Mystery and Imagination is a British television anthology series of classic horror and supernatural dramas. Five series were broadcast from 1966 to 1970 by the ITV network and produced by ABC and (later) Thames Television.
Contents
Outline
The series featured television plays based on the works of well-known authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, M. R. James, and Edgar Allan Poe. All bar one of the first two ABC series starred David Buck as Richard Beckett, originally a character from Sheridan Le Fanu's story "The Flying Dragon", as narrator. Beckett was made the central character of the series, taking the roles of various characters from some of the original stories. The first two series, although transmitted as two separate runs, were recorded in a single production block. The episode without Buck as the lead ("The Open Door") features Jack Hawkins. Unlike BBC dramas from the period, location exterior shots were also recorded onto video tape rather than 16mm film, giving a more consistent look to the production. Only series 5 was videotaped in colour.
Episodes
Archive status and availability
Of the episodes from the ABC era, only the versions of "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Open Door" (series 1) have survived. All the other episodes from the first three series are not known to exist, although the Thames episodes (series 4 and 5) survive. A brief clip from "Casting the Runes" (from series 3) also exists. Domestic audio recordings of the otherwise missing episodes "The Lost Stradivarius", "The Body Snatcher", "The Tractate Middoth", "Lost Hearts", "The Canterville Ghost" and "Room 13" also exist. These recordings have been uploaded to YouTube.
On 5 July 2010, Network released all eight remaining episodes on a four disc DVD set along with the surviving clip of "Casting the Runes". Kaleidoscope/TV Brain have released some of the off-air audio recordings from the missing episodes on DVD alongside some audio recordings from some of the missing episodes of the TV series Public Eye.
Reception
Critical response
Jon E. Lewis and Penny Stempel described Mystery and Imagination as a series of "nightmare tales of crime and the supernatural", noting that its episodes were "spine‑chillingly scripted and shot" and "only to be viewed with the lights on".
Kim Newman of Empire gave the series four stars out of five and wrote: "This collects the surviving eight episodes of ITV's flagship "quality" horror show of the 1960s and early 1970s. You get Denholm Elliott as both Dracula (with Susan George as his most fetching victim) and Roderick Usher (with Susannah York as mad Madeleine), Ian Holm as Frankenstein and (in rare but logical casting) his own Monster, Jack Hawkins haunted by a child, Patrick Mower and Isobel Black suffering The Curse Of The Mummy and, best of all, fine old slyly sent-up melodrama in Uncle Silas. Mostly studio-bound, it has fine writing and acting, but The Fall Of The House Of Usher isn't the only episode in which the sets seem ready to tumble".
Laurence Marcus of Television Heaven described stories of the series with having "original magic and power".