The 10 most terrifying TV shows of all time
As BBC One’s period chiller The Living & The Dead (Tuesdays at 9.00pm) petrifies viewers, we count down the top 10 terrifying TV shows of all time. Apologies to The Walking Dead, Penny Dreadful, Chocky, Fringe, Hannibal, The League of Gentlemen and Tales from the Crypt - you weren’t quite scary enough to make our cut…
10. Penda’s Fen (1974)
Directed by Alan Clarke (Scum), this haunting Play For Today was a provocative pastoral psycho-drama set in the Malvern Hills. Priggish adolescent Stephen, a rural vicar’s son, has a series of bizarre encounters with angels, demons, the ghost composer Edward Elgar and King Penda, the mythical last pagan ruler of England - causing Stephen to question his faith, parentage, sexuality and entire identity. Boys get burned. Hands are chopped off. Creatures appear at the foot of beds. Church floors crack open. Frequently baffling, hard-to-classify but wholly unforgettable, Penda’s Fen has become a cult classic and attained mythic status, despite Clarke claiming he never really understood what it was about.
9. Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1965)
"Good eeeeevening." When Hollywood’s master of suspense migrated to the small screen for a weekly anthology series, Hitch himself was the main attraction - hence his unmistakable silhouette accompanying the creepy theme song (Funeral March of a Marionette, fact fans) and his drolly deadpan introductions to each mystery. Hitchcock directed 18 episodes, earning two Emmy nominations, with others helmed by the likes of Robert Altman and William Friedkin. Memorable chillers include doppelganger tale “The Case Of Mr Pelham”; “Lamb To The Slaughter”, where a housewife bludgeons her husband to death with a frozen cut of meat; three wishes parable “The Monkey’s Paw”; and Roald Dahl’s “Man From The South”, starring Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre, in which a man bets his finger that he can light his Zippo ten times in a row. Hitchcock was so impressed with the show’s crew, he used them to shoot Psycho.
8. The X Files (1993-2002)
Chris Carter's cult Nineties series is usually remembered for its sprawling sci-fi conspiracy - “The truth is out there” and all that alien stuff - but many of its 202 original episodes were flat-out monster-of-the-week horror, as FBI duo David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson encountered an array of skin-crawlingly creepy threats. Stretchy serial killer Eugene Tooms slunk through air vents to eat victims’ livers. There were those alien worms at an isolated Alaskan research station, the Predator-like tree-bark creatures of “Detour”, cancer-eating Leonard Betts, the tapewormy Flukeman, and conjoined twins Lanny and Leonard. Most sinister of all? Controversial haunted house episode “Home”, with the in-bred and disturbingly disfigured Peacock family gruesomely slaughtering anyone who came near their Pennsylvania farmstead. This could be a case for Mulder and Scully.
7. Hammer House Of Horror (1980)
This home-grown Gothic anthology series, from the London studio that made all those Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing films, lasted just one series but left a legacy of thrills and chills. The 13 hour-long stories attracted acting talent the calibre of Peter Cushing, Diana Dors, Brian Cox and Denholm Elliot. Its two most memorable morbid frighteners were "The House That Bled to Death" (notably that gore-splattered children’s party scene) and “The Two Faces of Evil”, where a driver encounters a sinister hitchhiker who looks exactly like him - except with rotting teeth and (creepiest detail of all) one long, pointy brown fingernail.
6. Salem's Lot (1979)
"Open the window, Mark.” *Scratch, scratch* "Open the window, Mark, please.” Stephen King’s bestselling 1975 vampire novel was adapted into a triple Emmy-nominated miniseries, starring James Mason and a post-Starsky & Hutch David Soul, and directed by Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre infamy. When an ancient master vampire comes to a sleepy Maine smalltown, its citizens gradually get turned undead too. Its eerie atmosphere and Nosferatu-inspired special effects (all glowing contact lenses and levitating ghouls) chilled a generation. Even a still image of a child-vampire floating outside a bedroom window was enough to spook unsuspecting viewers when it popped up on Barry Took’s Points Of View.
5. American Horror Story (2011-present)
Writer Ryan Murphy’s hit anthology series is currently the scariest affair on-air, home to well-worn but still terrifying tropes like killer clowns, demonic nuns, carnival freak shows, witches’ covens and haunted hotels. It’s also populated by big-name actors relishing the chance to go fully grand guignol: see Ian McShane as a serial-killing Santa, deranged doctor Zachary Quinto’s Clockwork Orange-esque aversion therapy, Lady Gaga’s S&M vampire, Jessica Lange’s supreme witch, James Cromwell’s sadistic Nazi doctor or Kathy Bates as an immortal severed head. Throw in jolting jump cuts, freaky cinematography and a deeply morbid sense of humour, and you’ve got enough nightmare fodder to last a lifetime.
4. Doctor Who (1963-present)
Not every episode of the BBC’s time travel institution is a scary one but the sci-fi franchise has always packed sufficient frights to send generations of children scurrying behind the sofa. The Daleks and their crazed creator Davros definitely do the job but the Doctor has faced all manner of other fear-inducing foes throughout his incarnations: Patrick Troughton tackled Yetis in the London Underground, Jon Pertwee faced giant spiders and Tom Baker battled Egyptian god Sutekh the Destroyer in “Pyramids Of Mars”. In the post-reboot era, there’s been Weeping Angel statues, scarecrows coming to life, that gas-masked wartime child (“Are you my mummy?”), and the everyday foreboding of “Midnight” and “Listen”. The simplest Who concepts are often the scariest. Is there still room behind that sofa?
3. Twin Peaks (1990-1991)
Director David Lynch’s dark, deliciously twisted crime drama was often downright weird but remains burned in the consciousness of anyone who watched its two-hour pilot ("event TV" before the term was coined) and became hooked. This smalltown murder masterpiece boasted not one but three unforgettably frightening characters: the red-suited, backwards-speaking dwarf, lumber-cuddling clairvoyant Log Lady and, of course, cackling silver-haired spirit Killer Bob, played by set dresser Frank Silva. In one of the happiest accidents in TV history, Silva mistakenly appeared on camera while crouching behind Laura Palmer’s bed. The shot proved so creepy, Lynch promptly wrote him into the series. After a 27-year wait, the sequel is due on-screen next year.
2. The Twilight Zone (1959-1964)
Brrrr, that music. Creator and narrator Rod Serling’s groundbreaking CBS classic remains the greatest anthology series of all time. Its standalone 30 or 60-minute stories mixed psychological horror with bleak sci-fi and trippy, twisty thrillers - often with a hauntingly simple central premise. Scary standouts include “Little Girl Lost”, which saw a six-year-old swallowed up by her bedroom wall; creepy ventriloquist’s doll tale “The Dummy”; “The Hitch-Hiker”, about a female driver haunted by the same man appearing at roadsides; “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, with William Shatner as an airline passenger (“There's a man on the wing of this plane!”); the department store mannequins in "The After Hours”; eerie doppelgänger chiller “Mirror Image”; ghost-of-Hitler parable "He's Alive”, starring a young Dennis Hopper; and the unforgettable “Living Doll” ("My name is Talky Tina and I'm going to kill you”). You are about to enter another dimension…
1. Ghostwatch (1992)
“The programme you’re about to watch is a unique live investigation of the supernatural.” Broadcast on Halloween, this horror mockumentary was taken at face value by most viewers. Trustworthy presenters Michael Parkinson, Mike Smith and Sarah Greene hosted a creepily convincing report on poltergeist activity in a suburban London home, believed to be haunted by malevolent entity “Pipes” (because the parents told their children that eerie noises were caused by the plumbing). Pipes turned out to be the spirit of paedophile Raymond Tunstall, who committed suicide at the house - after in turn being possessed by Victorian child killer Mother Seddons. The film acted as a “national séance”, giving Pipes huge power and enabling him to drag Greene to her death, possess Parky and escape. The BBC got 30,000 calls within an hour and have never repeated it - although Halloween night DVD and cinema screenings have since become a tradition among fans. Ghostwatch also holds the dubious honour of being the first TV show to be cited in the British Medical Journal as causing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in children.
