West Country Tales – 1982-1983
EDIT: The post has been edited as one more episode has appeared on YouTube, bringing the total of surviving episodes to 10. I have linked the additional episode below, and I will edit to add more if/when I find them available.
West Country Tales was an early 1980s supernatural drama series based on real-life experiences sent in by viewers in response to a BBC appeal. Of the hundreds of letters received, 13 stories were selected and turned into TV scripts; 14 episodes were made in total, which means one wasn’t even pretending to be “based on a true story”, and 10 of those episodes still survive.
I especially enjoy the fact that these are allegedly “based on a true story” tales, adapated for the TV in ~30min episodes. I feel like a lot of them are actually “this is true in the sense I heard it off a bloke in the pub”. I really loved them.
Ten episodes still exist:
The Sabbatical
The Poacher
The Visitor
White Bird Of Laughter Tor
The Breakdown
The Beast
The Wit To Woo
With Love, Belinda
Miss Constantine
Ring A Ring A Rosie
Stars include: Keith Barron, Jack Watson, Jenny Hanley, Brian Jennings, Gilliam Miles, Charlotte Helyar, June Bishop, Anita Harris, Wendy Richard
Quality: 7/10, x2 discs, x3 programmes have timecoding onscreen
Dirs: John King, Kevin Crooks
Genre: British Supernatural TV Series, Folklore, Horror
The post Remembering West Country Tales has a full episode breakdown, including the missing episodes, courtesy of Steve Calvert.
I wouldn’t say these are scary, but they are really atmospheric and charming. The box set below has 9 of the 10 episodes available:
The YouTube playlist below has the 9 episodes available – lower quality, but available to watch as of the time of this original post.
The Sabbatical (S01 E01) has been uploaded by another user, 5PY Heritage, and can be found here:
You’ll find the series listed on IMDB but not Letterboxd.
My favourites were Miss Constantine and The Beast, but I also liked The Breakdown, The Visitor, and The Poacher.
Ring a Ring a Rosie is another ‘autistic kids are evil’ sort of story, and that made me uncomfortable. I also saw where To Wit to Woo was going a mile off, but it was still a decent ride, I was just so sad for the main character the whole time.
Happy watching! I’d love to know what your favourites were, and what you think!
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