The Cutprice Guignol

In the last couple of months, I’ve been delving into some classic British anthology horror television – from the highs of Late Night Horror to the, uh, less highs of Urban Gothic, I’ve had the itch for UK TV horror of yesteryear that only a good old anthology can scratch. All this to say that I have yet another to thrust under your nose this week, in the form of Beasts by Nigel Kneale.

Now, if you’re a fan of British genre television of the 20th century, that’s a name that you’re probably already well-acquainted with. Kneale is best known for his work on the iconic 1953 The Quatermass Experiment, a sci-fi series (which is, sadly, mostly lost now) that proved the British public’s appetite for genre TV and laid the groundwork for stuff like Doctor Who, as well as spawning film and TV sequels in the following couple of decades. I first encountered his work after my Dad – who raised me on a stringent diet of British spookery that I’m sure has had no negative impact on the kind of person I’ve become – showed me Neale’s supernatural horror The Stone Tape, which nearly sent me into a catatonia of pure fear and left me with an eternal love for Neale’s work.

Which is how I stumbled across Beasts, an ITV series released between October and November 1976 and featuring six distinct episodes written by Neale himself. The loose premise tying them all together was simple – each one contended, in some form, with a bestial horror inflicted upon the unfortunate cast of characters in each episode. If you’ve got the time and inclination, you can check them out here:

And of the classic British horror I’ve loved (and loathed), Beasts is up there with some of the very best. The broad theme gives plenty of scope for Neale to play across different sub-genres – contemporary urban horror, classic supernatural, meta-dramas, folklore, the lot – and the majority of the stories land in a really impressive way. The series is laced with Neale’s distinct style and dry sense of humour, and each episode is less focused on a classic horror monster than it is the animalistic potential that exists in humanity.

I think the weakest episode is, unfortunately, the first, Special Offer, which features Pauline Quirke in a very early role – to be generous, I’ll just say that her greatest performances were certainly still ahead of her. The standouts for me were Baby, which clashes science with folk belief through the lens of a genuinely sinister reproductive horror, and The Dummy, an episode with a distinctly modern feel that explores the power of performance and masks via the emotional breakdown of a actor known for his rubber-suit monster performances. I have a real soft spot for What Big Eyes, too, just for how it subverts expectations and allows Patrick Magee plenty of time to chew through the scenery in an appropriately lycanthropic fashion. One of the details I enjoyed across the whole season was the consistently-beastly sound design, from scrabbling little claws in the title cards or heaving groans of a monster breaking through its human restraints, which lends the whole show an underlying sense of effective unease.

Beasts is an enormously fun watch and a distinctly underrated string to Neale’s horror bow – it was a treat to go through these episodes for the first time, and I can already see a few making it into my regular horror rotation. If you’ve seen the show, what did you make of it? Did you watch it when it came out? Any episodes that left a particular impact on you? Let me know in the comments below!

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(header image via IMDB)