#mounting obsession with the burglars who broke into his home. it would make a good ep of Tales of Unease (shortly to begin on Thames'
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Shadows of Fear: Did You Lock Up? (1.1, Thames, 1970)
"And they didn't make much mess?"
"No, not really. They forced that door. Smashed the cabinet, slashed a sofa. And kicked a hole in the bedroom door."
"Ah. Big mistake."
"What is?"
"Never lock inside doors. Anything you can to keep them out - but when they're in, let 'em get on with it."
"I'll remember."
#shadows of fear#single play#roger marshall#1970#classic tv#thames#kim mills#michael craig#gwen watford#ray smith#mark mcmanus#malcolm kaye#charles leno#having come to something of a premature pause in my New Scotland Yard watch (the first ep of series 3 isn't on the YT playlist I've been#using and is proving quite tricky to get ahold of) i thought I'd revisit this brief lived anthology series for the creepy season. i first#watched this about 10 years ago and my memories of it are scant to say the least‚ so it seemed like good viewing for the season#the production history of SoF is lost in the mists of time (unless someone out there wishes to enlighten me?); this first episode was shown#in June of 1970‚ but the rest didn't follow until January of the following year; probably this acted as a sort of pilot to gauge viewer#reactions to another vaguely horrorish anthology series (the previous decade had been ripe with them‚ tho we rarely see their like today)#and then there's the odd case of the final ep‚ shown almost 2 years after the series ended and running to half the length (and generally#feeling like an entirely different format) but I'll come to that when (and if) i get to the episode itself. this debut ep is... well it's#fine. i was excited to see Marshall's name in the opening credits‚ one of the most dependable of old tv writers and I'd quite forgotten he#contributed to this show. but the issue here is simply one of length. the plot is solid‚ a suitably grotty little tale of a family man's#mounting obsession with the burglars who broke into his home. it would make a good ep of Tales of Unease (shortly to begin on Thames'#sister broadcaster LWT) or a few years later as an episode of Tales of the Unexpected; both being 25 minute shows. but this clocks in at#close to 50 mins and there isn't really enough to it to sustain that longer running time‚ leaving it feeling a little stretched thin and#flimsy. a shame‚ because Craig and Watford are putting in excellent performances as the middle class couple whose reactions to the burglary#slowly shift as time passes (he goes from prosaic acceptance to fixated malice‚ she from shocked indignation to making peace with it all)#no big surprises in where the play is headed or how it plays out‚ but that's often the case with these things; it's often just as much#about the horrible foreknowledge of what must come than some shocking twist‚ and this plays it about right. it's just too long is all.
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