Beasts

The only reason I don't give "Beasts" a top 10 is that there aren't many episodes. There should have been a second series - I reckon they would have been just as good.

Each episode from this series has a self- contained plot and they range from witchcraft to possession.

The production values are a bit modest but the beauty lays in the acting and the writing. For sheer storytelling, this kind of television is sorely missed.

I saw this at the age of 12 when it was broadcast for the first (and only) time. Two stories stick in my mind, Buddyboy, about a haunted Pool/Ghost Dolphin (memorable to me for a very well-endowed young lady removing her Bra!! ) But the story i remember most, the title of which i cant remember but concerned a plague of Rats, stealthily attacking people trapped in a country cottage.In the entire episode you never actually See a Rat! But it was done superbly. Always looked forward to seeing this show repeated, but never has been. It was a gem from Nigel Kneale, an Ace writer.

All of these were entertaining to some degree; 'Baby' was genuinely scary, with a creepy build-up and a final scene that made me make an incoherent noise of terror. I remember kids at school who were somehow allowed to watch that one coming in traumatized the next day, huddling together wide-eyed in a sort of support group. I quite understand now: it almost did for me as a grown man.

My abiding memory is of some chap incarcerated in his living room, ringing into some radio show and having something nasty getting nearer and nearer...and nearer. You never saw anything, but then again you never had to.

Even the word 'beasts' takes us all back there doesn't it? I try and be objective. I saw this in late 1976, and never since. I was 9 years old, hardly capable of critical reasoning. Yet, across the gulf of time, images and thought processes immeasurably superior to adulthood come back to you.

I'd like to watch it now, provided it don't ruin it.

I saw During Barty's Party when it was first shown on British TV in 1976; I was twelve and it was a special treat from my grandparents, whose house I was staying at. I had nightmares for weeks! This is a wonderfully crafted story: two actors and the suggestion of a terrible, unseen threat worked together in scaring the undergarments off this viewer! Some of the images, notably the last one, have stayed with me for 30 years. Do NOT watch this alone.

Without giving too much away: as the story unfolds, everything works by suggestion. Washed-out, bleak 70's British TV production values help in establishing the normality that horror needs as a baseline for all the nastiness to happen against. And the ending is truly haunting.