The late Roald Dahl is well-known as a writer of children's books, including those which classic films were based on such as
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, James & the Giant Peach, Witches, and
Matilda. Dahl's stories always had an edgy twist to them, though, and he explored this side of himself in the 1979 British TV Series
Tales of the Unexpected.
Not to be confused with Quinn Martin's 1977 USA effort that had the same title, the Roald Dahl series was hosted by Dahl himself for the first 2 seasons (John Houseman - best known as Prof. Kingsfield on
The Paper Chase - took over hosting duties afterwards). Those first 25 episodes were not only hosted by Dahl, but he wrote 21 of the 25 stories the episodes were based on (also available among Dahl's books, by the way).
This adult-oriented show was in the style made popular by
The Twilight Zone: an anthology series where each story concluded with a surprising twist at the end. Guest stars for those seasons included Jose Ferrer, Michael Ontkean, Jullie Harris, Brian Blessed, Susan George, Joan Collins, Sir John Gielgud, Lucy Gutteridge, Sir Derek Jacobi, Sir John Mills, Sir Michael Gambon, and Peter Firth, among many many others.
The Acorn Media Group is bringing
Tales of the Unexpected - Set 1: The Complete First Two Seasons to DVD on
September 28th. This 4-disc set will list price at $59.99, and has a running time of 625 minutes for 25 half-hour episodes.
This long-anticipated release is already available to pre-order both from
DVDEmpire.com and
Amazon.com. Thanks to Amazon, we are pleased to bring you this shot of the box set:
