Murder, infidelity, gambling, and sinister bed and breakfasts. We rank the stories in Tales Of The Unexpected’s first series…
From 1979 to 1988, Tales Of The Unexpected served up a semi-regular diet of murder, cruelty, betrayal and intrigue. An anthology show initially based on short stories by Roald Dahl (later seasons introduced work by other writers), the series could be described as ITV’s answer to Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Indeed, several of its stories were previously adapted in that American anthology show (Lamb To The Slaughter, for example, was directed by Hitchcock himself). And, just as Hitchcock showed up in front of the camera to introduce his episodes, Dahl appears here, seated next to a roaring open fire, providing an opening ramble about each story.
The title sequence, meanwhile, with its infuriatingly catchy theme tune and silhouettes of dancing ladies, feels like something from an early James Bond movie. Maybe it was Dahl’s homage to his contemporary and friend, 007 creator Ian Fleming…
But enough conjecture. With the cold, dark nights enveloping us and Christmas approaching, it’s the perfect time to enjoy some short stories of murder and suspense. And given that Tales is now streaming in its entirety on Prime Video, here’s our ranking of the first series’ episodes – though bear in mind that even the lesser stories (like A Dip In The Pool) are still worth a watch.
Episode 8: A Dip In The Pool
As Dahl readily admitted in the intro to this story, he had an appetite for gambling, which might explain why he seemed to understand the mindset of his protagonist here so well. During a luxury cruise, a gambler named William Botibol (Hollywood veteran Jack Weston) lays a bet on how far the ship will travel the next day. When he loses all his money, Botibol comes up with an ill-advised scheme to win it back… Of series one’s episodes, this one sticks out as the least suspenseful, and the ending is a dampener in more than one sense of the word. Weston (a veteran character actor whose roles ranged from Perry Mason to The Thomas Crown Affair to, er, Short-Circuit 2) is good value, though.
Episode 2: Mrs Bixby And The Colonel’s Coat
As we’ll soon see, unpleasant marital relationships figure a lot in Tales Of The Unexpected, and this episode is a vaguely depressing story of infidelity in late middle age. Julie Harris plays the wife who says she’s flying off to see her aunt in Ireland but is actually seeing a wealthy landowner; Michael Hordern appears as the dentist husband who has designs on his younger assistant. From the brief scenes of fox hunting to the mink coat that becomes the story’s MacGuffin, this episode is a product of its time, even more so than most. It’s fascinating, too, how many of these stories are told from the perspective of upper middle-class people in their 60s and 70s. Truly, times have changed.
Episode 1: The Man From The South
You can tell this is the debut episode because the production blew a chunk of budget on filming on location in sun-drenched Jamaica. Subsequent episodes were shot almost entirely in grey old Blighty, often in studios in the Anglia region. The Man From The South is an intriguing little story, enlivened by a robust, mischievous performance from Miguel Ferrer, a wealthy gent who bets a young naval cadet that he can’t successfully ignite his cigarette lighter ten times in a row. If the officer succeeds, he’ll win an expensive car. If he fails, he loses a finger… It’s a solid opening to the series, but later episodes would quickly top it in terms of macabre imagination.
Episode 6: Neck
The series shows its 70s roots here with a rather misogynistic episode in which an unfaithful, sharp-tongued wife (Joan Collins) gets her comeuppance thanks to a piece of modern art. John Gielgud (who’d later play a butler again in 1981’s Arthur) and To The Manor Born’s Peter Bowles add a touch of class, though. And the plot – about a young, handsome lad whose arrival at a stately home sparks libidinous mayhem – makes the episode feel like a proto-Saltburn.
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Episode 4: Lamb To The Slaughter
This is perhaps the best-known Tales Of The Unexpected episode – certainly, whenever the series used to come up in conversation in the the 80s and 90s, people would reliably bring up “the one with the frozen leg of lamb.” It’s a good story, too, so what’s it doing here in the middle of the pack? Arguably, the execution lets it down a little. There’s little in the way of suspense, and Susan George doesn’t entirely convince as the wife whose singularly unpleasant husband finally makes her snap one evening. It’s still a blackly comic little yarn, though, and credit to Brian Blessed for an unusually restrained performance as an oblivious detective. Inevitably, Hitchcock’s version of the story, which first aired in 1958, is the better adaptation.
Episode 5: The Landlady
This story could be regarded as a hat-tip to Alfred Hitchcock, or perhaps the author who originally came up with Psycho, Robert Bloch. A young insurance clerk (Leonard Preston) arrives in Bath for work, and ends up at a bed and breakfast run by the titular landlady, played by stage and screen star Siobhán McKenna. Thriller fans will probably see where the plot’s going at a certain point, but the final reveal is still grotesquely amusing, and McKenna is wonderfully unsettling as the crafty bed and breakfast proprietor.
Episode 9: The Way Up To Heaven
Don’t expect a twist ending in this episode, but do brace yourself for 25 minutes of knuckle-gnawing stress. Well-to-do grandmother Mrs Foster (Julie Harris) has plans to visit her daughter in New York, and also happens to have a phobia about lateness. Her husband, played by Angus McKay, appears to take sadistic pleasure in probing at this particular weakness, and repeatedly dallies about, forgetting cigars and other odd things, as Mrs Foster twitches and panics beneath the ticking clock. As in so many of these episodes, though, the universe has a certain way of punishing the cruel.
Episode 7: Edward The Conqueror
A noteworthy thing about the series was how many Hollywood stars of a certain age it managed to attract. Here, we get the great Joseph Cotten, of Citizen Kane and Shadow Of A Doubt fame, as another hateful Tales Of The Unexpected husband – this one named Edward. His musician wife, Louisa (Wendy Hiller) takes in a stray cat, and soon becomes convinced that the golden-eyed mog is the reincarnation of composer Franz Liszt. It’s easily the most outlandish of this series’ episodes, but at the same time, its conclusion is also perhaps the most brutal.
A contemporary piece on the episode in the Leicester Mercury, as uncovered by Cinemacats, suggests that the unnamed feline actor pictured above was a bit of a diva.
“Joseph [Cotten] was a darling man to work with,” Hiller told the newspaper in 1979, “but I’m afraid we both got a bit tired of the cat… It scratched me all over the place and as soon as it had finished its work it was taken off to the vet and we never saw it again.”
Episode 3: William And Mary
Dahl takes a dip into science fiction territory in what is surely the most ingenious and funny episode of the lot. Mary (Elaine Stritch) learns from a solicitor that her husband, the controlling academic William (Jimmy Mac), isn’t really dead, but has had his brain removed as part of a bizarre experiment. Having been denied the chance to drink, smoke or watch television, Mary takes the opportunity to finally let her hair down…
Earlier in her career, Stritch studied acting alongside Marlon Brando before becoming a star on Broadway, TV and film. In her 60s by the time this episode was filmed, she brings all her charisma, experience and talent for comic timing to bear as the exceptionally cunning Mary.
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