Apr 24, 2021
Out of the Unknown: Tunnel Under the World (2.8, BBC, 1966)
"I've got to see you, it's urgent."
"What did you want to see me about?"
"You must remember, you must!"
"I'm on a pretty tight schedule today - look up the diary, will you, Miss Mitkin?"
"Please, Mr. Birkett, it's dreadfully important."
"I, uh, may be able to fix you in tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow's no good."
"The day after?"
"There's no such day as tomorrow, it has to be today!"
#Out of the Unknown#Tunnel Under the World#frederik pohl#David Campton#Classic TV#Alan Cooke#Ronald Hines#Petra Davies#Gay Hamilton#Timothy Bateson#Peter Madden#Fanny Carby#Bryan Hunt#Patrick Parnell#BBC#Ohhh this one messed with my head! In a good way! I think?! All j know is i found myself thinking about it as I lay in bed hours after#Watching it. I can be forgiven‚ I think‚ for half expecting this to be a comedy episode (not unlike series 1s The Midas Plague)#For one thing this comes from a Pohl story‚ as had the Midas Plague; Pohl was well known for his satirical and sometimes even slightly#Silly Sci fi stories. Secondly‚ it stars Ron Hines‚ then already establishing himself as a kind of deadpan comic costar in a number of (now#Entirely lost) sitcoms‚ and only a year or so away from finding comic immortality as Wendy Craig's husband in Not in Front of the Children#But this isn't really a comic episode... It has a slight edge of dark absurdism but this is closer to something like... Idk perhaps a#British take on a Twilight Zone episode. That same kind of bleak sting and casual approach to the utterly bizarre. As an episode of this#Particular anthology‚ it's a big ask (the production demands of the final act are pretty ambitious and ultimately slightly beyond the#Capabilities of mid 60s BBC carpenters). Hines is great in this frustrated‚ frazzled regular guy kind of way (the sort of role he was close#To being typecast in; he broke more into serious drama in the 1970s). Petra Davies lends solid support but rather fizzles out of the plot#Past the half way point. A courageous attempt to do something very left field and which could have been treated more lightly; but I think#The choice to skew more towards darkness and the disturbing was the right choice. Unsettling.#And alas that wraps up series 2: much less fortunate in archival rates than series 1 (which is extant but for 2 episodes)‚ less than a#Third of this series survived. It did however fare better than poor old series 3... Like near contemporary Doomwatch‚ the survival rate for#OotU hits its nadir with series 3‚ with just one orphan episode surviving complete. Luckily‚ the BFI have cobbled some restorations up..