| Dead of Night | |
|---|---|
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| Genre | Thriller / Horror |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 7 (4 missing) |
| Production | |
| Producer | Innes Lloyd |
| Running time | 50 mins |
| Original release | |
| Network | BBC2 |
| Release | 5 November – 17 December 1972 |
Dead of Night is a British television anthology series of supernatural fiction, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in 1972 over seven 50-minute episodes.
Dead of Night is considered by some to be a spiritual successor to an earlier horror anthology by the BBC, Late Night Horror. Like Late Night Horror, Dead of Night ran for a single series in the autumn of 1972.
Only the first, second and seventh episodes – "The Exorcism", "Return Flight", and "A Woman Sobbing" – are retained on their original 625 line PAL colour videotapes in the BBC Archives. The videotapes of "Bedtime", "Death Cancels All Debts", "Smith" and "Two in the Morning" were either erased for reuse or junked during the mid-1970s, and not even any 16mm black-and-white film telerecordings made for overseas sales are known to exist.
Another programme made by the Dead of Night production team under Innes Lloyd, The Stone Tape, running to 90 minutes and intended to be the eighth episode, also survives in the BBC Archives, but this was broadcast as a stand-alone story and not shown under the Dead of Night banner.
BBC Four re-broadcast "The Exorcism" on 22 December 2007.
The three surviving episodes of Dead of Night were released on DVD by the BFI in October 2013, with extras including a gallery of stills from the four missing episodes, the downloadable scripts for all episodes (surviving and missing); and a booklet featuring essays and biographies by Lisa Kerrigan, Oliver Wake, Derek Johnston and Alex Davidson.
| No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "The Exorcism" | Don Taylor | Don Taylor | 5 November 1972 | |
| Rachel and Edmund have just bought a new cottage, and invite their friends Dan and Margaret down for Christmas dinner. But suddenly, there's a power cut and the phone goes dead; the wine tastes of blood, and the turkey makes them violently ill; and then the four discover they are trapped in the cottage with no way out. Then, Margaret becomes possessed by the vengeful spirit of the cottage's previous occupier, a woman from the Middle Ages named Sarah Jane, who tells the other three the tragic story of the events leading to her and her family's deaths; and how, on her deathbed, vowed justice for what happened... Archive status: exists | |||||
| 2 | "Return Flight" | Rodney Bennett | Robert Holmes | 12 November 1972 | |
| Readjusting to work shortly after the death of his wife, Captain Hamish Rolph is a man who has lost his bearings, which is an exceptionally dangerous problem in his profession. Archive status: exists | |||||
| 3 | "Bedtime" | Simon Langton | Hugh Whitemore | 19 November 1972 | |
| A young woman who feels trapped in her new marriage becomes so enamoured with an antique brass bed she begins to spend all her time sleeping in it, slowly becoming imprisoned by it. Archive status: missing | |||||
| 4 | "Death Cancels All Debts" | Brian Farnham | Peter Draper | 26 November 1972 | |
| A world famous writer wakes up at 4:20 a.m. every morning when his clock stops ticking, and soon becomes convinced that some day he will die at this exact time. Archive status: missing | |||||
| 5 | "Smith" | Robert Knights | Dorothy Allison | 3 December 1972 | |
| When a journalist decides to do a story on a criminal named Smith, whose crimes horrified and appalled the England of his time, she discovers that the past is living on in present. Archive status: missing | |||||
| 6 | "Two in the Morning" | Paul Annett | Leo Lehmann | 10 December 1972 | |
| A depressed man is alarmed when his doppelganger appears and begins to take over his life. Archive status: missing | |||||
| 7 | "A Woman Sobbing" | Paul Ciappessoni | John Bowen | 17 December 1972 | |
| Jane and Frank are in an increasingly strained marriage. One night, Jane hears a woman crying in the attic, though Frank hears nothing; and her attempts to discover the truth cause her to become increasingly paranoid. Archive status: exists | |||||
