Dead of Night is a pretty obscure television horror anthology series made by the BBC and broadcast only once in autumn of 1972. Sadly, only three episodes survive, the other four having subsequently been lost due to the BBC purging their archives in the 70's. On the strength of the three remaining episodes, it does seem like a sad waste. This series had an interesting, serious tone and there seemed to be a reasonable amount of psychological depth and well-rounded characters on display. It even was successfully chilling on a few occasions which was great.
The stories that remain all feature what can best be described as hauntings of troubled individuals. So to this end we have characters with a few real-life issues who are then a conduit for sinister ghostly entities. The episodes sometimes have subtexts underlying their supernatural tales, such as a socialist message underpinning 'The Exorcism' and feminism playing a similar role in 'A Woman Sobbing'. These two instalments incidentally are the strongest ones of the three, with the third 'Return Flight' feeling a little less focused and muddled. 'The Exorcism' is the most famous episode and quite rightly so, it benefits from a very strong performance from Anna Cropper who is possessed by a ghost in a scene of remarkable intensity. It's the best moment in the series and the episode as a whole connects its social message within the ghost story framework extremely well. 'A Woman Sobbing' similarly benefits mainly from another very strong performance from its lead actress, in this case Anna Massey who plays a woman increasingly unhappy with her role in life as a housewife bringing up children. She is haunted by the sound of a woman crying in the night. Like 'The Exorcism' it's executed with considerable intelligence and is genuinely chilling at times also.
On the whole, I enjoyed seeing this little seen bit of horror TV. It's a criminal waste that most of the episodes only got broadcast once, never to be seen again. But three is better than zero, and these surviving episodes do indicate that this was a good quality series of contemporary ghost stories with social relevance.
