Going Back To The Classic Anthology Series’
Monday is movies. And sometimes TV. Today it’s the classic anthology series’ from the 80s and 90s. Horror. Mystery. Intrigue. And good, old fashioned hokey-hammy, soapy, spongy memories…
Over the weekend, I started watching Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From The Stories of Stephen King. It’s an anthology TV series, eight one-hour episodes, each featuring an entirely new cast and telling a separate story. The stories, as the title of the series tells us, come from Stephen King. Though not all of them are taken directly from King’s 1993 short-story collection, Nightmares & Dreamscapes. One dates back to his debut story collection, 1978’s Night Shift. Anyway, this was a TV event – like a classic mini-series – appearing in 2006. To watch it now, you might think it was filmed in the 1990s.
I’m loving it – half way through at this point. And not just because I’m digging deep to catch up on the King adaptations I’m yet to see. I’m loving it – because I’m a huge fan of the anthology TV series as a concept; particularly the 1980s and 1990s variety (since that’s what I grew up watching). Things like the reboot of The Twilight Zone, The Hitchhiker, The Ray Bradbury Theatre and Tales From The Darkside.
These shows blew my mind as a kid, and I’ve recently watched a few episodes of both Bradbury and Hitchhiker; with more time in this world I’d commit to working through each series in full. And, who knows, maybe I still will…(Aro Video has your back if you’re looking for some of these things, that’s where I found the The Hitchhiker).
There were spin-off movies and films that presented as mini-anthologies too. Darkside and the 1980s Twilight Zone both inspired movie-versions, things like Stephen King’s Creepshow and Cat’s Eye were movies, but they were movies that told three or four short-film stories in one.
The tradition goes back to the original Twilight Zone, and of course things like Alfred Hitchcock Presents… (I have the recently released DVD box sets, just waiting for more rainy days). And then there’s the in-between era, which in my collection is nicely represented by 1980’s Hammer House of Horror: The Complete Series.It’s 13 one-hour films and I’m about halfway through it, savouring each and every standalone episode. You’d connect up Roald Dahl’s Tales From The Unexpected to this – and I have the thinnest memory of catching an episode or two when I was too young to see it, and not really watching, but maybe I couldn’t sleep and mum and dad let me sit up with them for a bit.
These days the touchstones (and reboots of the concept) are most obviously Black Mirror and American Horror Story and the like. And I’ve certainly enjoyed these, but some short, standalone mini-series’ are being confused as anthology TV, when instead they’re directly related to the 1980s mini series (V was my terrifying favourite – and maybe more on that some other time).
I’d link Unsolved Mysteries and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! to this conversation. They were more documentary-style, based in truth (or alleged truth) but stylised for TV in much the same way as the other shows I’ve mentioned, and flitting from story to story. Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction is the last in this style that I loved – and still love, occasionally watching an episode on Amazon Prime. Again, never quite committing to powering through the whole deal, but sometimes fantasising about all of the time I could one-day waste in some bed-ridden/early-retirement fugue state.
Many of the modern anthology series’ feel too slick. That’s what I loved – instantly – about Nightmares and Dreamscapes. It was big-budget (for the time). With bankable, or dependable stars (William H. Macy, William Hurt) but it was also basking in the hokey somewhat. There’s a ham-factor to a good anthology series. There’s a fine line between a good and a bad anthology series. And there’s a soapy, filmy filter of soft edges. That’s mostly just the haze of memory and the gauzy camera of the time. But I like to think it was a style – too.
And that’s a space I like to live in. That’s the space, I realise, that taught me to love horror. So many of these mystery/horror anthology series’ were never really scary, but were fun, funny, and also – when young – just a tiny bit unsettling. The voices of Robert Stack, Jack Palance and Jonathan Frakes. The writing of Stephen King and Roald Dahl, the direction of Alfred Hitchcock and George A. Romero. It all went in. At an early age. And because I’m enjoying reconnecting to my youth – seeking comfort in what was once slightly unsettling (though familiar and therefore perhaps always comfortable in a way) – I’m finding time, where I can, to reconnect with these old shows once again.
Any fans of the classic anthology series out there? Or are you more into the modern variant? And what are some of your favourite anthology series’ – old or new – that you would like to recommend?