Shadows: The Waiting Room and A British Christmas Tradition
This is the blog’s official Christmas post and so we have a ghost story for Christmas. It’s not from the legendary BBC series called A Ghost Story for Christmas, but instead from the children’s anthology series Shadows (1975 to 8), the series one episode The Waiting Room. I have actually blogged about this episode before but I like it so much that I want to post about it again for Christmas.
It draws heavily on several classic horror tropes: being stuck at a railway station overnight, a ghostly train, and events from the past happening in the present. Set in 1975, a brother and sister have missed the last train and are going to have to wait all night for the next train at 6.30am. They settle down as best they can in the waiting room, which is thick with dust but warm, and wait for the train.
I think possibly this may not be strictly a ghost story but a time-slip, since the other characters who appear are clearly living in 1925, and events are carrying on as they would have done fifty years before, rather than the long boring wait they expect. A train fireman appears and points out that there is a train at 1.30, so they don’t have so long to wait. Possibly there was, but the timetable he’s pointing to is for 1925. A lady in a magnificent cloche hat turns up and gets on the train.
The brother and sister have to try to stop the train, alerted by a telephone call they receive on a telephone which turns out not to be connected to anything. They can’t stop the train, and end up running away when the same people from 1925 turn up in modern dress to catch the train in the morning.
This play has of course been compared to Arnold Ridley’s The Ghost Train (although the alleged ghost train turns out to be a fake in that play) and I think the time element as well as the atmospheric railway station make it comparable to Sapphire and Steel, particularly the obvious assignment. Not a lot happens as such, apart from the extraordinary events.
It doesn’t half get a bashing on the internet, being compared to village hall am dram. I think The Waiting Room suffers because it only has one scene really, the titular waiting room. I do, however, agree with a common criticism that Paul Henley as the brother isn’t a patch on Jenny Agutter as the sister: he comes across as whiny verging on hysterical at times, but that is the only criticism I have of this play. I suspect he may be intended to be the younger sibling and thus less able to cope with the strange events, but if that is the desired effect the depiction has backfired spectacularly. Wonderful ghostly goings-on.
A British Christmas Television Tradition
Next if you’re not familiiar with it, I would like to introduce you to a British Christmas tradition, which like all Christmas traditions isn’t as old as it seems, dating back only to 1957. This is what is colloquially known as Watching the King, or more correctly The King’s Speech. Every Christmas day at 3pm a short speech by the monarch is broadcast: on the telly since 1957, and on the radio from the 1930s. Before then we just used to argue without the benefit of royalty. Perhaps I should stress that only the most fanatically royalist of his subjects actually watch it with any attention: everyone else is too drunk, asleep or have stamped out by then. Another British tradition is of His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs publishing how many tax returns are submitted on Christmas day each year!
Anyway, the Christmas broadcast didn’t just happen. The queen had coaching in broadcasting on the new medium from a National Treasure called Sylvia Peters. I couldn’t get a blog post out of it but I was struck when she appeared on a Christmas episode of Sykes that she didn’t get just applause but also a sort of ripple which I can only describe as the National Treasure Frisson. This is because she was a major character of the early days of British television, beating hundreds of other applicants who answered the advertisement, to be one of the first continuity announcers in the 1940s. The role then wasn’t what it was now, given that there were frequent derailments of the schedule and technology, and she really had to be on her feet. Unflappable doesn’t begin to sum it up.
And then Miss Peters was one of the commentators for the coronation, the first to be broadcast on TV in its entirety. One of the Dimblebys did the commentary of the actual ceremony, but Miss Peters did the commentary outside the abbey. She was therefore a natural choice to coach the new young queen in the new medium of television: this must have been a hugely daunting thing to do.
So from a moment in television history have a little bit of the first Queen’s Speech:
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my readers.
This blog is mirrored at
culttvblog.tumblr.com/archive (from September 2023) and culttvblog.substack.com (from January 2023 and where you can subscribe by email)
Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an incomplete index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog
There is an index to posts on the Substack version here: https://culttvblog.substack.com/p/index-of-posts?r=1q6qo6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
About this blog: https://culttvblog.substack.com/about
Vote Green for real hope and real change! greenparty.org.uk