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Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends
Graham Williamson discusses Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends, a staple of 90s television weirdness (and even weirder subjects)…
Ghosts In Time: revisiting Moondial (1988)
25/02/2021
Time-travel or ghost story? Robert Taylor takes a look at Moondial, a classic children’s drama that puts the resilience of children, in the face of adversity, at its heart...
A Monstrous Birth: Revisiting Chimera (1991)
08/10/2020
Revisiting Stephen Gallagher's Chimera, an early 90s TV mini-series exploring the perilous consequences when scientific advancement meets government corruption...
‘Always on, always suffering’: Replication, Repetition and Recursion in Black Mirror
22/01/2022
Sophia Adamowicz discusses how technology is used to simulate the horrors of hell in Charlie Brooker’s television drama, Black Mirror...
The Vault Of Horror – A Dr. Terror Retrospective: Part Two
26/10/2020
Graham Le Neve Painter once again draws back the curtain on the BBC's The Vault of Horror with the creative team behind Dr Terror...
Horror in the Britcom – One Foot in the Grave: Victor Meldrew’s New Nightmare
17/01/2022
A.J. Black explores the macabre lurking within the BBC comedy, One Foot in the Grave, in his series on horror in the Britcom...
Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: Contemplating Roddy McDowall, the Panic of the Inevitable in The Cemetery and the Choices We Make
15/10/2021
In this personal piece by Jamie Evans, he explores Roddy McDowall in 1969's Night Gallery, interprets the actor's performance and the writing of Rod Serling..
Local Gothicism: The Everyday Horrors of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith
02/01/2022
Sophia Adamowicz explores the distinctive blend of the macabre and the mundane in the work of The League of Gentlemen’s long-standing writing and acting partners...
Green Belt Gothic: Dead of Night (1972)
13/01/2022
David Evans-Powell takes a look at the 1972 anthology series Dead of Night and its particular delight in terrorising the middle-class...
Completely Forked! Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible (2001)
20/09/2020
Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible, an affectionate pastiche of 70s horror anthologies enjoyed a single series in 2001. Andrew Screen rifles through the episodes...
It went through the wall!: Quatermass and the Pit (1958)
21/01/2022
Jon Dear, writer and co-host of the Nigel Kneale podcast, Bergcast, takes a detailed look at the classic 1958 BBC television production of Kneale's Quatermass and the Pit...
Nigel Kneale’s Beasts (1976)
04/02/2022
Andrew Screen, author of the forthcoming The Book of Beasts, explores a 'touchstone of folk horror and hauntology', the seminal 1976 series Beasts by Nigel Kneale…
The Vault Of Horror – A Dr. Terror Retrospective: Part One
23/10/2020
Graham Le Neve Painter reopens The Vault of Horror with the creative team behind BBC horror host Dr. Terror; entering the mouldering tomb via a two-part retrospective on the 1992…
Hammer House of Horror (1980): a personal reflection
14/09/2020
Jason Brawn reflects on, Hammer House of Horror, one of the most important British television horror programmes of his childhood...
Whitechapel: Horror in the Dark Heart of London
20/01/2021
Jamie Evans ventures into darkest London for the 'pulpy, luridly compelling' ITV series, Whitechapel...
Don’t Go Mia: Horror Elements in 2Point4 Children
22/01/2021
J.D. Collins resurrects 90s sitcom 2point4 Children, from the realm of cosy sitcom blandness, to explore its supernatural undercurrents and brooding production values.
Ghosts (1995)
22/11/2021
Jon Dear revisits 1995's Ghosts, the short-lived BBC anthology show set in modern Britain...
All Things Bright and Beautiful: How The Mad Death (1982) ravaged TV
17/11/2020
Andrew Screen explores the BBC's chilling rabies outbreak serial, 1983's The Mad Death...
Ancient Terrors – or the Terror of Ancientness? Archaeophobia in British Film and TV
08/11/2021
Francis Young explores whether the distant past, in and of itself, can be a source of horror, leading to a distinct fear of the past: archaeophobia...
‘To be adored is something I recommend’: A Tom Baker Career
20/01/2022
Graham Williamson looks at the career of the great Tom Baker, including his tenure as the Doctor...
‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ Revisiting Mark Gatiss’ Crooked House (2008)
06/02/2021
Mark Anthony Ayling revisits Mark Gatiss's 2008 horror anthology, Crooked House, and the ordinary - and extraordinary - fears contained within...
Horror in the Britcom: The League of Gentlemen Christmas Special (2000)
20/12/2020
In a special festive edition of Horror in the Britcom, A.J. Black explores the singularly hilarious and disturbing portmanteau, The League of Gentlemen Christmas Special...
White Men Are Cracking Up: Siren Spirits (1994)
29/09/2020
Andrew Screen explores the little-seen 1994 BBC horror anthology, Siren Spirits, which explored family and race-relations in contemporary society.
A Beguiling Bleakness: Casting the Runes (1979)
09/12/2020
Following his final film for the BBC's A Ghost Stories for Christmas series, Lawrence Gordon Clark went freelance and landed at ITV where he turned his considerable talents toward directing…
Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set (2008)
01/02/2023
Brontë Schiltz essays Charlie Brooker's Channel 4 zombie outbreak series, Dead Set, which exposes the very real horror at the heart of reality television programming...
Horror Imagery in I May Destroy You (2020)
09/01/2022
Graham Williamson explores Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You, the hit BBC series, and finds ‘a recurrent thread of horror imagery around the edges of the show’...
Dread, Desolation and Urban Isolation: Shadows of Fear
08/02/2022
Andrew Screen tackles Thames Television's early 70s anthology, Shadows of Fear, which eschewed the supernatural for more psychological horrors...
Time travel and The Box of Delights (1984)
18/11/2020
Robert Edgar celebrates the enduring warmth and weirdness of the BBC's 1984 Christmas children's series, The Box of Delights...
Keckwick and the Land of Sea and Fret: The Woman in Black (1989)
08/12/2020
Robert Taylor explores the role of Keckwick and the landscape of The Woman in Black (1989) in a time when regional networks created event television....
Horror in the Britcom: Only Fools and Fridays
16/10/2020
A.J. Black's series looking at horror in British comedy discovers the 'not-so-hidden' horrors in one of Britain's most beloved sitcoms, Only Fools and Horses...
Creeping through the countryside
03/02/2021
At once sublime and horrifying, the English countryside is increasingly the backdrop in horror that explores a growing unease about our place in the world. Melissa Elborn digs deeper into…
‘Like Birds Caught in Bushes’: Robin Redbreast (1970)
20/05/2021
K B Morris explores the conflict between fate and free will in John Bowen's 1970 folk horror television play, Robin Redbreast...
Ghosts from the past, ghosts from the future: Haunted landscapes in British 1970s Television
26/01/2022
David Evans-Powell explores haunted landscapes in 1970s British television and discovers not a warning to the curious, but instead perhaps a warning to the unvigilant...
Working Class Horror: Govan Ghost Story (1989)
29/12/2020
Duncan Gates examines the angry progressivism of the ghostly tale and explores BBC Play One's 1989 effort, Govan Ghost Story...
Hell Hath Fury: The ‘horror illuminatum’ of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (2004)
25/09/2020
Exploring the potential influences and ways in which genre and horror fiction are used and referenced in the classic comedy/meta series, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace...
Better Dead Than Bored: Urban Gothic
12/11/2020
Andrew Screen encounters Channel Five's early Millennium low-budget horror anthology, Urban Gothic...
Inspiring Rewilding (2023)
08/02/2023
As the folk horror anthology Rewilding lands on Prime Video, its director Ric Rawlins discusses ten of its key inspirations – from Moomins to M.R James…
Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends: Weird ’90s
11/10/2021
Graham Williamson discusses Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends, a staple of 90s television weirdness (and even weirder subjects)...
The Horror Documentaries of Mark Gatiss
25/05/2021
J.D. Collins dissects what makes Mark Gatiss's BBC Horror documentaries so entertaining, and also how elements can be seen in his work...
West Country Tales (1982)
11/01/2022
Jon Dear peers westward toward two episodes from 1982-83's supernatural anthology series, West Country Tales...
Hammer on Television: Journey To The Unknown (1968)
03/09/2020
Hammer's forgotten horror anthology series, 1968's Journey to the Unknown, was broadcast over a decade before their House of Horror. But how does it stack up?
A Nationwide Séance: The Unremitting Terror of Ghostwatch (1992)
09/01/2022
Graham Williamson heads back to Halloween 1992 for the BBC's broadcast of Ghostwatch and examines how Stephen Volk's ghost story still endures despite only a single airing in almost 30…
Do you want the killer, or will anybody do?: Jack the Ripper (1988)
29/10/2020
1988's Jack the Ripper was the very definition of event television and recently returned to public attention via re-broadcast on Talking Pictures TV. Dean Newman takes a scalpel to ITV's…
‘There’s a dreadful strength in the land’: Nigel Kneale’s Murrain (1975)
05/02/2022
K B Morris essays the conflict between reason and superstition in Nigel Kneale's Murrain (1975), and the recurring theme of female suffering and trauma at the hands of men in…
Public Information Films: Dark & Lonely Waters
15/08/2020
The nightmare fuel of a generation of schoolchildren. Public Information Films of the 70s and 80s were mini horrors and warnings to the curious...
Horror in the Britcom: Alan Partridge’s Nor(folk) Horror
27/06/2021
Author A.J. Black returns with the latest in his Horror in the Britcom series. This time, he explores the (Nor)folk horror lurking in and around Steve Coogan's hilariously appalling Alan…
The enduring terror of Alternative 3 (1977)
01/04/2021
Graham Williamson revisits 1977's fictional hoax, Alternative 3. 'One of the most intoxicatingly, terrifyingly paranoid programmes ever broadcast on British television...'
Karloff On Television: The ‘Other’ Thriller
18/03/2021
A decade before Brian Clemens' Thriller, NBC in the US broadcast an identically-titled anthology show of its very own, introduced British horror legend, Boris Karloff. Jane Nightshade takes us back…
One Of Your Sons: Penda’s Fen (1974)
05/10/2021
Author K B Morris examines the 1974's BBC Play for Today, David Rudkin's Penda's Fen, and its exploration of the notion of Englishness...
Threads (1984): The Night Britain Didn’t Sleep
14/01/2022
Dean Newman explores the BBC's horrifying 1984 nuclear attack drama, Threads...
Stingless Stories: Scorpion Tales (1978)
26/02/2021
Scorpion Tales occupies a lower tier in the pantheon of great British horror television of the 1970s, but did it deserve more than a single series? Andrew Screen investigates the…
Fear Of Fulchester: The Horrors of TV’s Crown Court
07/02/2022
Ivan Kirby looks back at ITV drama, Crown Court, a perennial of 1970s/80s daytime television programming that - in pursuit of justice - often featured horror-inflected episodes...
The Forgotten Terrors of The Frighteners (1972)
25/11/2020
Long-neglected anthology series, The Frighteners (1972), utilised cultural concerns of the period in telling its pitch-black horror tales. Andrew Screen takes a closer look at the series' 13 episode run...
Bernard Cribbins: The Lost Interview
28/07/2022
A never before published interview with the late Bernard Cribbins, originally conducted almost 30 years ago by Adam Jezard, in which the actor discusses his work in the genres of…
The Horror of the Intimate Camera: The Woman in Black (1989)
03/09/2020
Why does The Woman In Black (1989) continue to cast a terrifying ghostly shadow over viewers more than 30 years after its first broadcast?