Dramarama: Spooky - The Complete Series [ITV] [Network] [DVD]

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The Keeper’, on the other hand, provides moments that are genuinely eerie, even to an adult audience in 2011. I know, I thought that was odd too, That's why I asked here, There are quite a few others talking about this episode on IMDB Dramarama page, Apparently the episode was written by the late great Brian Glover (himself a former Wrestler). Ghosthunters Peter (Tim Woodward) and Sally (Janet Maw) spend an evening in a haunted shack, wracked by the furrowed sexual tension between them – ‘When I said I’d come with you, I expected a little more of a run for my money’ – before being eventually sent over the edge of reason into insanity by twanging string instruments, weird mutterings and a game of Scrabble that leads to a poem straight out of Edgar Allan Poe. i really enjoyed STV's contribution to 'dramarama' 'wayfarers'on 'from the nation' at the royal holloway college on saturday.

Although I'm more than old enough to remember this series, I never saw it first time round so my review is not clouded by nostalgia. Those of us a certain age will wax lyrical (and often at great length) about the scariness of the shows made for children in the previous decade, name checking the likes of Sky (1975), Children of the Stones (1977), the Hinchcliffe era of Doctor Who (1963-1989) and many more but the 1980s had their fair share of memorably chilling moments, many of the best supplied by this short series of seven half-hour tales of the supernatural.

My Name is Tommy is a short scary story about a young boy who comes home from school one day and notices something strange about his family. The unsettling camera work certainly helps but the narrative weaving of innocent pastimes like playing scrabble into something far more sinister is highly effective. I remember one of the kid actors In that was Simon Schatzberger who later appeared in that classic Yellow Pages advert as the teenager who discovers a scratch on his parent’s expensive table after a wild party. at the foot of the bed, at which point the house is besieged by violent poltergeist activity (always accompanied by a mysteriously self-activating music box), with eerie coloured lights flashing about the house and spooky noises, culminating in the soldier "coming back to life" and sitting up.

All seems lost; but young Clare and the elegant, lively ghost of the ninth Earl unexpectedly team up to tackle the problem. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.Another story, Granada's "Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night" from 1988, was developed into the long-running series Children's Ward. Note: Our refurbished grades - Pristine, Very Good and Good - are solely based on the cosmetic condition of the phone. it first appeared under the name 'dramarama:spooky' in 1983 as all the plays in this series were made by thames TV. The Exorcism of Amy’ is set in a super-minimal, soft-focus household version of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude and pits a youthful Lucy Benjamin (best known as EastEnders’ Lisa Fowler) against both Amelia – a horrifying, quasi-Bonnie Langford incarnation of herself – and Elizabeth (Annabelle Lanyon), a po-faced Hermione Grainger-wannabe whose idea of niceness involves being as scary as possible to a new friend who just wants to be left alone. I am part of the vastness; part of the silence and emptiness that is filled up with your inane chatter and your trivial words,’ the pedantic phantom croons, sentencing Gary Davies, Simon Bates and Dave Lee Travis to sleepless nights with the sledgehammer obviousness of the satire while Gwyneth Strong (Cassandra from Only Fools And Horses in full-on faux new-romantic glitz mode) plays an endless stream of mostly forgotten hits by Grace Jones, Shack Attack, Fashion, Junior, Lynx and Aswad.

Brilliantly directed by John Woods and nudging the series into folk horror territory, The Keeper is the most sophisticated and densely packed of the stories, repeated viewings revealing layers of complexity that had previously eluded us. We know right from the off that there is something already resident, and comfortably at home, in the house and it's not best pleased at the arrival of the interlopers. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. This enduring bric-a-brac franchise at the very least gave you a chance to play spot-the-regional-logo, and at the very worst gave those regions some less than impressive caught-in-the-headlights national exposure.If you want something a little darker for children I recomend Shadows Series 1 (Series 2 is awful) Children of the Stones and King of the Castle. Thus, each episode was in practice a one-off production with its own cast and crew, up to and including the executive producer.