Beasts

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 vaguely remember the "Baby" episode of Beasts, which someone describes really above. But it is the opening "Special Offer" episode that stuck in my mind more, mostly because the setting was so mundane.

Like most throwaway 70s telly, I only saw it once, but I vividly remember Pauline Quirke playing a checkout girl in a supermarket who became obsessed with the store's cartoon mascot (a rabbit, I think) called Brightway Billy. She started hallucinating about seeing the rabbit in the shop. I was 12 when it was shown and it totally creeped me out, and created an atmosphere of insanity and hysteria in a very bland setting. At school the next day, every was imitating Pauline Quirke's moon face calling out for "Billy!".

I agree with zoothorn's review to the extent that 'Baby' is, by some distance, the scariest and most disturbing of the six and 'Murrain'– kind of a Straw Dogs/Wicker Man hybrid with Jarvis Cocker as a grumpy James Herriott – is the most satisfying dramatically. Probably not uncoincidentally, these episodes also have the most location filming.

However, I don't believe this is grounds to entirely dismiss the other episodes in the series. 'The Dummy' is, I think, a successful blend of satire and horror (although with Hammer and the rest of the British film industry on its last legs in 1976 it must have seemed a bit belated). Special Offer has the great premise of Carrie transferred to a tacky British supermarket. Also a fine central performance from an unfeasibly young Pauline Quirke and, despite ATV's limited budgets, very effective FX – no shoestring in evidence anywhere in fact.

On the other hand, 'What Big Eyes' ends up rather short changing the viewer and, despite its skillful escalation of tension,'Barty's Party' has been, I agree, somewhat overrated. The concept is too derivative of Hitchcock and James Herbert and doesn't really evoke any wider significance for the unfolding horrors.

Finally, I can see why 'Buddyboy' is so well-remembered as it must be one of the weirdest pieces of drama I've ever seen on British TV. I can only assume Kneale's remit to make each episode as distinct as possible eventually propelled him down this bizarre blind alley, but trying to extract chills out of a storyline involving a telepathic dolphin (which we never actually see) was always going to be tricky. The most disturbing thing here is the close-up of Martin Shaw's sleazy porn cinema manager 'on the job' – you may never see Judge John Deed in the same light again.

So, yes, by modern standards, these episodes are slowly paced, wordy and cheap. They were made at a time when TV drama was still largely derived from theatrical models and, at their worst, they are marred by OTT acting, lengthy expository dialogue and the constrictions of the set-bound productions. At their best, however, the acting is tremendous, character's and plot lines are given room to breathe, suspense is built gradually and the sheer ordinariness of the videotaped, studio-lit environments (and almost complete lack of a musical soundtrack) actually increases their creepy power.

I think it is salutary to remind ourselves that there was a time when TV producers had faith in audiences to sit down and engage with an hour's worth of challenging, original drama broken by only one ad break. In these hyper-stimulated, mayfly attention span times, that makes this series a strange and oddly compelling beast indeed and, IMHO, this DVD release should not be dismissed as a mere footnote to Kneale's better known work.

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.

I only recall seeing 2 episodes of this six-part series - "Buddyboy" & "Baby". The first of these, a tale of an old aquarium haunted by the spirit of a dolphin(!) was entertaining enough - but the latter was the one that stayed with me. "Baby" features a young couple who move into a centuries-old farmhouse and in the process of renovation uncover some kind of mummified farmyard freak walled up in an old chimney breast (IIRC). From this point on, the atmosphere of tension and unease mounts as more and more peculiar things begin to occur in their new home. The climax comes when the expectant mother wakes up one night having heard something downstairs... When I saw this particular story I was 9 years old. I experienced weeks of sleepless nights as a result, and more than one nightmare. Of course, I did have a rocking chair in my bedroom at the time (those of you who remember this story will realise the significance of this). Ever since the DVD format took off I've been hoping for a release of this series. The BFI originally planned to include a couple of episodes of "Beasts" as extras for their release of Nigel Kneale's "The Year Of The Sex Olympics". This plan fell through due to prohibitive costs. Given that so little of Kneale's work now remains unavailable on DVD, perhaps it's time that some enterprising company looked into unleashing "Beasts".

Update as of 20/06/08:

The good news is that, 2 years or so ago, someone decided that there was some mileage to be made out of one of Nigel Kneale's best unreleased works, so "Beasts" finally saw life again on a 2-disc DVD set, with a nice crisp transfer that is at least as good as the original transmission quality. There are some extras, too, including a stills gallery, a few PDFs, a well researched booklet on Kneale's televisual work and, for me, what amounts to the best extra in this mini box set - "Murrain", a one-off TV play that originally screened in 1975 and can in some ways be viewed as a sort of forerunner of the "Beasts" series itself.

Did I enjoy watching "Beasts" again? Yes, I most certainly did. It's held up very well over the years, and doesn't show its age too badly. I now know that I did see more episodes of the series back in 1976 than just "Buddyboy" and "Baby" - I now recall having seen "Special Offer" (with a hilarious performance from Pauline Quirke, of all people) and "The Dummy" (some nice turns from Clive Swift, Bernard Horsfall and Michael Sheard - good Brit character actors all). My second viewing of "Baby" could not possibly hope to stand up to the terror of my original experience - but it's still an effective little chiller which will give most viewers (particularly the more imaginative) an enjoyable frisson of disquiet. The episode "During Barty's Party", which I did not see on its original transmission, is also highly recommended.

"Beasts" is a rediscovered gem of 70s archive television and represents Nigel Kneale doing what he did best. Watch and enjoy.