terry : Also; there was a programme about a lad & a girl who had dreams about a house surrounded by rocks that were apparently alive. The two hadn`t met each other but were united every time they slept and experienced this nightmare. Does anyone remember this?

Can\'t say that I do; did this end with the father explaining that the atmosphere can act like a record, with any traumatic event getting played back as a haunting?

Two other mysterious programmes:

Professor Balthazar. Croatian animation, for years there was no info on this series (it’s now got a Wikipedia entry). Scientific genius Balthazar has to solve a problem every episode, for which he takes inspiration from his machine which produces a drop of liquid he imbibes (it resembles a still).

Sky. This is quite well documented, but my memories of it are likely deceptive. Written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, the late Richard Down tipped me off that the master tapes are damaged so it’s unlikely to be screened again.

Anyone else?

Another quite mysterious show was Vision On. Meant primarily for deaf children, it featured lots of strange imagery--Aardman Animations was founded to supply it, and Bob Baker and Dave Martin used to shoot filmed pieces for it. I still feel teary about a segment with Sylvester McCoy and a woman pretending to be tramps and sharing an apple core before going to sleep under newspapers.
Good site here <www.its-prof-again.co.uk/vision_on.htm>.

The programme about the lad & girl and the rock creatures,....
As I remember; I think it is the boy who is bedridden for some reason. Every time he sleeps he finds himself in this strange house on a strange landscape and I think his only companion is the girl. Strange things happen and for some reason they deduce that boulders scattered around the grounds are creatures that are causing events. I think that in the last episode the lad finds that his female companion was also bedridden and participated during her sleeping hours.
It was probably an adaptation of a childrens book. I can`t remember anything more other than how mysterious it felt.

Escape into Night; cited in an article in SFX magazine cover date April 2006 which was at the club yesterday, with a screed explaining this is one of the questions they get the most mail on.

I see it featured Edmund Pegge, who lives locally and is a future interviewee of the club 'zine, great, something else to ask him about!

IMDB listing: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0357363/>

There was a great entry on it at Action TV, which is no longer maintainted. I found a cache of the page and post it below. <www.action-tv.org.uk/guides/escapenight.htm>

Escape Into Night
ATV 1972
Based on the 1958 novel Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr Escape Into The Night was networked during Wednesday afternoons by ITV in 1972. The novel was adapted by Ruth Boswell, Head of the Script Department at ATV, who fashioned it into a six-part series that had a lasting effect on the viewing audience of the time. Despite a very low budget the production eschewed negative feedback by using moodily lit sets to help conjure up a nightmarish quality to the complicated and adult storyline. The series was also pioneering as it utilised Outside Broadcast facilities to film on location, something which would not become the TV norm until later in the decade. Boswell, who had created and script edited Timeslip, moved to Thames soon after production on Escape Into Night finished to co-produce The Tomorrow People.

A young girl, Marianne, is bedridden after a riding accident for several weeks. To entertain herself, she begins to draw an imaginary place in a sketchpad. At night, she dreams of being in the drawing, and as the days and weeks go by, she eventually adds a house. She sees a boy looking out of a top window, but cannot reach him until she draws a stairway. The is a boy named Mark, who is parlysed. A friendship developes between the two. Marianne learns from her visiting tutor, Miss Maynard, that Mark is real, and seriously ill with polio though, the two never meet except in their dreams. Whatever Marianne draws cannot be erased and after an argument with Mark she draws living, menacing rocks with eyes around the house. The rocks, called Watchers, slowly begin to close in on the house and Mark and Marianne realise they must escape the house before their dreams end. However Mark is seriously weakened and unable to escape past the menacing rocks until Marianne on waking is able to draw a bicycle.

Marianne was portrayed by Birmingham born newcomer Vikki Chambers who would later become a presenter on BBC Radio Birmingham. The character of Mark was played by another newcomer Steven Jones. The adult cast consisted of veteran actress Sonia Graham, who had appeared in Compact and The Changes, as Mrs Austen and Patricia Maynard (later a partner of Dennis Waterman) as Miss Chesterfield. Boswell had pitched the idea of adapting the book to Alan Coleman when he was first appointed as Head of Children's Drama at ATV in 1971. He was quick to snap up the proposal and suggested Richard Bramall as director. Coleman and Bramall also worked together on series The Kids From 47A.

A film version materialised in 1988 under the name of Paperhouse directed by Bernard Rose with Charlotte Burke in the role of Marianne. The film lacked the appealing darkness and unearthliness of the TV version, though the bigger budget did enable the ending involving a helicopter and a lighthouse to be more fully realised. The TV series had all this action take place off screen.

All six episodes exist as black and white film, though the series was made in colour, and although a video or DVD is highly unlikely, the surreal complex story and truly scarey imagery (the cliff hanger ending with a zoom in on the hissing, living rocks springs particularly to mind) have ensured that viewers who caught it on the original transmission have been left indeliable impressions and memories of the series.

Absolutely BRILLIANT!
I can`t believe I was 12 when they screened that; I thought I was younger.
I don`t know how you do it Martin or where you find the time from, but I`m glad you do.
One thing I DO know is,...whatever they`re paying you isn`t enough.

                    Thanks Again !

Yeah, fine, go ahead and pretend I'm some nebbish who spends all day looking up this sort of stuff. What we need is to see the May? 2006 SFX with the follow up 1975--1979 article.

The most mysterious piece of television I've ever seen was the advert for the polaroid Kodak Handle camera, circa 1977. The strange thing is that this was on a morning prior to the start of programming; I turned on the tv to see static, then an announcer introducing the full length camera advert, back to the announcer, then static. I didn't see the point in introducing the ad, which was self explanatory, let alone I was probably the only one outside the station who was watching.
Any ideas people?

I`m sure you are joking but I want to assure you that I was being sincere.
Having the ability to research a subject is a talent. I would not have known where to begin on Escape Into The Night.
          Again Thanks

My point being that I found this out through coincidence; once the SFX magazine had tipped me off to the title the rest is pretty easy.

Two more I seek any information on--

New Zealand series The Games Affair, five minute clip known to exist in fan hands.

Australian series Andra, totally thought this was Luna until I found the novel a couple of years ago (Zaphod was there, he can tell you how excited I was!).

Escape into the Night.

I remember reading a book similar to that story when I was in Primary School.  Strangely enough, I only remember the age recommendation which was 12+.

I also remember the drawing of the house and rocks and don't know if it was the cover of the book (which may have been an adaptation of the series) or from the TV series itself. 

The book came first--<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Dreams>.


Hmm, book, radio, tv, film, opera.

That is the same image I remember also, Tareth. That and the children looking out the window and realising the rocks were advancing.

On the subject of Mysterious Television,...
ITV have launched their "answer" to Torchwood, called Primeval.
The mystery is how they could have made such a mess of it.
Think of Home and Away with Dinosaurs.
I`m not a great fan of Torchwood but it`s a masterpiece compared to this.
Still, my little lad likes it, but even he knows that Torchwood is better and that Doctor Who is far superior still.
Now if I could only get him interested in Star Trek TOS.

That sounds pretty bad--with all that commercial derived cash how could they get it so wrong?

It takes a special kind of talent, mate.
The money seems to have been spent on the special effects which are admittedly quite good.But other than that it seems to have been a rush job as far as storyline and script is concerned.That was probably necessary to production of the effects.

isnt that what the americans do to a perferctly good show, they rip it off and kill it.

It`s what they are good at.
Even when they begin with a good idea (like Star Trek) they manage to reduce it to crap, eventually.
But I think that is what happens in a capitalist country. It`s not "Art for Arts` sake", it`s "Art for money,...oh sod the art just give us the money".
What America does today, we in the U.K. do tomorrow.

Nope, sorry but you got that one wrong.

The UK does a show really really well.

The US rips it off, takes out all the drama, jokes and sauciness and replaces it with politically correct mumbo jumbo, big tits, big cars and a couple of gays.

The world loves it and the UK tries to take it back with bigger tits, more gays and the odd one liner that may or may not be funny depending on your level of inebriation.

You devalued your argument in the same sentence!
What you probably mean (and I`m second guessing) is that someone without money, here or anywhere, has a great concept, gets it marketed/shown, and it becomes anything from a cult to a hit and then the men with wads of CA$H get their secretaries` to phone the relevant numbers and rip off not only the creators but the fan base that was established initially and which helped make it a hit but also the potential fans.
We could go on and on and on but, I think we all know where this is leading,.....
.......
.........HOLLYWOOD !

Next piece of mysterious television is anything by two producer brothers; the Kroffts.
I had wanted to get some Land of the Lost for the thirtieth anniversary in 2004, but it just wasn't possible then.