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Identifying Some 1970s Supernatural TV Dramas (UK)

gattino

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Messages
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So in recent weeks ive been enjoying tracking down on a variety of streaming and video hosting apps shows and movies of which i have some degree of childhood memory (I was born in 1968 so my pre-teens went up until 1980). I've mentioned a few of them on here, movies like The Medusa Touch and The Man Who Haunted Himself, individual episodes of the Outer Limits (The Zanti Misfits!) and Twilight Zone, and the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker Doctor Who episodes. The Pertwee episodes are interesting as im not watching every story, only those whose visual images and certain alien characters burned into my childhood memory. The story plots are never remembered on rewatching but the essential "thing" that i recall is always there.

I've just discovered - but have yet to watch - both Sapphire and Steel and The Omega Factor are available on Youtube.

So far, so easy. Now comes the bit where i need help from people with longer, clearer memories than mine.

I have distinct memories of several different short series of Saturday night (?) dramas/play for the day type productions with supernatural themes. Whether in all cases the whole series was supernatural or just individual episodes I obviously can't be certain. I can't identify stars, series titles, years (late 70s-ealy 80s), channel (though i have a notion in each case) or anything else useful. Only individual key scenes or images. Can anyone help place any of them?

1) A saturday night BBC short play series i think with two episodes in my mind. The twist in one, set in period Austria is that the child being born is to be named Adolf...you get the gist. What was supernatural about this i don't know but it may be that what i think of as a separate episode may in fact have been one and the same. At any rate it was a werewolf themed play, with silver bullets and all. Maybe it was that we're being lead to believe a werewolf was involved but the true horror is revealed in the end, that Hitler is being born into the world. or perhaps they were two separate stories. Hopelessly vague I know

2) This one i imagine to be on ITV. It feels like a dramatisation of a supposed real event. A victorian psychic demonstrating his powers to an audience. The end scene seems to proves his powers were real after all when his lady friend, at home, changing in front of the fire, turns and finds herself somehow briefly occupying the same space as him miles away concentrating intensley on a stage or in a drawing room.

3) One that scared me, in the classic hiding behind the sofa way. This was defintiely ITV, a short half hour one i think.. Perhaps set in a cornish coastal village. The denoument was the reveal that the mother suckling her child (the word suckling stuck in my head forever) was some monsterous creature that looked very much like one of the Sea Devils from Doctor Who.

Do any of these ring any bells with anyone?
 
3) One that scared me, in the classic hiding behind the sofa way. This was defintiely ITV, a short half hour one i think.. Perhaps set in a cornish coastal village. The denoument was the reveal that the mother suckling her child (the word suckling stuck in my head forever) was some monsterous creature that looked very much like one of the Sea Devils from Doctor Who.

Do any of these ring any bells with anyone?
The last one there sounds like it could be Beasts by Nigel Kneale. ITV Friday nights. Specifically an episode called Baby. https://celluloidwickerman.com/2014/11/27/hysteria-and-curses-in-nigel-kneales-baby-beasts-1976/

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Did Penda's Fen have a neighbourhood couple visited by the central character? and the female partner digging in the garden and finding a baby skeleton?

:dunno:
 
Here's the whole episode. I'm watching it now. Like Doctor Who it's interesting that the surrounding plot left no trace on the memory.
 
Doomwatch and Beasts are available on DVD and there is also a film of Doomwatch as well, some episodes are better than others whereas all of Beasts (one season only) is consistently good.
 
All the episodes of beasts are available to watch for free on youtube

Just search "beasts itv drama 1976"

As for the other items in my vague search list, I note that the BBC anthology series Supernatural is from the right period and channel..and one of the episodes has a werewolf theme. Though the framing device of the series ..a Victorian society of people telling their tales of horror to each other...would seem to preclude the Hitler twist in any of them. So I'm not convinced its the right show
 
..a Victorian society of people telling their tales of horror to each other...would seem to preclude the Hitler twist in any of them.

Unless framed as prophecy?
 
I don't know.. there seem to have been that many different one off plays or play series at the time....it may not have even been a supernatural one as i'm assuming.

Plus ive established the memories of my 8 year old self are confined to single burning images or scenes of uncertain accuracy. The revealed creature in Baby, above, is certainly a lot less impressive or horrifying than i recalled!

Trying to flesh out the hitler one...the unreliable images in my mind are that it was a short play of 30 or 60 minutes. It largely centred on a white moustachioed angry austrian/german gentleman, and a woman..his wife presumably...due to give birth. If it was historically accurate then the setting would be a small austrian town but if i didn't know that my memory would have embellished it as a snowed in alpine guest house. Whether there was a supernatural element to the tale - such as a prophecy or curse - i don't know, other than it had the Tales Of The Unexpected twist/revelation about the child's name. I associate it with a supernatural drama series primarily because i have a connection in my mind to an earlier/later episode having the werewolf theme.
 
Can you isolate a likely actor? I've tracked the single-burning-image things in my own memory by chasing them down through, for example, IMDB.
 
I can't..however i can picture the actor in the victorian/edwardian psychic one...unfortunately i neither know his name nor can recall any specific other shows he's been in, though he's been in many if im remembering the correct man. Which is uncertain.
 
I don't know.. there seem to have been that many different one off plays or play series at the time....it may not have even been a supernatural one as i'm assuming.

Plus ive established the memories of my 8 year old self are confined to single burning images or scenes of uncertain accuracy. The revealed creature in Baby, above, is certainly a lot less impressive or horrifying than i recalled!

Trying to flesh out the hitler one...the unreliable images in my mind are that it was a short play of 30 or 60 minutes. It largely centred on a white moustachioed angry austrian/german gentleman, and a woman..his wife presumably...due to give birth. If it was historically accurate then the setting would be a small austrian town but if i didn't know that my memory would have embellished it as a snowed in alpine guest house. Whether there was a supernatural element to the tale - such as a prophecy or curse - i don't know, other than it had the Tales Of The Unexpected twist/revelation about the child's name. I associate it with a supernatural drama series primarily because i have a connection in my mind to an earlier/later episode having the werewolf theme.
Tales of the unexpected s2e12 fits your description. From imdb.
 
I'm currently plowing through The Omega Factor. Again childhood memory is limited to the psychic subject matter, the star James Hazeldine, and the knowledge I liked it.

It's very engaging. It's clearly written by someone with a knowledge of psychic research, or else in a decade when it was treated seriously.
 
Yes! I got it for Xmas a while back. For me the burning image engraved on the mind was the description of the man with two smiles in the glasgow tenement. Took me several years to track it down to the Omega Factor.
 
I'm currently plowing through The Omega Factor. Again childhood memory is limited to the psychic subject matter, the star James Hazeldine, and the knowledge I liked it.

It's very engaging. It's clearly written by someone with a knowledge of psychic research, or else in a decade when it was treated seriously.
That thing that happens in the last episode. I can do that!
 
Can anyone help place any of them?

1) A saturday night BBC short play series i think with two episodes in my mind. The twist in one, set in period Austria is that the child being born is to be named Adolf...you get the gist. What was supernatural about this i don't know but it may be that what i think of as a separate episode may in fact have been one and the same. At any rate it was a werewolf themed play, with silver bullets and all. Maybe it was that we're being lead to believe a werewolf was involved but the true horror is revealed in the end, that Hitler is being born into the world. or perhaps they were two separate stories. Hopelessly vague I know....

Do any of these ring any bells with anyone?
Relentlessly determined to track this down - rang my bell as well - surely this is our source:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_and_Catastrophe:_A_True_Story
 
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Some of The Avengers and their American copycats The Champions walked that path, too. Really naive schlock, though, more worthy of Hammer than here.
 
Relentlessly determined to track this down - rang my bell as well - surely this is our source:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_and_Catastrophe:_A_True_Story
It is indeed.. Commendatations for the effort. Ladyloafer beat you to it yesterday, and the link to the full episode is a few posts above. You both did a better job than i at finding it. So interesting though the trick of my memory that transferred it to a different show on a different channel
 
The Champions was asBritish as they come, an ITC production, Lord Lew Grade’s company.

When Escet was living near Geneva I was soooo excited to visit the actual Jet d'Eau, having seen it so many times in my one of favourite TV shows.

My ambition was to have Escet make a little video of myself turning round in front of it à la Sharon McCready*. This plan failed because it's hard to stand near it without getting soaked. We did enjoy seeing it being turned on and off as the tourist boats passed though. Everyone says 'Awwwwww!' when it goes off and cheers when it comes on.

*Played by the beautiful and dignified Alexandra Bastedo, who was heavily involved in animal welfare charities and ran a sanctuary. She was only about 11 years older than I am!
 
2) This one i imagine to be on ITV. It feels like a dramatisation of a supposed real event. A victorian psychic demonstrating his powers to an audience. The end scene seems to proves his powers were real after all when his lady friend, at home, changing in front of the fire, turns and finds herself somehow briefly occupying the same space as him miles away concentrating intensley on a stage or in a drawing room.


A development! Still don't know what the tv drama was, but ive just stumbled on an account of an apparently famous incident of which my description must surely have been a dramatised re-enactment!

For the story of the purported teleportation of Mrs Elizabeth Guppy skip ahead on this youtube video to the 23 minute mark. The male psychic i described from the memory of the tv show was presumably Frank Herne.

 
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