Tales of Unease: The Complete Series [DVD]

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An author meets big fans of his most controversial work and a couple try to abandon their old car across London.

tales of 60s and 70s TV on Blu-ray and DVD in Four spooky tales of 60s and 70s TV on Blu-ray and DVD in

This atmospheric series features stories from novelist John Burke, playwright Michael Hastings, A Bouquet of Barbed Wire's Andrea Newman and James Leo Herlihy – author of Midnight Cowboy. If like me you really love supernatural stories then drama series Tales of Unease from 1970 is going to be a must have this month. It's perhaps interesting that, whilst I wouldn't describe any of these episodes as being particularly scary, it's the outcome of one of the "human" ones (Bad Bad Jo Jo) that has stayed with me the longest. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. But it settles into a surprisingly astute portrayal of gentrification, and its ambiguously sympathetic portrayal of the “old ways” (the title is heavily ironic) harks ahead to imminent horror landmarks like The Wicker Man and The Exorcist.This means that, in line with standard television policy of the 1970s, it’s shot on film rather than videotape, and it looks gorgeous as a result.

Tales of Unease on DVD - Networkonair

Here, the executives Harker (John Stratton) and Johnson (Michael Culver) are literally trapped in their office, but on a more metaphoric level they are trapped by their corporate greed. Of course, the businessmen aren’t really characters in their own right, it’s what they represent, not who they are, that is the focus. He is a sand pilot and, like a sea pilot, must know his way about; he must have a strong sense of both locality and identity. Bad Bad Jo Jo justifies a purchase all on its own, but Network have packaged the disc with a limited-edition booklet by that great TV historian Andrew Pixley.

Disc extras are limited to a single fine still gallery but another Andrew Pixley viewing notes booklet is also included, although not provided for review. Screen violence, extremist politics, mining disasters, frustrated housewives and class conflict – perhaps the only remaining Heath-era anxiety that hasn’t been ticked off the list is mechanisation, which is duly addressed in Calculated Nightmare. A few have a direct supernatural element, a couple some vaguer form of otherworldliness and a couple don't have anything like that and are pure human stories. We don’t come close to knowing anything about Sarah other than the fact she was killed in a car crash three weeks ago.

Tales of Unease (1970) DVD review - The Geek Show Tales of Unease (1970) DVD review - The Geek Show

All powerful entities demand sacrifices, to your time, your hopes and eventually your life, be they mythical deities or the NCB. I've been catching up with some shows from Honor Blackman's Avengersseries and keep feeling struck at what excellent work was done in this series--Britain really produced some exceptional material, generally on a shoestring, in the 1960s and 1970s. A rarely seen anthology series featuring stories full of menace and black humour, Tales of Uneaseavoids overt horror for a subtler and altogether more unsettling sense of the uncanny. The final episode, The Old Banger, written by Richardson Morgan (Rogin in The Ark in Space, Doctor Who fans) may be the best remembered of the series.

Network Releasing has announced the individual Blu-ray and DVD release of four spooky tales from 1970s television for 17 October: The Owl Service (1969); Tales of Unease (1970); The Intruder (1972); and Come Back Lucy: The Complete Series (1978).