Menace

1 9 7 0 (UK)
13 x 75 minute episodes
1 9 7 3 (UK)
10 x 75 minute episodes

Premiering on 29 September 1970, this Tuesday night anthology drama series from BBC2 presented thirteen high-quality original 75-minute thrillers.

The “menace” in the stories could be physical or mental and come from an individual or a group. It could endanger a person’s life or – perhaps worse – their mind. It could finally turn out to be imagination or merely ordinary events and circumstances seen through distorting glasses.

The settings were as varied as the stories – including a cross-section of life in Glasgow, a lonely cottage on the Yorkshire moors, a stately home in Ireland, theatrical lodgings in the North of England, an English village and the Home Counties stockbroker belt.

The first play, “The Straight and Narrow” by Alun Richards, was set in South Wales. Mona (Jane Hylton), a barmaid in the cocktail bar of a Cardiff hotel, met shy middle-aged farmer Elystan Griffiths (Freddie Jones) and, despite the late hour, joined him for a drive in the country. He took her to his grim and bleak farm in a remote Welsh valley to meet his mother (Rachel Thomas) and, for Mona, a night of terror began . . .

A second series of ten episodes aired on Thursday nights between March and May 1973. Both series were repeated later on BBC1.

Throughout 23 episodes, the cast members included George Cole, Sheila Hancock, Gordon Jackson, Garfield Morgan, Moira Redmond, William Gaunt, Annette Crosbie, Michele Dotrice, Robin Askwith, Michael Gambon, Patricia Hodge, Hannah Gordon, Patrick Mower, Gerald Flood, John Thaw, and John Gielgud.

Episodes

The Straight and the Narrow | Good Morning, Yesterday! | Crack-Up | Inheritance | The Millicent Sisters, Edward de Bruno and Ruth – Where Are They Now? | Man with a Mission | Killing Time | Trespasser | Something Cries Out | Nine Bean Rows | Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? | The Elimination | The Innocent || Judas Goat | Pick Up | The Haunting | The Sitting Tenant | Valentine | Tom | Deliver Us from Evil | Comfortable Words | The Solarium | Boys and Girls Come Out to Play