Worlds Beyond

I must have been in my teens when I first saw this series (in Australia), but it left a very strong impression. I was reminded of Worlds Beyond last weekend when I saw "Ringu (1998)", which was the first horror film to scare me anywhere near as much as these British TV classics.

I can't recall much more about this series except the opening music, which alone made my spine tingle. I also recall enjoying the episode entitled "suffer little children" episode and another one I vaguely recall about about a dance hall haunted by soldiers.

I recommend this for fans of ghost stories, but I have no idea where you might find it.

I remembered this a few months ago talking about 80s shows with friends. I looked on eBay but couldn't find it, so I tried putting the title into YouTube and the whole series is there. The memories it brought back were very fond.

The music is haunting and the production values were, for the period, very high.

The cast of each episode were drawn from the cream of British television and were, on the whole, brilliant.

Why people go on about hiding behind the sofa when Dr Who came on I will never know, for the 1980s this was the best scare on the box.

What a shame this gem of a series seems to have been totally forgotten about, doesn't seem to have been repeated in recent memory, and it's never had a commercial release.

It's billed as a horror anthology series, now I'd dispute that, there are horror elements, but it's way more than that, it has so much variety, there's horror, romance, comedy and drama. Every episode offers something a little different, episodes like Oliver's Ghost and The Black Tomb couldn't be more different.

I think this was clearly aimed at the US audience, as half of the cast are American.

I can only imagine the time of day that this was transmitted, I have yet to encounter anyone who's even heard of it.

It's clearly a low budget affair, and it looks a little cheap at times, but the production team did a good job with their limited resources.

Hard to comment on the series as a whole, as episode quality does vary greatly from one to the next. My personal favourites are Oliver's ghost and Haunted Garden, a love story with a twist, and a hilarious ghost story, both wonderful.

Plenty of well known faces, you'll see Anna Massey, Paul Freeman, Mary Tamm and David Warner. The standout performance however comes from Denholm Elliott, who steals the show with a hilarious turn.

I can't imagine many have seen it, it will get to, and that's a shame, overall, I really enjoyed it.

8/10.

Excellent little supernatural anthology series, supposedly based on true accounts, with an excellent mixture of quality guest stars from both sides of the Atlantic, including Denholm Elliott, David Warner, Karen Black and Eli Wallach.

Relegated to late-night British TV when it first came out, the series hasn't reappeared since, and richly deserves a re-showing and critical re-evaluation.