Six Tales

Stephen Laws writes:

"Completely by accident, I was looking at the TV schedules last night - and the title Spectre caught my eye (like I have exclusive rights on the word, or something).

"Turns out that it's the first of a six part Spanish series called 6 Tales to Keep You Awake - very much in the Del Toro/Spanish/ghost/horror tradition.

"I watched it this morning, and thought that it was pretty damned good. Amazing that this has been buried away in the schedules! Definitely worth a look-see; one claim to its excellence being that the creative associate involved is Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (director of the excellent Who Can Kill a Child? and, of course, creator of that other great horror - the 321 TV series)."

I saw Spectre in the listings for yesterday where it was written-up as an American TV movie with Robert Culp and Gig Young. An odd scheduling choice for BBC4, I reckoned, and never gave it another thought. The Total TV Guide compilers must have just searched on the title and cribbed the details of the wrong film!

The series looks like a mixed bag, but well worth noting. Jaume Balagueró, co-writer and director of one of the films, made his feature debut with Los Sin Nombre, a well-realised adaptation of Ramsey Campbell's novel The Nameless.