Acorn Media's Tales of the Unexpected, Set 3 offers 21 more episodes, covering the fifth season and about half of the sixth, shows that originally aired between April 1982 and May 1983. By this time Dahl had stopped hosting and his name is completely absent. Also not appearing in this set is John Houseman, who replaced Dahl as host but only for the U.S. syndication version. What's presented on DVD are the original U.K. cuts, which is just as well as these are complete, not time-compressed and run a full 26 minutes. (The U.S. syndication version was presumably cut to incorporate new footage of Houseman, and to allow for commercial breaks.)

The show is only fair - it's better than, say, the mostly terrible Hammer House of Horror, an hour horror anthology that aired at about the same time, but that's not saying much. Although popular enough to run for as long as it did, tellingly it has not attracted the cult following superior programs like The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents still enjoy. The shows are well-acted and competently directed, but the twists are frequently cheap and predictable and, oddly, often their impact is unnecessarily thwarted.

For instance, (Spoliers Ahead) in fifth season-opener "Blue Marigold," Toyah Willcox plays a famous fashion model who loses her married lover (former Hammer star Alan Bates) soon after she's dropped in favor of a new advertising campaign. A la Singin' in the Rain, she's attractive but has a grating voice, in this case a harsh Cockney accent, and has trouble finding work. Despondent, she becomes a drunk, is admitted to an asylum, and drops out of sight. Years later, an opportunity arises where she hopes to win back her man - she's invited by his fiancee to join them for dinner. She knocks herself out to regain some semblance of her lost beauty, which she does. However, he's been in a car accident and has lost his sight: all her efforts have been, literally, in vain.

Not a bad idea, but the writers (adapting a story submitted to the producers in an elaborate contest) don't make clear the faulty logic of Willcox's character, her mistaken belief that her relationship with Bates rests entirely upon her looks. Worse, the casting of Willcox muddles things further. The model should have started out gorgeous, become a grotesque alcoholic, and then transformed back into an approximation of her original beauty. Unfortunately, Willcox is not all that attractive to begin with, and her descent into near-madness is shown mainly by having the character not wear any makeup, rather than showing any real dramatic change.

The show frequently stumbles with its twist endings, which often play like someone telling a bad joke that they realize is no good, so they rush through the punch line before anyone notices. In one episode, John Mills stars as an infamous safecracker out on parole, who accepts an offer to appear on a live television show promoting an allegedly impregnable, state-of-the-art safe. If he can crack it within three hours, he gets to keep the 25,000 pounds locked inside. The set-up is ingenious, but the twist is so badly mangled as to make no impact all.

Similarly, "The Moles," about a quartet of thieves tunneling into a bank vault (and featuring Steptoe & Son's Harry H. Corbett in a role that aired after his untimely death), hinges on a twist badly delivered: (More Spoilers) a sign indicating that the bank has been shut down and its assets moved to a new branch. In the show the sign is long-winded and the end credits are already rolling before most viewers will have had the chance to read it all.

In the end, without a single creative hand to guide it, the show has little personality beyond its peculiar opening titles, sort of a cross between Jan Svankmajer animation and Maurice Binder's signature title designs.

Besides Mills, the great line-up of guest stars includes Derek Jacobi, Jennifer Connelly (making her television debut), Leslie Caron, Ian Holm, Janet Leigh, Richard Johnson, Peter Jeffrey, Colin Blakely, Bernard Cribbins, Phyllida Law, Haley Mills, Darren McGavin, Peter Cushing, and many others.

Video & Audio

Several of the earliest episodes in this set were produced on film, but nearly all the later Tales of the Unexpected were shot on videotape, with a few miscellaneous exteriors shot on film, as was usual manner of British television production. The videotaped episodes show their age, but look okay. The English mono is adequate; there are no subtitle options. There are seven half-hour shows per disc.

Extra Features

Extras are limited to a few essays and filmographies, but several are above average. Tunes of the Unexpected is a nice mini-biography of composer Ron Grainer, while Tales Trivia offers short but useful background on most episodes. Cast Filmographies are of less interest, but welcome.

Parting Thoughts

At $39.99 (SRP), Tales of the Unexpected isn't a bad deal (on a cost per episode basis), and a chance to see fine actors in okay if generally uninspired little stories of mystery, suspense, and occasional horror. For those looking for something to watch between "Definitive" Twilight Zone releases, this works well as something like a "mid-season replacement."

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf - The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune and Taschen's forthcoming Cinema Nippon. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.