A Place to Die

I started watching these from the first episode and this one is by far the worst one yet. The "acting" of Alexandra Hay is horrible, much like a bad actress in a high school play. I could go on about it but I won't belabor the point; it's too depressing. Just skip over this one. I hope the next one is better.

A Memorable episode that my family & I enjoyed immensely in the 70s and it has always stuck in our memories; especially the local imbecile "Nick" with his g---s foot. :) My family would always turn-off the lights & call out 'Nick' 'Nick' get so 'n' so for eg. It was terrifying. Although looking back on it today, it is hardly frightening at all...Suspenseful however though... I do believe after arriving in the village to take up his new post as the Doctor, the newly married couple (Dr Bruce Tenner and his wife Tessa) should have realised sooner rather than later what was going on; especially after being greeted by the most peculiar looking old people, all with walking sticks & limping left foots? That is as far as I go....😲 One to watch...👌

This literally is a limp version of The Wicker Man. Initially I thought it my also be a riff on The Straw Dogs.

Doctor Bruce Nelson (Bryan Marshall) and his American wife Tessa (Alexandra Hay) move to the countryside where he takes over as a rural GP. The last doctor died by an unfortunate fall.

Tessa has a limp due to a minor accident, she walks with a cane and her foot is bandaged.

There is something about her limp that attracts the locals attentions. It might be many of them also have a limp, Dr Nelson puts that down to congenital deformity due to inbreeding.

Tessa is rather put out by the over friendly locals, they seem to be more interested in her than their new GP. Then there are also some peculiar things the previous doctor left behind. A cross for example.

Of course these locals believe in devil worshipping and Tessa has the right look to be satan's new bride.

Not much thrills or surprises. Every villager is a stereotype. Marshall has to do a lot of heavy lifting because Hay is just pretty to look at and does not offer much else.

Most of the THRILLER episodes have a certain something that overcomes the technical limitations of the era in which they were made : the mixing of 16mm exterior locations and VT studio interiors, the lack of blood and gore , the rather unnatural lack of 'language' in the dialogue, all of which are rather charming and evoke the TV you remembered from the early 70s.

However this particular episode has a fundamental flaw which makes the usual suspension of disbelief impossible. It's the ridiculous cliché of "village life". This seems to have been written by someone who hadn't ventured as far as the suburbs let alone a remote English village. The result is a Neverland of 'rural characters' which would have seemed out of date in the earliest Agatha Christie novel from the 1920s, let alone a TV drama written in the early 1970s. It's just nonsense. Here's "the gamekeeper"...with a shotgun under his arm, "the blacksmith" with his leather apron.... "The school mistress" a starchy spinster in a tweed hat... and even inevitable "village idiot"... and here they all are queued up one behind the other in the village shop (which by some quirk of set design looks like a trading post from a spaghetti western rather than a village shop). None of them seems to have any work to do, no one drives a car, in fact the whole village seems to have only one visible car, the newly arrived doctor's Morgan.

Irrespective of the story-line this backdrop is so fake it's laughable. So it's a dud episode I'm afraid. But never mind, if you are watching the box set keep going as the following episodes are so much better!

'A Place To Die' saw Thriller dipping heavily into the supernatural world with a reasonably gripping tale of devil worship and sacrifice.

Alexandra Hay plays Tessa Nelson who, along with her doctor husband, Bruce are the new arrivals into a rural village. Almost immediately we see that the locals are in a kind of mystic awe in Tessa's presence and gradually make her feel welcome while covertly discussing her satanic potential amongst themselves. To them she is 'The Lady', a chosen disciple who will give them unlimited powers.

Tessa soon grows wary of the constant attention and when she happens upon a bunch of unposted letters written by the previous doctor while outline in no uncertain terms the nature of the villagers beliefs, the tension is upped considerably.

The villagers are not dissimilar to those in 'The Wicker Man' and are somewhat caricatured - although Lila Kaye's Bess is enjoyable to watch. An interesting tale but somewhat overblown.