the BBC would have maybe liked (if they'd known) with Episode Three, 'Chicken', containing - at 00:55 - the most famous piece of salty Clanger speak, "Oh sod it, the bloody thing's stuck again."

Only 27 episodes (two series and one special) of The Clangers were made but to this day they hold - as does much of Postgate and Firmin's work - a special place in hearts of swathes of Brits who grew up in the 70s and 80s, but their simple charm has rendered them timeless with the revived series (2015-2020) producing a further 106 episodes narrated by Michael Palin (in the UK) and William Shatner (in the US).

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Sunday, 10 November 2024

Black Carrion

Right, before we start, let me just say upfront this show is bad, really bad, and not in a so bad it's good kind of way but in a so bad it's bloody awful kind of way. It is, in so many ways, terrible; irredeemably, eyewateringly terrible. But I like it even though it is, and I can't stress this enough, crap!

'Black Carrion' was the eighth episode of Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense, the venerable company's second TV series made in conjunction with 20th Century Fox Television whose input allowed for longer run times, some 'name' actors and access to the US TV market.

Telling the story of the search for the 'Verne Brothers' (Alan Love and Julian Littman) a long disappeared early 60s pop duo whose contribution to music seems to have been doing covers of Chuck Berry and Johnny Kidd and the Pirates songs with horrible 80s saxophone parping over the top whilst wearing, for no particular reason, white leather jackets with a bird motif on the back.

Written by Don Houghton (Sapphire and Steel, Ace of Wands) there's much spooky promise here with a fun premise and some nice sets but he just doesn't seem to know what to do with it and squanders every opportunity. The script suffers from more flashbacks than Jerry Garcia, meanders aimessly for much of the time, features teenage hoodlums who aren't, investigating reporters who don't and a grand finale that isn't.

The first time I watched this, I almost shouted at the TV in disbelief at how idiotic the ending is, but over the years, I've come to kind of love it for all it's very, very, many faults.

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