Having watched "Beasts" and then the "Hammer House of Horror" TV series I decided to keep going with watching of another anthology style show "The Frighteners" - which despite its name didn't delve into horrors any more than the odd murder in the series. Indeed, it's much harder to define a theme that links these stories that it was with say "Beasts" though they are all human based dramas, i.e. with no supernatural elements. I watched about half of these on YouTube in the summer of 2020, then they were suddenly removed. I picked up the rest at the start of 2021, when they returned. There is a dvd of the complete 13 episodes available though.
Produced by London Weekend Television, alongside executive producer Peter Wildeblood, who had curated episodes of "ITV's Sunday Night Theatre" as well as similar but shorter anthology style series "Conceptions of Murder" and "Rogue's Gallery" previously. As with many a series like this, the results can be a bit of a mixed bag. Generally though, looking at the scores I gave for every individual episode, whilst none are particularly outstanding, they are mostly positive.
There are a number of high-profile actors who appear across the run, John Thaw, Warren Clarke, Clive Swift, Brian Glover but perhaps the most high profile is the late Ian Holm, who unfortunately stars in one of the worst episodes of the run, in my opinion. Behind the camera there's not a lot of recognisable names either, although Mike Hodges writes and directs one episode, which was one of the better ones. This was year after "Get Carter" had been released.
As I say then, a mixed bag but some of the better episodes, such as "The Manipulators" and "Bed and Breakfast" have stayed with me.
