I mentioned the new series of Black Mirror the other day and I said how I love a good anthology series. It got me thinking, what’s the best anthology series ever?
I can’t claim to have seen them all, but I thought I would make a list of my favourites and then see if you guys wanted to add some more.
Hammer House of Horrors
I have recently started watching Hammer House of Horrors, from the 1980s. Now, I’ll be honest, the only reason I started watching it was for a bit of boob. I watched Top Secret (1984) the other day and it stars Lucy Guttenberg. I looked up her other stuff and found she got topless in this series.
It’s not like I Googled Lucy Gutteridge nude and ended up on AZNude or anything like that, I’m not a pervert. I’m getting off the point, the point was the anthology series, Hammer House of Horrors looked rather good.
I haven’t finished it yet, but hot damn, it is a great series! There is a series of episodes, including stories about cannibals, witches, and possessed houses. That’s out of the ones I’ve seen already. Some of them are pretty creepy, but all of them are very well made, well, apart from some dodgy acting.
The cast has been amazing, Peter Cushing, Brian Cox, James Cosmo, Warren Clarke, and Denholm Elliot to name a few. It’s also nice to see some actors that have popped up in older British sitcoms.
As I said, I haven’t finished the series, but I’m going to and looking forward to each episode.
Inside Number 9
I have mentioned this series before and it is fantastic. From the creators of League of Gentleman, the series not the movie. Two writers/actors, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, have created an anthology series all based, however loosely, around the number 9.
I can honestly say that each and every episode of this series is really well done. Shearsmith and Pemberton play different characters in each of the episodes and they are just a treat to watch.
Both of them grew up on things like the (original) Wicker Man and each of the tales in Inside Number 9 has a dark side, mostly with a sense of humour. Genuinely, some of the episodes have stuck with me for a long time and a couple of them are really chilling.
It’s a very British series, but I do highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it and want to see something new each time I also recommend League of Gentleman as well, which is darkly comic with a story running through the whole thing. Here is a clip from Leauge.
Black Mirror
Obviously, you can’t mention an anthology series without mentioning Black Mirror. This kind of came out of nowhere on the BBC and was an instant hit. Very, very dark in places, with a sense of humor and some episodes guaranteed to make you think.
The very first episode was about the Prime Minister of England being blackmailed into having sex with a pig on live TV. It is as bad as you think, but also very well done. It was amazing that this episode was allowed on TV, as it was very close to a true-life account of the real Prime Minister and a pig. Which definitely did not happen.
As I said the other day, I love Charlie Brooker and I think his writing and imagination are great. Some of the stories really stick with you and some make you wince.
Other Anthology Series
Living in the UK, I know of things like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, but I don’t think I have seen many of them. That’s something I’m now going to rectify. I’d like to find more horror series like this, so if you know any, post them in the comments. Also, Cabinet of Curiosities and Love, Sex and Robots, which I will cover in another article later in the week.
What anthology series do you rate? What’s good? What’s worth missing?
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