Be afraid (TV episodes that are scary).

[Gordon]

Saw this in The Guardian today - I think the only one I have seen is the 'Hush' episode from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which from memory was quite unsettling. Will try and catch the others (bar the ones on Paramount/Sky).

N.B. You'll need Netflix/Prime/Disney/Iplayer to watch most of these.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/oct/31/run-hide-its-the-13-most-terrifying-tv-episodes-to-watch-this-halloween

[jeremyp]

I've seen two of those. Hush (which was absolutely hilarious and also my favourite Buffy episode) and Ghostwatch which really was scary even though I was certain was fake. Now I know it's on Amazon Prime (I thought it had been consigned to oblivion, never to be spoken of again by the BBC), I think I'll give it another go.

[Nearly Sane]

So ones I've seen

Dr Who - Listen. Eerie, I think more than scary. I'm not one that generally gets scared at films or tv. Of all Dr Who episodes, both classic and new, the scariest for me is Midnight with David Tennant. It's a phenomenal performance  from Lesley Sharpe, and the Doctor is helpless, indeed ostracised. I have an underlying phobia of madness and while this isn't explicit here, it's the base for the idea.

Buffy - Hush. Brilliant, funny, not scary imo. Given my fear of madness, Normal Again is the episode that plays on it most.

Ghostwatch - because it's played straight gets to be genuinely scary. The pacing in its brilliant. The only issue is the actress who plays the mother was too well known 

The X Files - Home. Not scary to me, bit icky. Ice, another one that plays on madness works for me

Twin Peaks - Lonely Souls - the sequence covered is brilliant.





Mindhunter Series 1, Episode 2 - yep, scary but a bit worrisome, and obviously about madness. As Mindhunter is factually based, and Kemper and his crines are real, it creates an uncomfortable feeling. Part of why I stopped watching it after 1st series.


Stranger Things - The Weirdo on Maple Street - it's well done. Not scary

The Walking Dead - Seed. All a bit Doom. The Walking Dead is all a bit video game.

Fringe - Marionette - yep that's quite scary, and not very Fringe.

[jeremyp]

The scariest Doctor Who episode for me, or rather, the scariest story was The Green Death. I was six at the time.

[Nearly Sane]

The scariest Doctor Who episode for me, or rather, the scariest story was The Green Death. I was six at the time.

A Connections thing here. When I was putting up stuff in the music thread this morning, I noticed that amongst other people born on All Hallows Eve was the actor Talfryn Thomad who appears in The Green Death. When  I was drafting my earlier reply on this thread I thought about putting up episodes of other series that I had found scary. Decided that it would make the reply too long, and that it would be better to let my brain do some background processing on the question. One episode though that I had thought of was the Law and Order episode of Survivors in which Talfryn Thomas is a main character.

It's scary because it plays on how easy it is to get a decision wrong, and how fragile morality is. I rewatched Survivors during lockdown as watching a programme about the collapse of society due to a virus seemed appropriate. The episode itself seemed a bit heavily signposted now but I still felt the chill that the 11 year old me had.

[Nearly Sane]

Probably the scariest episode of anything for me, and one of the greatest TV episodes of all time is Tweedledum from Colditz, where the question 'Can I Play With Madness?' Is firmly answered No!

Michael Bryant's performance in this is jaw dropping. I was 8 when I first watched it.

[jeremyp]

Probably the scariest episode of anything for me, and one of the greatest TV episodes of all time is Tweedledum from Colditz, where the question 'Can I Play With Madness?' Is firmly answered No!

Michael Bryant's performance in this is jaw dropping. I was 8 when I first watched it.

That's the only episode of Colditz I can remember.

[Nearly Sane]

Continuing episodes that scared me, The Ash Tree in the Ghost Stories for Christmas. This was when I think they are all MR James. It's odd because I must have been 12 and I think I'd watched the previous 2 when I would have been 10 and 11, and liked them but didn't feel scared by them. The Ash Tree is generally not that well thought of as the adaptations go but something about the 'monsters' creeped me out.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0216553/

[Nearly Sane]

Another episode that scared me was from the Dead of Night TV series broadcast in 1972. There are only 3 of 7 episodes still im existence. The first The Exorcism is good but I don't remember seeing it at the time though a couple of years later, my sister told me the basic story, and I also heard a radio adaptation around that time. The second is Return Flight which again I didn't see at the time but don't think is that scary at all 

The one I remember watching at the time is A Woman Sobbing. It mentions the film Gaslight which is obviously an influence but is deeply influenced by the novella The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman which is a great favourite of mine but unsurprinsingly I hadn't read it when I was eight.

It is, as so often with the things I find scary, based around madness. Is the husband trying to send her insane, or just get her declared insane, if so why? Is it nothing to do with him, is she just going mad? Is it something 'supernatural' and she's all too sane?




https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_of_Night_(TV_series)