Though Roald Dahl is better known in this day as the author of stories for children, he had a parallel career as the author of
short stories with more adult, macabre sensibilities. Some of those stories became part of a short-run series to fill the slot of to not
one but
two ill-fated Jackie Gleason shows. But instead of another game show or talk show, CBS wanted something to pair with the Twilight Zone. That show was
Way Out, though it didn't rate well and only ran for
14 episodes (and
5 episodes are on Archive.org). 18 years later, Dahl returned to TV with his sinister stories, but this time it was in the UK, where
Tales of the Unexpected lasted 9 seasons,
112 episodes in total. You can view
23 or so episodes online, split into parts (YT Playlist).
Random Bits and Pieces
* The above linked YT playlist features clips uploaded by
starman2110, who might have some clips not included in that playlist.
* Like many of Dahl's macabre short stories,
The Landlady found new life in various forms. First, it was
first published in the New Yorker in 1959, then
made into an Alfred Hitchcock Presents epsidode in 1961, and later as
an episode (complete ep on YT) of Tales of the Unexpected in 1979, the show's first season. Oddly,
the story is used as part of an English learning program, wherein you can read the whole short story in PDF or listen to someone read the story in 4 MP3 clips. You can also read the story
in plain HTML, also part of
an English learning course.
* There were
a couple of US openings for the show, beyond the
original Roald Dahl opening from the first two seasons, and the opening featuring John Houseman as the new narrator when Dahl was no longer involved in story writing or introducing the show.
* The
Peter Cook & Co special on
London Weekend Television (LWT) featured a segment called
Tales Of The Much As We Expected, which spoofed the Tales of the Unexpected, and it's host, "Ronald Dahl."
*
Roald Dahl, previously
posted by bearwife at 3:01 PM on March 22, 2011