Yesterday, was scrolling though YT trying to find something I could watch in 20 -25 minute chunks while fruitlessly battling the fat via my rowing machine and thought, I’d rewatch the Twilight Zone.
In a twist that would have caused Rod Serling himself sleepless nights, I typed in Twilight Zone and got an episode called One Step Beyond where a man called John Newland seemed to have deputized for our Rod.
Although it featured many of the same tropes (pre- and post-show flash forwards and backs to the announcer), it subsequently turned out OSB was the name of the show rather than the episode.
Intrigued I checked it out and discovered that OSB actually pre-dated TZ by several months. Despite it’s running to three series and almost 100 episodes, it doesn’t seem to have been screened in the UK which is probably why I’d never heard of it.
The USP here is that all of the stories are apparently based on real cases. While sophisticates like ourselves would now dismiss them as urban myths), the yarns are a pretty good way to fill 25 minutes of your time.
If you like shows like TZ, Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Serling’s later Night Gallery, you’ll probably like this.
Now this is spooky! I had never heard of One Step Beyond before. The very next thing I did after reading this post was check my email, and top of the list was the weekly circular from Talking Pictures TV.
From this Tuesday at 6pm, starting with season 1 episode 1, they’re showing … One Step Beyond.
Now that is bizarre. Did a thread about Between the Lines a few Sundays back and someone posted that they were about to start showing it on BBC Two each Sunday night.
Maybe I have some kind of bizarre power over the TV schedules or something
Do any episodes feature heavy heavy monsters?
I love stuff like this. The genre was ruined when taken over by new agers and then paranoid right wingers.
BBC2 repeated the Outer Limits when I was a kid – early 80s. Scared the living crap out of me.
That was one of the most alarming episodes … “The Living Crap”. They eventually reused the idea in “Dogma”.
It’s the living crap
Diddle diddle diddle dee
What a terrible thing to lose