The Ray Bradbury Theater
Season 6

THE LONELY ONE

Three women try to enjoy their evening at the cinema despite the fact there's a serial killer on the loose and they're going to have walk home after dark.

The final season of the show starts off with a non-genre episode. Instead, this is a bit of a thriller that turns into a full on horror sequence at the end as a single woman is chased through the dark woods by either a serial killer or the wild imaginings of her frightened mind. It is this final sequence that sticks in the memory, with Joanna Cassidy handling the abrupt change from confident woman to screaming heroine in a manner that doesn't totally undermine her character. There are some character moments that don't work half as well, such as the decision to carry on with a fun night out after tripping over the latest victim's body in the woods. Not many people could enjoy a relaxing evening after coming across a corpse.

The twist in the tail is visible from miles away, of course, but on the whole this is a very strong season opener.

Top

THE HAPPINESS MACHINE

A man wakes up one morning with the yen to share his happiness with the world. He starts on a happiness machine and becomes obsessed with finishing it, neglecting his family in the process. When it is finished, he is surprised to find some resistance to its existence.

Sometimes, the point of these stories can be seen coming down the track from a long way away and that's the case here. The plot is too slight to hold the attention before getting to the moral of the story that we knew was coming all along. It doesn't help that the happiness machine itself looks about as likely to work as the proverbial chocolate teapot. Again the storytelling is a little muddled and rushed due to the condensed running time, which needs more detail to flesh out the threadbare plot.

Elliott Gould is immensely likeable, as ever, as the hero of the piece, but even he can't lift it above the average.

Top

TOMORROW'S CHILD

A modern birthing technology fails and places the child into another dimension, appearing in our dimension as a blue pyramid. The parents struggle to deal with the situation whilst waiting for the scientists to find a way to restore the child to this dimension. Their solution, however, is a bit more problematic than that.

This is hands down the weirdest of the stories the show has put forward yet. Though we can't actually imagine the dimension into which the child is born, the representation of it in this world as a blue pyramid is just plain bizarre. There is no explanation as to how the child can survive in the other dimension, alone and unfed, nor how it can be heard in our own dimension.

The reactions of the parents are also hard to comprehend. Not because we can't imagine them, but simply because they are not consistent. Carol Kane goes through so many conflicting emotional states in such a short time that she comes off as just unstable. Meanwhile, Michael Sarrazin is painted as cold and unfeeling, when he is really just trying to cope with a lost child and an alcoholic wife. At least the ending is in keeping with what has gone before being, well, bizarre.

Top

THE ANTHEM RUNNERS

An American screenplay writer is in Dublin when he finds a James Joyce first edition. He is then challenged by the owner of a pub to take a bet on that most unusual of local sports - anthem sprinting.

Whimsy hasn't played a large part in the show to date, but this episode is the very essence of whimsical. It's set in a whimsical Ireland that bears little resemblance to the real one, but owes everything to the Hollywood convention. There isn't a single leprechaun in sight, but the lead anthem chaser might as well be one. The sport of anthem chasing itself is the most ridiculous and whimsical idea and the problem that gets in the way of the event of the evening (ie the magical power of Deanna Durbin's singing voice) is nothing other than pure whimsy.

Men will bet on anything appears to be the point of the story and, if it isn't, we can't imagine any reason for this to exist at all.

Top

BY THE NUMBERS

As a young man, a writer encounters a boy who is mercilessly drilled by his father as though they were both in the army. He imagines the only two outcomes are the child killing himself or his father. As and older man, the writer encounters the child again, on a train, and learns the outcome was a bit more complicated than either of those possibilities.

With no genre elements, this is a character sketch leading to a twist in the tail that manages to be satisfying for once. The main part of the story is played out around a pool in flashback, so at least one of the outcomes is ruled out, but when the twist comes it is more complicated and subtle than we might have expected and that at least justifies what has gone before it.

Top

THE LONG RAIN

Four survivors are faced with a trek across the treacherous terrain of a planet where it never stops raining to find a place of salvation after their ship crashes on approach.

A battle of wills for survival against a planet with smoking waters, directed lightning strikes and plants that will choke the life out of anything that doesn't move enough, this might have been a fascinating stand off given enough time for the constant rain and threats to wear down the determination of the astronauts, but the skimpy running time means that the highly-trained men lose their minds with too much rapidity for the episode to truly convince. The coda within the sun dome is unnecessary and feels like a late addition.

Top

THE DEAD MAN

A woman who spent her entire life caring for her mother, who has now died, moves to a small town and find kinship of a kind with a man who drifts about the town claiming he died in the flood that took his farm and livestock.

This is a story of two lost souls, broken people who find each other in a quiet and unspectacular way, making their lives better. What it doesn't have is an ending. Told from the viewpoint of the child who believes the man to be truly dead, that might have been acceptable, but the film is told mainly from the woman's point of view and the ending makes no sense at all in those terms. It's not an ending, it simply stops.

Louise Fletcher does a fine job of crafting a lonely woman the audience can care about in the short running time and the relationship between her and the man is strange, but in a way that isn't unbelievable. Sadly, the story doesn't know where to take the relationship and the conclusion is a little baffling.

Top

SUN AND SHADOW

When an American film crew show up outside his house to film a commercial, the owner decides it is his job to protect his way of life from this crass intrusion.

Selfish capitalism comes up against selfish traditionalism in this fable. The film crew assume they can do whatever they want as long as they throw some money around. It takes only one man of principle, uninterested in their wealth, to scupper their plans. It helps that all he has to do is keep showing up in their shot to spoil their plans and that they haven't got any permits or permissions to set rules for him to break. Still, nobody is pretending this is how the situation would really play out. There's also a slight whiff of hypocrisy in this particular story being filmed as part of a television show.

That said, the story doesn't outstay its welcome, or its whimsicality. It's good-natured and has a definite outcome, which isn't quite as common in this series as it could be.

Top

SILENT TOWNS

Mars was evacuated in a rush and one of the technicians, working far underground, didn't get the message. He wanders the abandoned cities, lonely and alone. Then, somewhere, a phone starts to ring.

This is an episode that has not aged well at all. The early section, where the lone stranded man wanders the town in search of the ringing phones, is quite effective and even eerie. Though it is questionable that a civilisation that could colonise Mars could fail to contact everyone in the face of an evacuation, the consequences play out in a believable fashion. When he finally connects with the caller, his joy is palpable and the story takes a turn.

Unfortunately, it's a turn for the worse. The man's response to what he finds is immediate, shallow, reprehensible and misogynistic, turning the story into the same and leaving a sour taste in the mouth.

Top

DOWNWIND FROM GETTYSBURG

In a tourist theatre at the site of the Gettysburg address, an advanced robot is programmed to give the speech again, just as Abraham Lincoln once did. Unexpectedly, history strikes twice.

Although it features an advanced android in the guise of Abraham Lincoln (and a not very good guise, to be honest. We would have expected the robot to have been much better than the one depicted here), this story isn't really a genre story at all. Instead, it is an examination of how the search for celebrity can drive people to do almost anything, including 'murder'. The short running time doesn't allow for a very deep examination, not least because the set up of the situation takes up the first third of the episode. The robot's creator is shown to be a driven and passionate individual, which makes the very real possibility of violence all the more potent. This is a good showing by Howard Hesseman, who does well with the time he is given.

As reality television stokes the fires of those wanting to be famous and willing to do anything to become so, the theme of this episode becomes ever more relevant. The conclusion, and punishment meted out to the criminal of the piece, are satisfying enough, but a bit more time spent on the interaction between the creator and destroyer could have made for a much more interesting and layered discussion.

Top

SOME LIVE LIKE LAZARUS

At a holiday resort, an ageing woman waits for the arrival of the man she has loved since they were both twelve, wondering if this will be the year when he kills his domineering mother and runs away with her.

This episode manages to fail as both a love story and a murder mystery. Told in flashbacks to different time periods, it never really digs under the skin of the trio of characters. Yes, the girl is a bit of an independent and fiery tomboy, the boy is a weak and disappointing man and the mother is a conrolling harridan, but those single dimensions are as far as characters are sketched, and they are rough sketches at that. There is not reall effort made to convey why the mother controls her son so tightly, nor why he allows it to happen. Clearly, money and status has something to do with it, but more time was needed to flesh out that relationship.

More time is also needed for the main relationship. It's easy to see why the boy likes the girl, but it is almost impossible to see why she loves him - apart from the fact he appears to be the only child around the resort in the early years. That lack of depth of makes it impossible to understand why she waits for him at all. Her sacrifice at the end makes perfect sense, but hardly the greatest of television.

Top

THE HANDLER

A quirky mortician in a small town exacts revenge on corpses destined for closed caskets for previous slights, both real and imagined. One night, one of the corpses proves to be less dead than it appears.

Michael J Pollard has always played unusual and quirky parts and so the starring role of the misfit mortician is easy for him. The script is too wordy, explaining the plot rather than showing it, but being cheap because it's a one man show. Unusually, there isn't a twist in the tail in this episode, there are two. The first is predictable and not all that exciting, but then the final one shows up and is a bit more gruesome.

Hardly a stand out, but solid at least.

Top

FE FI FO FUM

A ne'er do well husband buys an industrial strength garbage disposal system as part of a plan to drive his wife's grandmother insane and claim her money. After all, how much resistance could an old woman put up?

Another foray into unusual crime stories, with no genre content, though this does feature a future Cylon in the shape of a supporting role from Lucy Lawless. In truth, it's a slight tale and outlasts its welcome long before the end of the running time.

Top

THE GREAT WIDE WORLD OVER THERE

When her nephew comes to stay, an illiterate farmer's wife finds a way to get the one thing her neighbour always holds over her, mail.

Considering just how slight this story is, it is astonishing that it manages to make such an impression. It is possibly the best episode that the series has produced yet. Drenched in the glow of nostalgia, it benefits hugely from a likeable performance from the equally likeable Tyne Daly. Her character's needs and desires are so simple it's impossible not to be delighted for her when they are achieved.

For once, the running time fits the story and doesn't short change it. It's a kind-hearted fable of simple folk that probably couldn't be made in today's cynical world, but it succeeds in its task of making the world seem just a little bit better.

Top

THE TOMBSTONE

A travelling salesman and his wife check into the last available hotel room. The only catch is the stone mason who was in the room left an unfinished tombstone at the bottom of the bed.

This story suffers from lack of logic and common sense on such a scale that it is never even remotely believable, much like the over the top performance from Shelley Duvall. There is no reason for her to believe the tombstone means there's a grave in the room any more than it is ever likely that a hotel would allow a stone mason to carry out tombstone carving in there in the first place. Why would the mason want to? Where is his workshop? None of this makes the slightest bit of sense and so when the plot tries to twist into a ghost story, it fails to be even remotely chilling.

The final twist can be seen coming a long way off and isn't worth the time spent wading through the rest of the plot. This turned out to be the show's final episode and it isn't a great one to go out on.

Top