Tales Of The Unexpected - Classic or Dud?

Buzz buzz buzz. (The only episode of TOTU that everyone saw as you note above.)

Opening sequences that promise more than you ever get, er Eastenders. You get the idea it might be about all of London, not just a fictitious adjunct to the Central Line.

Shouldn't Albert Square be like Shoreditch by now?

Weren't there two different versions of Tales of the Unexpected (one for the U.S., and one for the U.K.)? The show I remember had as its title sequence some close-up shots on a darkly-lit carousel, and the voiceover: "A wise man believes only in lies, trusts only in the absurd, and learns to expect the unexpected..."

One of the presumably U.K. episodes I really liked was the one with Derek Jacobi where he plays an eccentric, flamboyantly-dressed schizotypal who arrives in a small village (in reality, he is in the town to get his revenge on one of the townsfolk who framed him for murder 15 years earlier). The scene where he gets his revenge is totally brilliant, and I always enjoy seeing Jacobi do the quietly menacing thing.

Another episode I kind of remember is where two guys pay their friend a visit in his house and find him in the cellar, shoveling back in the ground. They become increasingly suspicious that he murdered his wife and buried her there; he, of course, denies it. Finally, they get a policeman who makes the guy dig up his cellar. They find nothing, and the two guys leave ashamed that they suspected him. Then later, the wife comes home; the husband strangles her and buries her in the cellar.

some of the TOTE episodes were quite quaint and mundane. Richard Briers as the illiterate verger who gets kicked out coz he can't read and opens a shop, for example.

Roald Dahl was my hero

I lord it over men sexually by doing the dance from the opening sequence.

The only one I remember in any detail was the Jacobi one - that was superb.

I also remember an episode with the two Collins in it (Joan and Pauline). They played sisters - Joan was the popular one who always got the guys, Pauline the quietly "bitter and twisted" sibling. It involved Joan hatching a scheme to attract the man Pauline was in love with by faking suicide - the idea that Pauline would post a suicide note to the bloke so he would save her but vengeful Pauline didn't post the letter and thus Joanie expired. That type of plot was typical of Tales - the worm turns and the unlikeable central protagonist was hoist by their own petard.

roald dahl is my dad's mum's sister's husband's brother!!

(Great aunts brother in law?)

Now there is a tale that was totally unexpected.

(did anyone see Peter Cook on telly over christmas pretending to be the former Ronald Dahl (afterwards he dropped the n to make himself more interesting and unexpected) presenting this programme and then catching fire unexpectedly? I larfed and larfed and so did my goodwife)

Wasn't there also one with Peter Cushing, and he's an ex-German officer serving out a life prison term, and he relates to his fellow prisoners a story that happened decades ago involving a duel and a poisoned sword? I vaguely remember that one.