Ann Way Season: Shadows of Fear - The Death Watcher

Shadows of Fear was an anthology series in which all the episodes have in common that the characters have some reason to fear. It only ever consisted of one series of eleven episodes, being broadcast in a leisurely way between 1970 and 1973. It hasn't appeared on this blog before, although I see that I have posted about the other series which I tend to confuse with Shadows of Fear, namely the series called Shadows, which was broadcast between 1975-8, and which covered more typically supernatural and horror territory.

Despite both being anthology series and being easily confused because of the name, Shadows has rather tended to overshadow Shadows of Fear because it revived a character from the legendary series Ace of Wands (1970-2) and had a spin off series, The Boy Merlin, in 1979. Naturally to anyone my age or older, who are most likely to remember these shows, Shadows has more presence. The reason I'm starting off by getting this out of the way is that I was convinced I had blogged about Shadows of Fear and in fact had some difficulty realising that the episode I was looking for waan't an episode of Shadows!

The plot of The Death Watcher is essentially a very simple one. A scientist, Emmy Erickson, unwisely accepts the invitation to a meeting from a Dr Pickering, who researches in an area that Emmy rejects, and believes that the dead and the living can communicate. She goes to his remote house, and in no time at all is locked up, being experimented on and looking at the prospect of being murdered. Because Dr Pickering has told everyone that she is a mentally ill patient receiving treatment nobody believes her protestations that she is being held prisoner.

I think possibly the reason this show hasn't appeared here before is that this sort of tense situation will either appeal to the viewer or it won't. I quite see that a lot of people watch this sort of drama because of the comfort that it strangely gives to us. In the real world the idea of being held prisoner and tortured gives no pleasure at all, but in the world of fiction we know that the situation is going to have to be resolved and the prisoner is going to escape of be released in some way. It's a perfect example of how the world of story telling provides us with an escape from the real world by creating a world where injustices are going to be corrected by the end of the story.

As it happens the person who provides the escape is actually Ann Way. Pickering's assistant Dawson catches a bus on his day off, and finds himself sitting next to Ann who is chatting away about the doctor. The things she says are what make him realise that all is not what it seems at the house. This is one of Ann Way's characteristic dotty old lady roles and she plays it marvellously, talking in a West Country accent complete with rhotic R.

Dawson's day off provides the only part of the episode which isn't completely studio-bound, and production values are otherwise what you would expect of the time.

I think that if you like the sort of television which appears here and also like suspense, this show and episode will appeal to you (this sentence wasn't meant to sound damning in any way, I just can't seem to phrase it in a way which sounds neutral).

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