Ghosts In The Machine: Cementing The Stone Tape's Reputation, Part One
Nigel Kneale will always have a special place in the sci-fi pantheon, but thanks to The Stone Tape, he'll also be remembered for one of TV's greatest ghost stories...
Christmas Day 1972, and British television was serving up its standard fare. Eric and Ernie were appearing on both BBC One and ITV, the Beeb spent an afternoon at Billy Smart’s Circus and, if you didn’t like the look of Auntie’s Christmas Night With The Stars, the commercial channel offered the All-Star Comedy Carnival, presented by everyone’s favourite gap-toothed stand-up Jimmy Tarbuck.
But not everything was safe and samey. Take the other channel - yes, there were just three channels in 1972! On BBC Two, Christmas telly meant a very special Call My Bluff featuring Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, plus the latest instalment of Alastair Cooke’s history of America and an evening at the ballet. Night owls, meanwhile, could enjoy Fred Astaire in conversation with American talk show host Dick Cavett. Would that the festive schedules were always this diverse…
However, the undisputed highlight of an idiosyncratic line-up was The Stone Tape. Starring Jane Asher, Michael Bryant and Iain Cuthbertson, The Stone Tape was a supernatural drama overseen by Peter Sasdy who’d directed late-era Hammer offerings like Taste The Blood Of Dracula, Countless Dracula and - the quite superb - Hands Of The Ripper.
However, the real draw was screenwriter Nigel Kneale who, as the creator of Professor Bernard Quatermass and such superb one-off dramas as The Year Of The Sex Olympics and The Abominable Snowman had already given the Beeb countless hours of classic fantasy television.
If The Stone Tape was different from Kneale’s earlier assignments, it was because the BBC had already established a tradition for frightening festive fare. Perhaps inspired by the popularity of the Jonathan Miller adaptation of MR James’ Whistle And I’ll Come To You (1968), the A Ghost Story For Christmas strand ran between 1971 and 1978. But while the Corporation would reap wide acclaim for its seasonal presentations of James’ A Warning To The Curious (1972) and Charles Dickens’ The Signal Man (1976), it was The Stone Tape - though not officially part of the series - that secured a particularly troubling space in the nation’s collective conscious.
Although influenced by the work of Kneale’s hero, the aforementioned Montague Rhodes James, The Stone Tape was an original work from a true master of fantasy drama. And thanks to a contemporary setting, a raft of strong performances and a brand of evil rarely encountered in ghost stories, it left a mark as indelible as blood on virgin snow.
To quote leading lady Jane Asher, “Barely a month goes by without someone asking me about The Stone Tape - which is amazing when you consider that it aired so long ago and has barely been screened since...”