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adapted by Ted Hart More Stories from Thriller
Fontana, London, 1975
The blurb on the back:
COUNTRY WEDDING
ONE CAREFUL OWNER
K IS FOR KILLING There really is no equivalent anymore. Brian Clemens - the man who gave us The Avengers and The Professionals - created Thriller in the mid-1970s as a series of one-off full-length dramas, whose only connecting theme was an atmosphere of suspense and a reliance on the sturdy second division of British actors: the likes of Helen Mirren, Denholm Elliott, Diana Dors and (pictured on the cover of this book) Nyree Dawn Porter. It was a format that later passed onto Tales of the Unexpected and Hammer House of Horror, both of which are better remembered than Clemens' blueprint. The series ran for four seasons from 1973 and used to attract a steady 6 million or so viewers, which for ITV at 9pm on a Saturday night in those days was pretty decent (nowadays, it'd be miraculous). I haven't seen any of them for years - decades even - but in my memory they were okay, you know. Not classics, admittedly, but the kind of solid TV drama that is in somewhat short supply nowadays, particularly on ITV. Re-reading these five stories now, however, I have to say that if they were any good then it was down to the quality of the acting and the directing, 'cos the stories sure aren't up to much. Derivative to a fault, they're not even from the pen of Clemens himself, but adapted by Ted Hart from Clemens's original stories. 'Original' may be pushing his luck.
ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: 2/5 HIPNESS QUOTIENT: 2/5 visit an interview with Brian Clemens from the maker of... ![]() Kronos home |