This morning, Y was asking me about watching a TV show late at night a long time ago about a couple who discover that their radio can tune into the conversations of their apartment building neighbors. I had never seen it, but we brainstormed Google searches for television series that deal with the fantastic.
I thought of The Outer Limits, The Twlight Zone, and Amazing Stories. However, I was far off the mark thinking of show creators Leslie Stevens, Rod Serling, and Steven Spielberg. There were also shows like Night Gallery and Tales from the Crypt (an old favorite of mine when I was younger that I occasionally watched when the local cable company offered HBO free during promotions).
Thinking about it now, all of these examples rely to a certain extent on horror as the glue that binds the series together. There are episodes that lack this generic quality, but the theme of horror seems to pervade each episode in one way or another–as a major narrative force or as a flash-grab at the audience’s attention.
Eventually, Y found out that “The Enormous Radio” was an episode from George Romero’s Tales from the Darkside.
Dynamic Subspace 