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Tales of the Unexpected : Season 7
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Air date: 12 May '84 - 15 episodesTales of the Unexpected is a British television series which aired between 1979 and 1988. Each episode told a story, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, with an unexpected twist ending. Early episodes were based on short stories by Roald Dahl collected in the books Tales of the Unexpected, Kiss Kiss and Someone Like You. The series was made by Anglia Television for ITV with interior scenes recorded at their Norwich studios whilst location filming mainly occurred across East Anglia. The theme music for the series was written by composer Ron Grainer. Although similar in theme and title, the show is not related to the American anthology television series, Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected, which ran for one season in 1977.
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List of Episodes (15)
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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1. The Dirty Detail
12 May '84Fred Pearson is a Vietnam war veteran, but he came out with a miserable service record, thanks to the bullying of Guedo, his sergeant, who constantly gave him dirty detail punishments and broke his nerve. Since discharge, Pearson hasn't been able to keep a job and feels the world is against him. Years on from Vietnam, and after an unsuccessful day of looking for work, Pearson goes to his favourite bar to drown his sorrows and finds Guedo boasting about his time in the army. Pearson sees a chance
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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2. The Best Chess Player in the World
19 May '84G.B. Shaw, a successful newpaper proprietor, sets out to use people as if they were pieces on a chessboard. His beautiful wife, Paula, has everything she could want - including a horse, a Ferrari and a very large dress allowance. Then Paula begins to live dangerously by taking a lover, and Shaw decides to deal with the problem in his usual cool, calm and clear-thinking way. But life does not always obey the rules of the game...
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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3. Proxy
26 May '84A millionaire media tycoon and two of his lawyer friends are being blackmailed by a scheming woman on account of past affairs with her. When the woman is found murdered in her apartment, the men fear that the police inquiries will lead to one or all of them, and they will be ruined. But then the tycoon's faithful chauffeur, William, thinks up a brilliant way out...
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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4. Have a Nice Death
02 Jun '84Sam Luke is a successful male-chauvinist writer, pushing the line that women are the weaker sex. He is a popular fellow, with no enemies - except that the feminists did not like his book Women Weeping... Then the literary lion gets a series of 'Have a nice death' messages, the machismo crumbles and he decides to go home to his wife. But it isn't so easy as it might be...
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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5. Number Eight
09 Jun '84A smartly dressed driver on his own picks up a scruffy, wild-eyed hitch-hiker. As they drive off together, they hear warnings on the car radio of a dangerous serial killer on the run - the ""will-o-the-wisp"" murderer is said to be of slight build with fair hair... a description which clearly matches the hitch-hiker.
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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6. The Last of the Midnight Gardeners
16 Jun '84Walter is a vain writer and publisher with a wife and a mistress, based in London, and he likes to show off. He stages a story-writing competition, with a £5,000 prize, to find the plot for a perfect murder...
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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7. The Gift of Beauty
30 Jun '84Elizabeth kills her rich husband, with the help of Ray, her young lover. She then undergoes plastic surgery and begins an exercise programme, in the hope of closing the age-gap between her and Ray, but she finds it too demanding. Then Elizabeth finds a flier advertising a new way to reverse the ageing process, and she decides to give it a try...
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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8. Wet Saturday
07 Jul '84Wet weather, and a dead body in the house. Mr Princey's dim-witted daughter, Millicent, thwarted in love, has killed a young preacher with a croquet mallet, and Princey decides he must cover it up, or risk losing his high standing in the community. The police need to be persuaded that there was a tragic accident...
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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9. Sauce for the Goose
21 Jul '84Olivia is a rich widow who seduces Stephen, a younger man with no money. He marries her on the strength of her inheritance from her late husband, whose death she has skillfully arranged. Stephen thinks he is in a position to go on playing the field, while Olivia has other ideas. When Stephen takes up with another woman, Olivia knows what has to be done...
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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10. Bird of Prey
04 Aug '84This is the story of a parrot's egg - and a flirtatious wife and a jealous husband. Jack and Edna's pet parrot lays a huge egg - one much bigger than parrot-size - and promptly dies. Jack and Edna keep the egg warm, and it hatches into a menacing, black-feathered bird. Although it fails to talk, the new arrival soon begins keeping a close and disdainful eye on them... Jack befriends the bird, but Edna is unnerved by it - and she has good reason to be.
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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11. I Like it Here in Wilmington
08 Nov '84Wilmington, Delaware, business man Harry Elton is a man on the verge of bankruptcy, as Marvin Castlemore, his partner in the rag trade, has made a disastrous guess on next season's fashions. Harry and his wife have a luxury lifestyle, and he has to decide whether to put his marriage or his business first. So he plans to murder his wife and collect her life insurance money.
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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12. Accidental Death
19 Aug '84Steve and Jane travel around England pretending to be market researchers. They con their way into the houses of the rich, to identify things worth stealing on a return visit. Then one day, in a hotel bar, they meet a scruffy old man called Percy. Local gossip has it that Percy is a rich miser with a hoard of money hidden in his tumble-down cottage, so Steve and Jane decide to call on him at home... But there is more to Old Percy than meets the eye.
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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13. The Reconciliation
16 Sep '84After ten years, James is fed up with his boring marriage, but his wife, Caroline, still loves him. As he walks out on her, she warns: ""I'll never divorce you."" James's lawyer advises him that the best way to avoid years of delay is to catch Caroline being unfaithful. So James hires a private eye to follow her for a whole day, up to midnight, with little hope that it will do him any good - and he gets a surprise.
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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14. The Mugger
14 Oct '84Gerald Overton is an ambitious politician with the tough job of cracking violent crime. But a chance encounter with a beautiful woman at a dinner party leads him into a nightmare, and his whole career is threatened... Gerald surprises himself when he decides to take the law into his own hands.
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Tales of the Unexpected (1979)
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15. The Open Window
21 Oct '84The 'open window' of the title is in a hunting lodge in the Connecticut hills. A young fellow goes through it and finds a strange new world on the other side which does not look much like New England...
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