After the early example of “folk horror” in the Play for Today instalment Robin Redbreast, playwright John Bowen returned to the form with A Photograph, a deceptive piece of work that for the most part plays as a psychological thriller before taking a turn into “folk horror” territory in the closing moments. John Stride, who would turn up again in Bowen’s less-than-compelling Ghost Story for Christmas instalment The Ice House (1978), plays Michael Otway, a freelance arts journalist/presenter currently working for BBC Radio 3. One day he and his wife Gillian (Stephanie Turner) receive a mysterious photograph through the post simply showing a pair of young women sitting outside a gypsy caravan. There’s no note, no explanation, no clue as to the sender.

The already unstable Gillian begins to suspect that the photograph is proof of her husband’s infidelity (he is having an affair but it turns out to have nothing to do with the photograph, just one of the narrative feints that Bowen pulls) and becomes obsessed with finding out who these women are. Like David Hemmings’ similarly obsessed photographer in Michaelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (1966), Gillian enlarges the photograph, spotting a distinctive tattoo on one of the women. Driven to distraction, Otway decides to humour her and sets off to investigate, ultimately finding himself caught in an unexpected trap.

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His investigations led him to the standard issue small English village where he meets Mrs Vigo (Freda Bamford, reprising her role from Bowen’s earlier Play for Today, Robin Redbreast (played by Sylvia Kay, she possibly turned up a third and final time in Bowen’s two-part Sunday Night Thriller, Dark Secret (1981) – Kay plays a “Mrs Davies” who is known to the protagonist by an earlier name, “Miss Vigo”) and the younger, never-named man (Eric Deacon) – her son? We never find out – she shares a caravan with. The same caravan seen in the photograph. In the closing stages the play takes an unexpected turn as the couple’s relationship with Gillian is revealed and Otway’s fate is sealed.

We know that Otway is doomed from the first few seconds of the play, which opens with the camera panning across his dead body. The story is less concerned with the fact that he doesn’t get out of the play alive than it is with how he wound up dead in that rather grotty caravan. Throughout, Otway is presented as a smug and insufferable fool, oblivious to his wife’s needs and deteriorating mental state who thoroughly deserves the appalling fate that befalls him. His behaviour and patronising attitudes are punished by representatives of older ways of living, people who can see right through his middle-class bullshit and see him for the worm he really is. For all his pompous pretensions and self-absorbed lifestyle, he’s still easy prey for people whose beliefs are more instinctive, from his point of view less sophisticated but in the end far more powerful than anything he holds dear.

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From the disturbing opening shot through to the galvanising final sequence, wherein Otway falls foul of the rural conspiracy and is poisoned for his ‘crimes’ (“That’s country wine, that is,” says Mrs Vigo ominously, underlining the fact this is all about the old ways vs the new, the city vs the country) A Photograph oozes menace. It isn’t as explicitly “folk horror” as Robin Redbreast perhaps but it contains enough of the sub-genres well established tropes – often subtle and mainly present in the closing moments – to make it of interest. The two plays are connected, thematically, through the presence of Mrs Vigo, and the through fact that both revolve around urban media types falling foul of something they’re simply not equipped to understand. And although A Photograph is the less well known and less effective play, it’s still one worthy of seeking out. The supporting characters – a hitchhiker (Judy Monahan) who chides Otway for picking her up expecting sex and treating his wife’s concerns about the photograph as an excuse for a jolly in the countryside; a travelling evangelist (Raymond Mason) who inadvertently leads him to his ultimate doom – are well sketched and the lead performances are excellent. Stride, recently the star of popular legal drama The Main Chance (1969-1975), is a lot more impressive here than he would be in the dreary The Ice House, perfectly capturing Otway’s arrogance and over-inflated sense of entitlement. Stephanie Turner was still a few years from her role as Inspector Jean Darblay, the original lead in cop show Juliet Bravo (1980-1985) and is first rate as the fragile wife who turns out to be a lot more than she initially seems.

A Photograph is a lot harder to find than either Robin Redbreast or The Ice House, both of which have been released on DVD by the BFI. It was briefly available on the BBC’s ill-fated BBC Store but since it closed has once again slipped back into relative obscurity though an unauthorised upload can still be found on Youtube. It’s a remarkable piece of work whose climax will leave you shaken and questioning everything that you’d watched to that point. Like Robin Redbreast it demands a lot of the viewer but more than rewards those willing to put in the extra effort required of it.

October 2020 Update: Since the review was written, A Photograph has been released on blu-ray in the UK by the BFI as part of their Play for Today Volume 1 box set.

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