The BEST episodes directed by Roald Dahl
#1 - The Hitch-Hiker
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 2 - Episode 4
Paul Duveen gives a lift in his ultra-fast new BMW to an elderly hitch-hiker on his way to Epsom for the Derby. Duveen, cajoled into taking the car to its limit, is promptly booked for speeding. In the course of the remaining journey, the passenger reveals his astonishing skills as a professional pickpocket - his name for himself is a fingersmith - and before they finally part, the fingersmith has a little present for Duveen...
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#2 - Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 1 - Episode 2
Bixby is a New York dentist. Once a month, for many years, his wife goes to Baltimore by train to visit her aunt. She does not tell Bixby about her affair with the Colonel, a single man with a big house near Baltimore, who is the real reason for all these visits.One Christmas, Mrs Bixby gets a parting gift from the Colonel - a splendid mink coat. So that she can explain the coat to her husband, she devises a complicated scheme which depends on pawning the coat and then 'finding' the pawn ticket... but the best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft agley.
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#3 - Lamb to the Slaughter
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 1 - Episode 4
An enraged detective's wife kills her husband by smashing in his skull with a heavy blunt instrument - but no murder weapon can be found, and the police are baffled. The answer to the riddle lies under the detectives' noses - or, rather, it did...
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#4 - Parson's Pleasure
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 3 - Episode 6
Cyril Boggis is a rogue antique dealer who goes around posing as a clergyman and describing himself as President of the Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture. Cyril makes a handsome living by buying valuable antiques cheap and selling them to Storker, another dealer. One day, Cyril calls on old Farmer Rummins and buys a piece of furniture from him which he knows is worth a fortune. He looks forward to making a huge profit on it - but his luck may be about to run out.
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#5 - Genesis and Catastrophe
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 2 - Episode 12
Klara. the mother of a new-born baby boy, is desperately worried, as she and her husband, Alois, have lost three other children in lessss than two years. A doctor convinces her that her new son is healthy, and Klara decides to call him Adolphus. She loves this beautiful child. Her husband comments on his small size, and the doctor pleads with him to give his wife better support. Alois tries to comfort Klara. ""He must live, Alois,"" she cries. ""Oh God, be merciful..."" We slowly realize who the child will grow up to be.
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#6 - The Umbrella Man
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 2 - Episode 11
A smart old man, claiming to need his taxi fare home on a wet afternoon in London, persuades a stranger to buy his umbrella. Followed into a pub, it turns out that the Umbrellaa Man spends the money on a large whisky. What is going on?
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#7 - Taste
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 2 - Episode 7
Richard Pratt, a famous middle-aged wine connoisseur, is having dinner with the Schofields for the third time. Twice before, he has won a case of wine from Mike Schofield by correctly identifying the claret served with dinner. This time, Pratt wishes to increase the stakes - he offers his London house and his place in the country against the hand in marriage of the Schofields' teenage daughter, Louise. And Schofield (who is sure he has found a wine no one could identify) persuades Louise to agree to the bet. After all, this wine is unguessable...
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#8 - The Man from the South
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 1 - Episode 1
A young American sailor on shore leave in the West Indies is tempted by a crazy bet. To win a new Jaguar, all he need do is to make his cigarette-lighter light ten times without any failures. In return, he has to stake one of his fingers. But what is the truth about Carlos, the high-rolling old man who has proposed the bet?
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#9 - Vengeance Is Mine Inc.
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 3 - Episode 4
Tom and George, two young college graduates who are out of work in New York, offer satisfaction to the victims of Lionel Brewster, the city's most scurrilous gossip columnist - for a price. Mrs Wilbur has a job for 'Vengeance is Mine Inc', but she gets rather more for her money than she asked for.
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#10 - A Dip in the Pool
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 1 - Episode 8
William Botibol, an American passenger on a British cruise ship, is anxious to win the rich sweepstake for predicting the distance the ship will travel in twenty-four hours - and William realizes that if the captain were to need to go back to pick up a man overboard, then his own ticket should win. So long as someone sees him go over the side, there can be no real problem...
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#11 - The Sound Machine
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 4 - Episode 7
A botanist called Klausner invents a machine which can translate the conversations of trees and plants... and what he hears gives him a nasty shock.
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#12 - The Surgeon
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 9 - Episode 3
An Oxford doctor, Robert Sandy, faces up to his own lust for money when a grateful patient, a Saudi Arabian prince, gives him a huge diamond. Robert and Betty Sandy find their new asset a huge liability... Sandy's demise is unforeseen - but is it a form of rough justice?
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#13 - Poison
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 2 - Episode 5
Harry Pope is a reformed alcoholic working in Kashmir, India, and hoping to go home to England soon. One hot night, Harry is reading in bed, when he feels something moving on his chest. He looks down to see a deadly little snake, a krait, which slides under his pyjamas and goes to sleep on his stomach. All Harry can do is to wait for his friend, Timber, to come home. When he arrives, Timber sends for a local doctor...
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#14 - The Way Up to Heaven
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 1 - Episode 9
An elderly American couple, the Fosters, are planning a six-week trip to Paris to visit their grandchildren. Foster gets left behind, and his wife writes to him every week... on her return home, she does not seem very surprised to find that the lift in their house is stuck between two floors.
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#15 - William and Mary
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 1 - Episode 3
William Pearl, a philosophy don at an Oxford college, dies of cancer, and his widow, Mary, gets a letter from him. William tells her about his colleague John Landy's scheme for keeping William's brain alive after his death. He also advises Mary not to smoke, not to drink, not to use lipstick, and not to buy a television - and William had spent the long years of their life together disapproving of what Mary wanted to do. Mary calls John Landy and goes to visit what is left of William. She decides to take him home - she has her own ideas about their future relationship.
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#16 - Galloping Foxley
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 2 - Episode 3
After more than sixty years, William Perkins is still haunted by memories of being bullied at an English private school... One day, he is annoyed by a swaggering passenger on a train and is sure he recognizes him as Foxley, the school prefect who made his life so miserable, long ago. And Perkins makes a mistake.
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#17 - Edward the Conqueror
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 1 - Episode 7
An elderly couple, Edward and Louisa, find their life invaded by a stray cat. The cat's knowledgeable response to Louisa's piano playing, and the pattern of warts on its face, convince her that pussy is a reincarnation of Franz Liszt, the composer. Liszt, the cat, does not trouble to conceal his dislike for Edward, who is becoming dangerously jealous...
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#18 - Georgy Porgy
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 2 - Episode 9
George is an English vicar with a fantasy life. He sees naked women during his sermons. One day, he finds he is suddenly irresistible to the opposite sex, and a beautiful woman throws herself at him on a river bank. What is going on?
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#19 - Depart in Peace
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 2 - Episode 10
An art collector finds himself drawn into an unusual struggle with two beautiful women.
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#20 - The Landlady
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 1 - Episode 5
Billy Weaver, a seventeen-year-old Londoner, arrives in Bath late at night to take up a new job. He finds a room for the night at a bed-and-breakfast house run by a sweet old woman. As he signs the guest book, Billy feels sure he recognizes the names of the two previous guests. Where on earth can he have heard them before? As he drinks a cup of tea with a curiously bitter-almond flavour, the owner of the boarding house is telling Billy she is an amateur taxidermist...
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#21 - Skin
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 2 - Episode 2
Drioli, a penniless old tattoo artist, has a fabulous work of art by his friend Soutine and is offered a huge amount for it. He desperately needs the money, but how can he deliver the picture to the buyer while he is still alive? - the masterpiece is tattooed on his back.
#22 - Royal Jelly
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 2 - Episode 1
In a cottage surrounded by the drone of honey-bees, the bee-keeper's baby daughter is ailing and losing weight. The corner is turned when Albert begins to feed his daughter on Royal Jelly, but a curious transformation is under way...
#23 - Neck
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 1 - Episode 6
Unworldly art collector Basil Turton inherits his father's publishing empire (and his title) and marries Natalia, an East European with a decidedly Machiavellian streak. Six years on, the new Lady Turton is not just wearing the trousers but also being far from discreet about her lovers. Sir Basil's butler, Jelks, strongly disapproves of it all. Then Lady Turton gets her head stuck in a valuable work of art...
#24 - My Lady Love, My Dove
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 2 - Episode 8
Arthur Beauchamp's wife, Pamela, decides to have some fun with their weekend guests, the Snapes - they instal a hidden microphone in the Snapes' bedroom. After a game of bridge for high stakes, the microphone reveals that the Snapes have a complicated system for signalling their bridge hands to each other...
#25 - The Boy Who Talked with Animals
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 4 - Episode 3
David, a nine-year-old boy, talks his father into getting him a giant turtle. And there is more to David's desire for this unusual pet than meets the eye. Then Sam Jenner, a rugged American, gets drawn into David's holiday adventure in Jamaica.
#26 - Mr Botibol's First Love
Tales of the Unexpected - Season 2 - Episode 13
William Botibol is a pathetic failure whose life-long ambition is to conduct an orchestra. He fills his lonely life with music, pretending to be a great composer and conductor. Then Botibol meets a young lady who shares in his fantasy - but why is she really putting herself out for him?