The BEST episodes of Tales of the Unexpected
Every episode of Tales of the Unexpected ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Tales of the Unexpected!
Tales Of The Unexpected is a British television series originally aired between 1979 and 1988, made by Anglia Television for ITV. The series was an anthology of different tales. Initially episodes were based on the short stories collected in the books Tales of the Unexpected, Kiss Kiss and Someone Like You by Roald Dahl. The stories were sometimes sinister, sometimes wryly comedic, and usually had a twist ending. The upbeat theme music for the series was written by the prolific film and television composer Ron Grainer.
#1 - The Hitch-Hiker
Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 3/22/1980
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...
#2 - A Harmless Vanity
Season 5 - Episode 9 - Aired 6/20/1982
Mary Hitchman's disbelief turns to curiosity when a friend tips her off that her husband George is having an affair with a pretty young secretary. Mary arranges a chance meeting with her rival at a beach party - and George does not foresee what is coming to him.
#3 - Wink Three Times
Season 9 - Episode 6 - Aired 4/15/1988
Jeremy Tyler, a timid provincial solicitor, is visiting a smart London hotel on a business trip and becomes embroiled in a curious case of mistaken identity. Babs Colport has arranged a blind date through a dating agency. Jeremy, looking for female company, tries to seduce her.
#4 - The Verger
Season 9 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/22/1988
Albert and Milly Dobson have given sixteen years of devoted service to their parish church, but a new Vicar arrives who does not like the old ways and has little time for the Dobsons. Following radical changes, a secret Albert has hidden for years causes consternation. In defiance, the couple build a new life... Of course, God moves in mysterious ways.
#5 - Skeleton in the Cupboard
Season 9 - Episode 1 - Aired 12/18/1987
Robert Smythe is a ruthless executive with a dangerous twenty-year-old secret... An echo from the past prompts him into a new cover-up of the truth, but his wife becomes suspicious.
#6 - The Flypaper
Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 8/9/1980
A young girl is being followed by a stalker and is glad to take shelter with the elderly Miss Harrison, who lives in a caravan - but the girl is still in danger, and she disappears.... what has happened to her, and who was the stalker? At the end of the programme, an old man joins Miss Harrison in her caravan, and we see that it is near a lake...
#7 - The Dirty Detail
Season 7 - Episode 1 - Aired 5/12/1984
Fred 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 of revenge...
#8 - Proxy
Season 7 - Episode 3 - Aired 5/26/1984
A 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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#9 - The Wrong 'Un
Season 6 - Episode 9 - Aired 6/11/1983
Helmut Weinrich is a German business man staying in a hotel and looking for a good time after a successful deal. Helmut meets the beautiful and enigmatic Molly, a girl with an edge of danger about her. He ignores the warnings of the hotel's security officer, buys Molly dinner and invites her up to his room...
#10 - The Tribute
Season 6 - Episode 11 - Aired 6/25/1983
Three English ladies who served the Empire in distant places, Fanny Soane, Mable Ince, and Lady Eleanor Benson, hear of the death of Nanny Dench, who had served all of them. The three ladies decide against the expense of a notice in The Times and plan instead to meet Nanny's niece for lunch. But a shock is in store for them...
#11 - The Mugger
Season 7 - Episode 14 - Aired 10/14/1984
Gerald 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.
#12 - Light Fingers
Season 5 - Episode 11 - Aired 7/4/1982
Joan Stackpole wants a quiet life. Even talking to her husband Ralph is an ordeal she prefers to avoid. Meanwhile, Ralph has a big problem - someone is stealing the gloves from his glove factory, and the pilfering is throwing all his staff under suspicion, including Cotter, his designer. When Ralph can take no more, he hires a private eye, who forms an ingenious plan to catch the thief, and Ralph tells Joan about it over breakfast. Ralph swears he will get rid of the culprit - but then traces of the thief start turning up in unexpected places...
#13 - Sauce for the Goose
Season 7 - Episode 9 - Aired 7/21/1984
Olivia 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...
#14 - The Stinker
Season 3 - Episode 7 - Aired 12/7/1980
Jack Cutler is an arrogant millionaire, and in middle age he runs into the meek Harold Tinker, a fellow he was at school with - Tinker remembers being bullied by Cutler, who called him ""Stinker Tinker"". Cutler offers Tinker a job, and, to please his beautiful wife, Tinker accepts. But his old resentment and loathing for Cutler have not gone away, and when he suspects his wife is having an affair with his new boss, something explodes...
#15 - Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 3/31/1979
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.
#16 - Youth from Vienna
Season 6 - Episode 13 - Aired 7/2/1983
Caroline Coates, a television station interviewer, is promoted to be anchorwoman of the station's main news programme - and there are two men who want to marry her. But Caroline worries that she won't keep her looks forever. Humphrey Baxter, one of her admirers, is a scientist working on a formula to stop the aging process. Unfortunately, though, some of the effects of the fountain of eternal youth are unforeseen...
#17 - The Eavesdropper
Season 5 - Episode 2 - Aired 5/2/1982
Donald Henderson gives his wife, Moira, a unique watch, and then it goes missing, so Donald offers to replace it. As a result, Moira is in a store looking for a similar watch when she overhears a young woman telling a friend about her affair. It seems the stranger is meeting a married man - and she goes on to show her friend the beautiful watch he has given her. Unhappily, it looks just like Moira's. Moira puts two and two together and gets herself into a rage, and things soon get terribly out of hand...
#18 - Bird of Prey
Season 7 - Episode 10 - Aired 8/4/1984
This 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.
#19 - Accidental Death
Season 7 - Episode 12 - Aired 8/19/1984
Steve 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.
#20 - The Colonel's Lady
Season 9 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/8/1988
Eve, the wife of Colonel George Peregrine, writes a book of love poems which is a huge success. Eve is soon in demand from unexpected quarters, but her book, containing revelations about her love life, has unhappy effects on her marriage. George is anxious to find out the identity of the young man Eve's poems were addressed to - and when she tells him, the truth comes as a huge shock.
#21 - There's One Born Every Minute
Season 4 - Episode 13 - Aired 6/5/1981
Arthur and Margaret Pearson are a quiet middle-aged couple. Arthur is dull, but double-dealing, and when his wife Margaret inherits £50,000 he reluctantly agrees to gamble the money on a dubious and highly speculative property deal.As a result, the Pearsons' lives (and their relationship) begin to change significantly.
#22 - The Orderly World of Mr Appleby
Season 2 - Episode 15 - Aired 6/7/1980
Arthur Appleby's orderly world centres on his quiet antique and curio shop. He has just married for the fourth time, and his new wife, Martha, discovers Appleby's dark secret - he murdered all her predecessors. But the new Mrs Appleby has a plan to turn the tables on her husband.
#23 - The Way to Do It
Season 4 - Episode 16 - Aired 7/26/1981
Young Roger Carson has a dreary life and suffers from the domineering ways of his rich Aunt May. By way of escape, he takes up gambling - and swiftly falls for Suzie, a beautiful casino hostess. The boss of the casino sees Roger as a chicken ripe for plucking, and gets Suzie to encourage him. Soon, Roger is losing more than his income...
#24 - The Best Chess Player in the World
Season 7 - Episode 2 - Aired 5/19/1984
G.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...
#25 - A Passing Opportunity
Season 6 - Episode 1 - Aired 4/9/1983
Frank Jesmond is a struggling tough guy who is jealous of his rich and successful former schoolmate Peter Madison. And Frank will do anything for money - including murder. But what about Jesmond's loving wife and young son, Timmy?