The After School Hauntology of Dramarama

Beasts, Hammer House of Horror, Tales of the Unexpected, Supernatural, Dead of Night; at one point, our nation's televisions were so packed with sinister, twist-in-the-tale anthology shows that even children had some of their own. ITV's Dramarama ran for 91 episodes between 1983 and '89, and while these weren't strictly genre pieces, often featuring more regular fare, two of which span off into full series (Children's Ward and Dodger, Bonzo And The Rest), the focus tended to lean heavily on the Fortean, and outright horror. The usual theme for these Halloween essays is “when show x went spooky!” but spookiness was Dramarama's raison d'être , as the follow-up to a series literally titled Spooky, which had episodes like The Restless Ghost, The Ghostly Earl, and The Exorcism of Amy. But let's keep with tradition, and take in some half-hours from the regular run.

I can't do this and not talk about Death Angel, even though it's one of the episodes originally produced for another youth anthology series, 1981's Theatre Box, and later repurposed as a Dramarama, getting thrown into that show's repeats. Set in the world of wrestling, Death Angel was written by Brian Glover, himself an ex-wrestler under the name Leon Arris 'The Man from Paris', but best known as Kes's loudmouth PE teacher, or the vest-wearing neighbour Richie and Eddie pinch gas from in Bottom.

The set-up is three children sneaking into the backstage of a theatre, via a knotted rope dropped through a skylight, to get a free view of the show, stood on milk crates and peering through the air vents. Our rascals are Bud (your classic urchin), Toy (a punk girl with a pink fringe), and Fergus (a young Gary Beadle), while one of the wrestlers is Ray Winstone, his match stopping early due to a cut. Just the sight of such a realistically bloodied face on children's television is surprising, though the kids wrongly believe it must be ketchup.

Appropriately for an episode set in such a secretive world, almost the entire story is voyeuristically witnessed through vents, and which side of the fence this sits on television portrayals of wrestling being either fake or a genuine contest is unclear. Winstone's wording to another performer of “who are you wrestling with tomorrow night” suggests it's meant to be phony – with rather than against. There's even a lengthy exchange about “shooters,” an insider term that would've been understood by about a hundred people in 1981. A shooter, as explained by Bill Maynard in the Vince McMahon role, is a “hard man, top man. You don't mess with shooters. They can kill you as soon as look at you.”

The brief wrestling scenes add to the unsettling vibe, action under a chorus of boos and cheers, but aside from half a dozen front row punters visible only from the behind, the budget allows nothing beyond the ring but blackness, like we're watching Chris Benoit suplexing Savile onto his head over and over again for an audience of goblins down in the underworld. That said, it is the comically unspectacular British wrestling of the time; dramatised by actors and all; like the pratfalls of the Two Ronnies in a skit set at Mr. Me-Naggy's Kung Pu dojo. But anything would feel unnerving under its discordant soundtrack of horns and off-beat drums, with distant jeering from the auditorium heard under the children's dialogue – “shut it, you wally!”

Another vent gives a direct view into the dressing room, though thankfully nobody's got their william out or are defecating in a co-worker's bag as a funny jape, instead, the sight of Death Angel preparing for his match. A raspy-breathed heel in a featureless black mask and bodysuit, his vague Eastern European accent is unable to pronounce Birmingham, which is where he's off to tomorrow, to face the exotically named opponent Kawasaki 850. But Fergus warns against his chums spying, afraid they'll see the Angel without his mask, which the poster promises will result in death! It's all soaked in that fuzzy, approaching dread of the grown-up anthologies, and Chekov's Unmasking is the inevitable, unavoidable monster on the final page, creeping ever closer. The kids speculate he wears a mask because he's burned, and that “he's got maggots crawlin' out of his eyeballs and mouth...”

Death Angel's entrance gear is horrifying enough, with a white-on-black skull design and accompanying angel wings, like an even worse Mothman. As Maynard orders him to take the mask off if he loses, it seems wrestling is real here. “Only Death itself takes off the mask,” says the Angel, and told he'll be in the main event, he asserts “the Angel of Death always comes at the end.” It's incredible how many plot strands they cram into a 26-minute piece. Fergus is specifically afraid of seeing the Angel's face because he's hoping to get signed by Arsenal talent scouts, and you can't play football if you're dead. In some very 1981 dialogue, Toy tells him “You don't 'alf pong. Reckon your mum should give you a bath!” which reveals his mum's banged up in the nick, and Fergus plans on visiting tomorrow, racing up to Birmingham on his brother's Kawasaki 850. Hold on...

Death Angel keeps the mask in his bout against Lucky Day (pre-dating Steve Martin's Three Amigos character by some years), and in a final act twist, the kids are actually there to rob Bill Maynard, snatching the bag of takings, plus a home-made pork pie from Winstone's missus, leaving Maynard to scale a set of bleachers as he gives chase, in the show's tensest scene (if he keels over, there's no Claude Greengrass!). Fergus doesn't join them, limping with an ankle injury, which goes away when he sneaks back to the vent to spy on Death Angel removing the hood. We don't see see what he sees, only his reaction, scarpering in terror, too panicked to clamber back up the rope – “I saw his face! I saw it! I'm going to die!”

Maynard tells Death Angel what happened, bemoaning the loss of a half-eaten pork pie whilst in the midst of a heart attack. At that moment, Fergus makes it onto the roof, with some very comical Arn Anderson style “Whoaaa! I'm off-balance!” acting atop a girder, knees a-knocking, arms a-flailing. As Maynard pleads with Death Angel to call an ambulance, it's then he turns and shows his real face. As often in these things, there's one image that sticks with us forever. In viewers' online reminiscences of the episode, they often misremember the logistics; who was in the dressing room and what led to this moment. But never the image. It's a single second of screen-time, but anyone who witnessed it as a child will carry that second with them forever; horrible melted face like Rice Krispies poured into concrete. And up on the roof, the girder is empty, Fergus having fallen to his death. Wonder what came right after? Tommy Boyd and his perm cheerily introducing the next cartoon?

If Death Angel feels like a Tales from the Unexpected, 1987's Snap is A Ghost Story for Christmas; or even Hammer House of Horror, from which it semi-borrows the premise of The Two Faces of Evil. We open on rain-soaked marshes, lorry thundering past containing the world's worst dad, berating depressed son Peter about his fecklessness, and a school project to hike round Romney Marshes for a day – “that son of mine can just about string five words together.” They pass the classic creepy hitch-hiker, a figure in a cloak-like black mac that dad doesn't even see, and anyway, “I've got one layabout on board, let's leave it at that, shall we?” As dad drops him off, under one of many horror music stings, we see the hiker – somehow – stood just down the road.

As someone Elon Musk would describe as psychotically childless, (weirdly, no woman has yet seen fit to procreate with a man whose job is effectively 'making references to Syd Little') I'm not particularly au fait with modern children's television, but any bits I've caught on the screens of young relatives, it all seems very brightly coloured and joyful, a world away from the stuff Scarred For Life have gotten three (excellent) volumes out of. I'm aware of Creeped Out, an anthology in the vein of what we're discussing, but when I was a lad, kids on telly were always turning into dogs or battling hypnotic headmasters and whatnot. Which traumatising images will today's youngest generation be discussing in their adult years? Probably some TikTok thing about singing toilets. But viewers of Snap were treated to particularly bleak scenes with Peter's trip; yellow mac, pissy rain; a handwritten, mud splattered sign on a gate reading 'loose dogs will be shot.' Tom Baker's uncredited narrator bookends the tale with lines from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – “Like one that on a lonesome road, doth walk in fear and dread...”

The folk horror vibes are pristine, with shots of desolate fields, moss-covered follies, and tatty scarecrows with empty eye sockets, all seen as Peter's Polaroids. Most disconcerting visual is a shot of half a dozen dead birds hanging from a cross by their ankles. And through all this, the man in the mac, always nearby, unseen. A bird seems to call Peter's name. A photo of some bushes, into which we crash zoom again and again, until landing on half a face, peering out in a legitimate jump scare. CITV Lake Mungo. Even in the marshes, the unlucky blighter finds himself unwelcome, tramping into a church being renovated by sour men, with a bad actor up a scaffold admonishing “Can't you see we're working. Why don't you just get lost?” As he storms out, tools seem to invisibly fly from a workman's hands, while a headstone outside has been desecrated by a tin of white paint. Did Peter do that, or was it something else?

Taking rest in a concrete shelter to scoff paste sandwiches, a dark figure watches from the dunes, shown in dizzying, back and forth zooms. But after briefly leaving the bunker, he returns to find his sandwiches torn to pieces and scattered on the ground, which feels very poltergeisty. Outside, the stranger's pegging it away, now wearing Peter's yellow raincoat, tossing aside the black one, which Peter dons as he gives chase; an impossible chase; like running after your own shadow. Scrambling up pebbles, it brings to mind A Warning to the Curious; which at times Snap feels like a (very good) cover version of, and in the scariest moment, Peter walks alongside some groynes, not noticing he's passing his nemesis, stood immobile on the other side, again and again. Finally catching up, he means to clout the hitcher with a big log, but he disappears, leaving a cache of defaced Polaroids.

After nightfall, a final chase – stranger now armed with a machete – takes them back to the church, full of light and life and the sounds of a choir, until Peter opens the door to find it empty. The figure stands in an open doorway, and for the first time we see his face. It's Peter, or at least a doppelgänger. His reflection taunts him from a mirror – “Don't look for him, Peter, he's done with,” and then begs “please, let me in. You know that you like me, the secret of me, the darkness of me. Just close your eyes and let me be you.” I swear there's more running than the whole series of Interceptor as he scarpers again, finally making it to the road where dad's arrived to pick him up.

Except, dad drives straight past, and gazing out of the passenger window is yellow mac Peter. Dad apologises for his behaviour this morning, to which 'Peter' tells him “it's alright. I'm gonna be different now, you'll see.” As the original Peter recedes in the rear view mirror, you get the sense dad's gonna get strangled in his sleep, and viewers are left to wonder, did Peter go out to find himself and come back a new boy, leaving that meek little victim out on the marshes? Or did he hate his life so much he willed up a violent tupla to take his place, free to no longer be 'Peter'? You didn't get this with Jossy's Giants.

1989's Back to Front ploughs a similar furrow. This one's written by Anthony Horowitz, creator of Foyle's War and later hand-picked by the Fleming estate to author a new series of Bond novels. Though most importantly, he created Crime Traveller, which was required mid-90's viewing for David Wicks off EastEnders aficionados and nerds who fancied the new Kochanski. We open on a close-up of Ross Kemp in an antique shop, where a dad's haggling for a full-length mirror with a mysteriously accented owner Mr Rolyat, who seems to speak in quasi-palindromes “Accent the place? Place the accent!” He even offers the wrong hand when sealing the deal with a handshake. The series is filled with neat little clues like that, before there were subreddits to pick them all apart.

There's a sense Dramarama writers cherry-picked inspiration from their favourite horrors, and Horowitz undoubtedly drew from Beyond the Grave, where Cushing's antique dealer flogs David Warner a cursed mirror – “it's séance time!” Hanging the mirror in his son's (also called David) bedroom, it's hats off to the set designers, with Wolverine, Terminator, and Kiss posters, and a Def Leppard scarf pinned to the wall above the bed. David deems the mirror weird. “David, you like weird things. Weird comics, weird posters. You're weird,” says dad, ruffling his hair. Cheers, Rick Allen's crying, as if he didn't have enough on his plate. The first scare comes early when David walks off but the reflection remains, with a smirk on its face, and you can immediately tell where it's going, but it doesn't matter. Just brace yourself and prepare for the inevitable impact.

The school-set scenes are the most perturbing, with the forgotten visuals of my own school days rendered so vividly, from the architecture and blazers to the clack of moulded studs on damp changing room tiles. However, a head-on-hand-boring history lesson about the Bayeux Tapestry is less realistic than haunted mirrors, as the teacher doesn't get a massive laugh every time he says “Tostig.” Christ, my class couldn't get through a reading of Our Day Out once some wag pointed out the author's name was Willy Russell – “it's written by Russell's willy!!” Anyway, David gets in trouble for furtively looking at himself in a hand mirror secreted in his desk. “Admiring yourself?” “Yes, sir.” He then lets in a goal during PE after getting distracted by his reflection in a puddle, and I had to rewind a couple of times to confirm, yes, he was called a wanker by an annoyed team-mate.

At home, the boy and his reflection do the old Groucho routine from Duck Soup, with a dramatic zoom on mirror-him's sweatshirt, which is missing a patch. Of course, when he tries to show mum, she sees nothing untoward. David convinces pal Greg to accompany him to the antiques store to get to the bottom of things, where Rolyat does more weird backwards talk, and more or less lays out his evil plan – “The mirror came from me, I came from the mirror! And now the mirror comes for you!” David postulates there's another dimension, into which mirrors are a window, with a theory that brings a little of Jordan Peele's Us into the conversation. “The people in the other world are like our slaves, they have to do everything we do.” His mirror, he reckons, is half-open, so the reflection can do what it likes, and sure enough, he walks into the bedroom to see it lounging on the bed, reading a comic.

Exposition is delivered by Greg's nan, who informs her grandson she used to do accounts at the antique store, until the owner, Mr. Taylor, suddenly disappeared. Like Cushing figuring out what Alucard is backwards in Dracula A.D. 1972, Greg twigs that Roylat in a mirror is Taylor, and bombs round to David's, to stop him from smashing the mirror and letting its reflection loose. As David swings for it with a hammer, we cut before the moment of impact. Outside, Greg's frantically ringing the door bell, but backs away when David opens it, his KISS jersey now reversed, and talking in backwards gibberish. Then we get another of those images which are hung in your mind-gallery until it's time for the grave, as David watches Greg run away, and we see his eyeballs are entirely made of mirrors. As the credits run, the real David bangs against the inside of the mirror, silently screaming for help, before doing a strange backwards walk; not super consistent with mirrors, which aren't in reverse. To cap it off, a lovely moment where the Yorkshire Television Productions logo is itself mirrored.

In rewatching forty years after the fact, where shows like this rarely exist outside the random pick and mix of YouTube, my main concern is that kids of today won't grow up disturbed enough. They'll have no shared traumas to discuss as they sit huddled in evacuation boats when the floods come, having to fill the hours with chat like “Remember Take Me Out? Whatever happened to Paddy McGuinness?” Poor deprived sods.