Actualités

While most kids TV shows are pretty tame, a handful of entries into the genre managed to feature some genuinely creepy moments and frightening scenes. Broadly speaking, kids TV is largely devoid of serious scares. Even kids shows that have horror elements like Gravity Falls or Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated usually steer clear of anything that might keep child viewers up at night. This is often due to network censors cutting scenes that could be perceived as spooky, a policy that leaves a lot of writers unable to push their family-friendly efforts as far as equivalent big-screen kids horror stories like Coraline or ParaNorman.

However, this has not stopped some seriously creepy kids TV shows from slipping through the cracks. Over the decades, there have been a handful of kids TV shows that are as scary as any successful horror movie franchise. Some of these shows got away with their surprisingly...

The psychedelic Folk Horror features The Other Side Of The Forest and Beyond The Speed Of Life are to be released on physical media and streaming this summer.

The Other Side Of The Forest

“The Other Side Of The Forest” is a fantasy Pop-Art Fairytale directed by Grant McPhee and starring Lori Stott (BBC’s The Demon Headmaster) and Ashley Sutherland (Night Kaleidoscope).

It is the story of a shy young woman seeking her fame in the dark world of the 1960s folk-music underground. Lori’s journey to stardom takes her on an adventure far beyond the music world she is trying to break into, and instead she travels far beyond her reality to a forgotten past of rural landscapes, magic, myth, dead Gods and mysterious fallen angels.

In this fantastical world Lori meets a mysterious time-travelling guide (Ashley Sutherland) who helps her navigate the malevolent threat of the Swine-Folk,...

Terence Hardiman, who terrified a generation of children with his performance in Cbbc’s The Demon Headmaster, has died aged 86.

Hardiman’s agent Scott Marshall Partners confirmed his death “with great sadness,” calling him a beloved client and much-loved stage and screen actor.”

He is probably best known for his role as the evil protagonist in Cbbc’s The Demon Headmaster, which ran from 1996 to 1998 and was rebooted briefly in 2019. Hardiman terrified a children of generation with his portrayal of the Demon and he became widely recognized for the character’s trademark dark glasses.

Born in London in 1937, Hardiman first got into acting at Cambridge University before he toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company, starring in the likes of Doctor Faustus.

He got his big break playing Stephen Harvesty in Granada Television’s Crown Court for a decade from 1972 and went on to appear in the likes of Doctor Who,...

Alex Westthorp Sep 19, 2016

We revisit Tom's Midnight Garden, Moondial, The Chronicles Of Narnia and a few lesser-known UK children's TV series...

Read our look-back at UK kids' fantasy dramas 1980 - 1984 here.

By 1985 British TV's children's drama had really hit its stride, achieving "a balanced diet of programmes" as Edward Barnes, the head of the BBC children's department observed. The late 80s, arguably, saw a new golden age for spooky and magical kids drama. Excellent production values, improved significantly by well-honed special effects work using Quantel, Paintbox and Harry, and moreover some interesting casting - often of very talented newcomers - produced some of the most memorable dramas of the era.

The second half of the decade saw the BBC riding high on the back of the success of their state-of-the-art adaptation of John Masefield's Box Of Delights. Meanwhile, anthology series Dramarama was going from strength to strength on ITV.

facebook

twitter

google+

Jokers, circus masters and demonic dolls. Which TV characters terrify you? Den Of Geek asked its writers that very question…

The subconscious is a terrible place; dark, mysterious and peopled by spectres from the past. As a bit of a laugh then, we sent our writers journeying into theirs and asked them to drag out any TV terrors they found lurking in the shadows.

Some television fears had been ensconced there since childhood, others were more recent tenants. Some were morally terrifying; human beings with icy hearts capable of atrocities, others were simply… atrocities.

Join us as we count down in order of terror from the sort-of-creepy to the downright terrifying, the 50 TV characters that, for whatever reason, give our writers chills. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, so feel free to fill in gaps by adding your own peculiar television nightmares below…

50. Charn -...

Happy birthday, Cbbc! 30-years-old and still going strong, judging by this nostalgia-powered clip starring the likes of Edd the Duck and Gordon the Gopher.

Confronted with three decades' worth of the finest children's entertainment, it was a hard task to corral the Digital Spy team into picking the very best - or at least their favourite - Cbbc programmes.

So here are our picks, from ChuckleVision to Byker Grove and back again, which means you'll have to let us know yours in the comment box below.

1. The Animals of Farthing Wood (1992-1995)

This animated adaptation of Colin Dann's novel was so good it could have been on at any time of day instead of part of the Cbbc lineup.

It was gripping, heartbreaking and funny, and you found yourself getting perhaps too-attached to the likes of Fox, Badger, Toad and Mole (a tear may have been shed on several occasions). Though,...

It's pretty hard to fathom now that BBC One is on the verge of celebrating the show's 50th anniversary in spectacular fashion, but there was a time when (whisper it) Doctor Who wasn't on television.

If you ignore that one night in May 1996 when Paul McGann lit up our screens, Who was in absentia for 16 years, but that doesn't mean that the BBC weren't looking for another sci-fi or fantasy hit to replicate the show's success...

This week's Friday Fiver takes a look at a few such attempts - not programmes like The Tomorrow People inspired by the show's original run, or series like Primeval and Merlin which launched in the wake of the new show's success.

These are the shows that tried - with varying degrees of success - to fill that Doctor Who-shaped hole in our hearts between 1989 and 2005.

> Doctor Who: 11 golden moments from 50 years of...

There are so many Children’s TV shows that are disturbing in a variety of different ways. There’s the intentionally creepy such as Courage the Cowardly Dog; the unintentional creepy such as Lamb Chop and the tragic animal slaughter of Animals of Farthing Wood.

Here’s a rundown of my Top 5 most disturbing TV shows created for children.

5. The Demon Headmaster

The Demon Headmaster was some downright creepy stuff and I’m not surprised that it’s no longer running. I don’t think the Beeb would allow a program based in a school and centred on a headmaster with pervy eyes to exist on their channels these days.

What was most disturbing about the Demon Headmaster was that with children’s imaginations being so wild, it didn’t take long until viewers started to wonder if their own headmaster was as evil as Terrence Hardiman’s demonic eyed titular character.

She's the gobby scene-stealer from student sitcom Fresh Meat. So how did she portray Joyce Vincent, a woman who lay dead and forgotten in her flat for three years, in the new film Dreams of a Life?

Joyce Vincent was found in a bedsit above a shopping centre in Wood Green, north London, in 2006, three years after she had died. Council workers, finally spurred into action by rent arrears, had to scale a mountain of post before they could get through the door to where she lay in front of the sofa, the television still on. Reading the scant news reports, it was easy to jump to the conclusion she had been a marginal figure, perhaps a drug addict or somebody with no family or friends. But there were details that nagged – the Christmas presents she had been wrapping lay next to her (who were they for and why hadn't they missed her?...

There's something fairground-like about The Beast Below. Looking at the story again after my initial first reactions in April 2010, the first thing that strikes me is that the setting reminds me a bit of a trip to the fair. A down-and-out fair on a rainy day, I'll grant you, but then we have... The Doctor and Amy dodging what looks like a non-stop line of hoopla stalls and market stands of cheap bling that fell off the back of a lorry. The Demon Headmaster skulking in a doomy ticket vestibule. The Doctor and Amy taking the unorthodox slide of a lifetime. And of course, too many kids. That should give you a clue as to the writer...

Yes, who else but the current main man, Steven Moffat? Seems he can't get through writing a Doctor Who story without including some pasty-faced young scamp. Think of young Reinette or young Amy.

I sometimes have this recurring nightmare that I'm back at school. The horror. A horrifying prospect of 11 years of homework, detentions, rotten kids and equally rancid school dinners (the sort that would leave Jamie Oliver telling the chefs responsible to Pukka Off). If you'd offered me a million pounds to relive all 11 years of school, you'd luckily get to keep the money – which would at least pay to repair a John-shaped hole in the wall.

So the evil that is school is like gold dust when planning settings for a wacky new episode of Doctor Who. The somewhat overdue setting came to fruition in 2006 with School Reunion, a story that also marks the return of Sarah Jane Smith and K9.

In essence, School Reunion is a kind of loose pilot for the hugely successful spin-off show. It's the sort of adventure that could fit snugly into the Cbbc schedules, combining...

Here we go, or should that be Geronimo(?), with the new series ending last Saturday here in the UK I figured it was about time I went back and watched it all over again and brought you the chaotic mess of thoughts that would follow.

Two things before you read all of this, I thought David Tennant was brilliant but I thought his departure was drawn out and by the end of it almost wanted him gone. This is no reflection on him though more on the production, I mean 20 minutes of his last episode were dedicated to his regeneration. I also really wished people wouldn’t judge Matt Smith on his first seconds in The End of Time yet so many people did.

So, without further ado…

The Eleventh Hour

My Thoughts: It had been a long wait for this. Many had criticised his ten seconds on screen, many others hadn’t.

Here we go, or should that be Geronimo(?), with the new series ending last Saturday here in the UK I figured it was about time I went back and watched it all over again and brought you the chaotic mess of thoughts that would follow.

Two things before you read all of this, I thought David Tennant was brilliant but I thought his departure was drawn out and by the end of it almost wanted him gone. This is no reflection on him though more on the production, I mean 20 minutes of his last episode were dedicated to his regeneration. I also really wished people wouldn’t judge Matt Smith on his first seconds in The End of Time yet so many people did.

So, without further ado…

The Eleventh Hour

My Thoughts: It had been a long wait for this. Many had criticised his ten seconds on screen, many others hadn’t.