Dramarama: Spooky - The Complete Series [ITV] [Network] [DVD]

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The first seven episodes all had a supernatural theme and were made by Thames Television under the umbrella title Spooky. Nicholas Ball, best known at the time for his leading role in the popular private detective drama Hazell (1978-1979), stars in David Hopkins’ story of the eponymous smug, egotistical radio DJ, the host of a confrontational late-night phone-in show. When they originally sired back in the early eighties, I was a tv-less student so, unlike students today with their endless loop of countdown and Jeremy Kyle, I never actually saw any 'Dramarama' - let alone this expressly spooky version. As a punishment he’s put in detention and left alone in an empty music room to finish the work he’s been neglecting.

Then there's the one about the arrogant DJ who gets haunted by a Poltergeist who has become fed up with him! The series has rarely been repeated in recent years, although two episodes - "Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night" and "Back to Front" - were broadcast on the CITV Channel as part of a 30th anniversary weekend in January 2013. Hearst UK is the trading name of the National Magazine Company Ltd, 30 Panton Street, Leicester Square, London, SW1Y 4AJ. There’s a noise from outside and the camera pans round to the window and we hear people approaching.Born in Cheshire and brought up in Alderley Edge, his work is rooted in the landscape and history of the area. According to the chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall, a naked wild man, covered in hair, was caught in the nets of local fishermen. Aimed at a young audience, the plays manage to achieve an effective level of atmosphere, with good performances from a cast that includes a number of familiar faces.

The boy decides to challenge his own fear of finding out exactly what is inside the cupboard in the dark corner of his room. All in all, even viewing the episodes in a single setting as a fully grown and highly cynical adult, they were wildly entertaining. Some of the episodes in the earlier Spooky series of horror stories were downright traumatic for any sensitive kid watching. Like many of the Spooky episodes – and indeed a lot of the Dramarama stories – the acting of the young leads is a little “stage schooly” but it’s unlikely that its young target audience would have noticed, instead being drawn into the drama. The Keeper’, on the other hand, provides moments that are genuinely eerie, even to an adult audience in 2011.

Episodes comprise: 'War Games With Caroline', 'The Exorcism of Amy', 'The Danny Roberts Show', 'The Ghostly Earl', 'In a Dark, Dark Box', 'The Restless Ghost' and 'The Keeper'. Catherine Butler talks about how Garner is “ careful to integrate his fiction with the physical reality beyond the page” but here it’s woven with a sense of escalating dread that scared me more than half of Lawrence Gordon Clark’s Ghost Stories for Christmas (and I love those) and director John Woods deserves huge credit for the inventive camera work . The wind isn’t effective and the banging is realised as part of the score, which while interesting from the point of view of whether or not the sound is diegetic (and there’s no trace of it when Peter plays back the recording he made), it doesn’t jolt or disturb the viewer as well it might.

From memory it also had Brian Capron (Corrie's Richard Hillman) in a small role before he became Mr Kirkwood in Grange Hill though he isn't listed on the imdb. Then afterwards, all seems to be well, the corpse is removed and the room converted into another bedroom, until one day the poltergeist activity starts up again. The final episode of this initial run, The Keeper was an original story by Alan Garner and I think is probably one of the most terrifying things I’ve seen. The Exorcism of Amy’ is set in a super-minimal, soft-focus household version of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude and pits a youthful Lucy Benjamin (best known as EastEnders’ Lisa Fowler) against both Amelia – a horrifying, quasi-Bonnie Langford incarnation of herself – and Elizabeth (Annabelle Lanyon), a po-faced Hermione Grainger-wannabe whose idea of niceness involves being as scary as possible to a new friend who just wants to be left alone.Roberts is driven half-mad by the voice, driving away Alice with his angry outbursts, leaving him alone with his tormentor. We know right from the off that there is something already resident, and comfortably at home, in the house and it's not best pleased at the arrival of the interlopers. it first appeared under the name 'dramarama:spooky' in 1983 as all the plays in this series were made by thames TV. Though set almost entirely in a studio set graveyard, The Restless Ghost is surprisingly atmospheric, a pleasing pastiche of Victorian and Edwardian ghosts stories with a dash or two of Hammer horror thrown in for good measure.

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