The BEST episodes of Tales of the Unexpected season 5
Every episode of Tales of the Unexpected season 5, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Tales of the Unexpected season 5!
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 - 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.
#2 - 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...
#3 - 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...
#4 - Operation Safecrack
Season 5 - Episode 3 - Aired 5/9/1982
Retired safe-cracker Sam Morrissey is approached by Jack Harrison, an advertising man representing the Holdwell Safe Company, with a proposition. Jack wants Sam to try to break into a Holdwell safe on television - and, of course, he firmly believes it can't be done. However, inside the safe there will be twenty-five thousand dollars, and the money is Sam's to keep if he can crack the safe within three hours.Sam accepts the challenge - but he is not a man who likes to leave things to chance.
#5 - Death Can Add
Season 5 - Episode 10 - Aired 6/27/1982
Alan Corwin audits the books of a City investment firm where Oliver Platt is a whizz kid. Platt has taken huge risks, and for a high price Corwin agrees to keep quiet. All is safely covered up - but Platt has not foreseen the well-meaning interference of Leila, his secretary and girlfriend...
#6 - Pattern of Guilt
Season 5 - Episode 8 - Aired 6/13/1982
Pathologist Keith Briscoe has a problem. He has had enough of Elaine, his selfish and expensive second wife, and wants to re-marry Faye, his first wife... but Elaine has given Briscoe five years of her life and doesn't want to let him go. Then the pathologist finds himself working with a police team to catch a serial killer. The man they are after poses as a door-to-door salesman and kills women for their small change, and Briscoe realises how much he loves Faye when she agrees to act as a decoy to trap the killer. And then he has an idea...
#7 - The Skeleton Key
Season 5 - Episode 18 - Aired 8/22/1982
An arrogant young man called Max has to have an emergency operation just before he is due to go away on a holiday with his girlfriend, Emma - a holiday he hoped to turn into a honeymoon. Max panics and gets bad-tempered, and Emma tries to calm him down. Meanwhile, Andy, who is a radiologist at the hospital and a much more pleasant character than Max, is also keen on Emma. So she has to choose between them...
#8 - What Have You Been Up To Lately?
Season 5 - Episode 13 - Aired 7/18/1982
Richard Mellor and Fergus Locke are two failed actors whose names have never been in lights. They meet by chance for the first time in twenty-five years, remembering that Mellor wooed and won the girl they both loved more than a quarter of a century before. But now their marriages are as washed-up as their careers...
#9 - Stranger in Town
Season 5 - Episode 5 - Aired 5/23/1982
A bearded, simple-minded stranger, wearing a top hat and a multi-colored coat, appears in a village performing conjuring tricks and is soon a favorite with the village children. They call him Sir Columbus, and he seems delightful and harmless. One day, Columbus talks his way into the office of a local business man, reveals himself as an unexpected visitor from the man's guilty past, and commits what seems to be the perfect murder. (This episode is noted for providing a young Jennifer Connelly with her first screen credit.)
#10 - The Absence of Emily
Season 5 - Episode 14 - Aired 7/25/1982
The rich, bossy Norma owns a big house and allows her sister Emily and lazy brother-in-law Bob to live at the lodge. One day, Emily vanishes without explanation, and Norma suspects Bob of killing her for a life insurance pay-out. Norma unwisely makes a noise about her suspicions - but while Bob has a sinister side to him, he is rather more subtle than that...
#11 - The Moles
Season 5 - Episode 6 - Aired 5/30/1982
Edward Boyle and George Balsam are newcomers to crime, respectable businessmen on the brink of bankruptcy, who join forces with Meakins, a professional criminal, to rob a bank. They tunnel under the bank's vaults, burrowing through the earth like moles... but their plan comes unstuck.
#12 - Blue Marigold
Season 5 - Episode 1 - Aired 4/25/1982
Marigold is a dream girl supermodel, but she is wrecking her career with drink and other excesses. Paul Foster, her dismayed lover, slowly sees how much greed for fame lurks behind Marigold's beautiful face. Sophie Trent is a more easy-going newcomer, but she sets off a jealous and dangerous reaction when her more dulcet tones are used to replace Marigold's voice on a television commercial.
#13 - Decoy
Season 5 - Episode 7 - Aired 6/6/1982
Pretty policewoman Mary Bryan is out to get her man, in seductive, skin-tight silver pants. And it's all in the line of duty, as Mary is the bait to trap a suspected serial killer who has been murdering young women around the city. But things do not go according to plan.
#14 - Run, Rabbit, Run
Season 5 - Episode 4 - Aired 5/16/1982
Just after the Second World War, Robert Simpson was a young U.S. Army interpreter stationed in liberated Paris and living in the house of Jacques Vareille, a hero of the French Resistance, and his downtrodden wife, Nathalie. Robert had no idea why the hectoring Jacques never set foot outside his house. Now, ten years after the war, Robert is back in Paris to write a book about the Resistance, and he pays a call at his former digs. Only Nathalie is still there - and she has a story to tell of a very different kind. It seems that she sought revenge on her bullying husband, with unforeseen consequences.
#15 - Who's Got the Lady?
Season 5 - Episode 17 - Aired 8/15/1982
Parnell is an art dealer who plans to steal an important picture from his own London art gallery. During a ceremony to unveil The Patrician Lady (a masterpiece on temporary loan) gun shots and an explosion suggest a robbery. Afterwards, surprisingly, The Patrician Lady seems to be unharmed, but then Parnell finds the name 'Zarchetti' stamped on the back of the canvas, suggesting the picture is a fake. With the original under suspicion, Parnell plans that his artist girlfrend will then forge copies of the painting, which he can sell to several of his collectors who will each pay a good price for what appears to be the real masterpiece. But something goes wrong with the plan...
#16 - A Man with a Fortune
Season 5 - Episode 16 - Aired 8/8/1982
John Smith is a rich but lonely Californian wine-grower visiting England in the hope of finding his long-lost family. In London, he meets two girls, Janet Murdoch and her room-mate Eva, and things start to go terribly wrong.
#17 - Death in the Morning
Season 5 - Episode 12 - Aired 7/11/1982
Rich landowner Sir Ian Masterson marries, and Karen, his new wife, moves into his magnificent house in the country. Karen is befriended by Linda Larch, a neighbour. But Linda has her own agenda, and Karen also senses that there is an evil spirit which wants to see her off.
#18 - In the Bag
Season 5 - Episode 15 - Aired 8/1/1982
An honest girl called Cara aims to recover her family jewellery (which has been consfiscated as a result of a lover's tiff) by stealing it from a hidden safe. She hires the ultra-cautious safebreaker Sam to do the job for her, and persuades him to take her along. Realizing that Cara will be a danger, he insists she must follow his orders. The plan is for them to dress as students and make their getaway by mingling with college crowds... But Sam has made the first big mistake in his long and successful career as a peterman.