Dead of Night

Stumbled across this when looking for an off the beaten track horror fix and this delivered. Apparently 4 episodes were lost so I've only seen the first 3, but that kind of added to the mystery of this show. The first episode 'Exorcism' was the most effective and I loved how low key the whole cast played it. Obviously it had its flaws, the 2nd and 3rd episodes were excessively bleak for me but I haven't seen much easily comparable for a slice off British 70s horror.

I watched this series when first broadcast in 1972 and remember enjoying it at the time so was delighted to see these three episodes again recently.

I only recalled the odd snippet from some episodes but the dramatic Episode 1, the Exorcism, made a vivid impression on me then and was just as dramatic this time.

I enjoyed Episode 2, featuring Peter Barkworth as a pilot, more than some others seem to have done. It doesn't have the drama of Ep 1 but does leave one pondering afterwards.

Episode 3 I found the weakest but still enjoyed the 1970s production values with real actors (all three have stalwarts of 1970s and 80s TV) and the feel of seeing a good play rather than a poor film that I get from most modern drama.

How typical of the BBC in not bothering to preserve their own archives. This series - "Dead of Night," offers some very good suspense television. The episode about the Haunted countryside house is the best of the three existing episodes in my opinion but none of them disappoint.

The DVD release comes with an accompanying booklet about the series.

Sadly this is a decimated series, with only three of the seven episodes available, the other four lost along with so many other gems, such as Doctor Who and Dad's Army.

Horror was definitely popular in terms of Television Serials in the Seventies. Dead of Night is a little known series, overshadowed by the likes of Tales of the Unexpected, Ghost story for Christmas and Thriller. However this series has so much to offer, from the three stories you get a decent flavour for what the remaining episodes will be like. Exorcism is easily the best of the trio, it's dark, imaginative, well acted, featuring several ghostly scenes.

Some names of real quality were behind this series, the likes of Robert Holmes, Ines Lloyd and Louis Marks, names any Doctor Who fan will of course be familiar with. From what I've seen, the production values and acting are excellent, the quality of writing does vary however.

Let's hope the remaining four are uncovered one day. 8/10

Dead of Night is a pretty obscure television horror anthology series made by the BBC and broadcast only once in autumn of 1972. Sadly, only three episodes survive, the other four having subsequently been lost due to the BBC purging their archives in the 70's. On the strength of the three remaining episodes, it does seem like a sad waste. This series had an interesting, serious tone and there seemed to be a reasonable amount of psychological depth and well-rounded characters on display. It even was successfully chilling on a few occasions which was great.

The stories that remain all feature what can best be described as hauntings of troubled individuals. So to this end we have characters with a few real-life issues who are then a conduit for sinister ghostly entities. The episodes sometimes have subtexts underlying their supernatural tales, such as a socialist message underpinning 'The Exorcism' and feminism playing a similar role in 'A Woman Sobbing'. These two instalments incidentally are the strongest ones of the three, with the third 'Return Flight' feeling a little less focused and muddled. 'The Exorcism' is the most famous episode and quite rightly so, it benefits from a very strong performance from Anna Cropper who is possessed by a ghost in a scene of remarkable intensity. It's the best moment in the series and the episode as a whole connects its social message within the ghost story framework extremely well. 'A Woman Sobbing' similarly benefits mainly from another very strong performance from its lead actress, in this case Anna Massey who plays a woman increasingly unhappy with her role in life as a housewife bringing up children. She is haunted by the sound of a woman crying in the night. Like 'The Exorcism' it's executed with considerable intelligence and is genuinely chilling at times also.

On the whole, I enjoyed seeing this little seen bit of horror TV. It's a criminal waste that most of the episodes only got broadcast once, never to be seen again. But three is better than zero, and these surviving episodes do indicate that this was a good quality series of contemporary ghost stories with social relevance.