The Owl Service

A small cast of characters. An isolated location. A lot of supernatural things happening for inadequately explained reasons. It's like a Sapphire & Steel story where Sapphire and Steel don't turn up.

The Owl Service is an eight-part TV series from 1969 starring Edwin "Captain Hart" Richfield. Like Sapphire & Steel's first assignment, it appears to have been made for little mannys to watch, but is really far weirder and scarier than it probably ought to be.

Three of the characters - Roger, Alison and Gwyn - are obviously being played by mannys who are significantly older than the characters they are playing, and one character - Alison's mother Margaret - doesn't appear at all.

The fantastical element, where a Welsh legend repeats itself every generation and it is up to Roger, Alison and Gwyn to see if they can break the cycle or else suffer the same tragic fate as Gwyn's parents, is even subtler than in Sapphire & Steel. Several episodes in the middle pass without any sign of it at all, before it ramps up in the final part for a sudden, dramatic, albeit rather rushed, ending.

Any fan of Sapphire & Steel should give this series a look.