I realised today that, thanks to more storage issues, I don’t have my DVD copy of 1984 BBC adaptation of The Box of Delights with me. It’s something I’ve watched just about every Christmas for the last few years, and it doesn’t really work if you watch it at any other time of the year (As a tangent – it’s also an unutterably strange story, where the first couple of episodes are genuinely spooky stuff, revolving around magic, sinister wolves and the pagan history that’s lurking just behind the quiet facade of England, and then it suddenly turns into a decidedly camp Buchan-for-kids romp all about nasty gangsters abducting clergymen, only really remembering its weirdness in the last episode (just before the ‘It was all a dream’ ending. It’s also one of those series where it’s only when you watch it as a grown up that you realise that Robert Stephens’ OTT turn as Abner Brown is so flagrantly, spectacularly gay that there are barely words to describe it…)

Anyhow, I found myself adrift for Christmas viewing, but the Internet is coming to my rescue in a variety of ways – including finding this, the Christmas 1960 episode of classic anthology series The Twilight Zone. It’s not one of the show’s out-and-out corkers, and it’s also one of the happier tales from a show that was more than ready to look in some very dark places, which also means that there’s lots of sentiment and a few moments which could certainly be described as twee and dated – but it’s also charming, touching, and with enough of writer Rod Serling’s sense of intelligence and social conscience to it that it still exerts a pull. So, for your seasonal viewing, here’s the full episode – ‘The Night of the Meek’. Enjoy…

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