The success of Murrain, his contribution to ATV’s anthology series Against the Crowd opened the door for Nigel Kneale to pursue a new anthology series of his own. Beasts was a six-part series, each episode focusing, as its title suggests, on a particular “beast”, though sometimes in unexpected ways. Ghostly dolphins, flesh-eating rats, a horror film actor who psychologically melds with his most famous creation, a poltergeist unleashed by a troubled shop worker and a suburban werewolf were just a few of the ghastly delights on offer. The other episode was Baby, a sort-of companion piece to Murrain that found Kneale once again exploring “folk horror” themes.
Expectant couple Jo (Jane Wymark) and Peter (Simon MacCorkindale) move into an old and remote country cottage which is being renovated by a pair of superstitious local builders (Mark Dignam and Norman Jones). Behind one of the walls they discover a mummified “something” (we never really find out what it is though it resembles a lamb with claws and Peter speculates that “it was never actually born”) in a clay pot that seems to have been hidden in the walls for years, possibly centuries. As veterinarian Peter and his business partner Dick Pummery (T.P. McKenna) prepare to perform an autopsy on the creature to discover what it is, Jo begins to mentally unravel, coming to suspect that the long-dead monstrosity is a threat to both her and her unborn baby.
On the face of it, Baby seems pretty straightforward – something nasty from the past impinges on the present, menacing the city slickers out of their depths in their rural surroundings. But this is Nigel Kneale we’re talking about and there’s a lot more to Baby than that. For a start we’re never quite sure that anything we’re seeing is actually happening. All of the supernatural occurrences – including a fantastically creepy scene in which Jo is searching the woods for her lost pet cat and large, inexplicable shadows turn day into night – are only ever witnessed by Jo and no-one else. Given the enormous stresses that she’s under (her husband is an insensitive boor, seemingly oblivious to his wife’s fears) it’s hardly surprising that she might be cracking up, imagining the whole thing as her fears for the safety of her unborn child mount. Even at the climax, when she confronts the creature and what may or may be it’s mother, happens when she’s alone and the camera subsequently reveals that nothing is actually there. So is there really a malevolent force from the ancient past stalking Jo? Possibly, but Kneale is too canny a writer to make things that simple. We simply never find out.
Wymark is excellent as the increasingly frazzled Jo, struggling on with no support from her useless partner and fending off the weird eccentricities of the obnoxious Pummery and his oddball wife Dorothy (Shelagh Fraser). She’s clearly distressed about her pregnancy – it’s suggested early on that she’s already lost one baby in childbirth – and is finding no support from anyone around her. Even her beloved pet, Muddy the cat disappears and abandons her, sensing perhaps that something isn’t right in the cottage. She’s terrified of history repeating itself and that she’s about to lose another child and her vision of the monstrous mother-creature suckling her hideous little mutant offspring is less an intrusion of the supernatural than it is a physical manifestation of her anxieties. Her eventual collapse seems ultimately the only possible response to her increasingly unpleasant and terrifying surroundings. Wymark does a fantastic job in presenting Jo’s vulnerability as her initial superficial confidence and occasionally fiery outburst slowly give way to insanity.
She certainly outclasses her co-stars. McKenna is usually a lot better than this, turning Pommery into a rather one-dimensional oaf, goading Peter into joining in with his laddish banter and forced bonhomie. MacCorkindale is as over-the-top as ever, starting out angry and agitated for no good reason and ramping up the hysteria from there. His trademark full-tilt performance transforms even the most mundane of passing lines into some great theatrical performance. Far more fun are Dignam and Jones as the Mummerset-accented locals, dispensing good advice (“Get shun of it,” they advice Jo when she shows them what they found in the wall, “get it out of here, get it gone”) that no-one bothers to listen to, and Fraser as the dotty Dorothy, equally full of advise for Jo though of a less useful variety.
Peter and Dick’s insistence on solving the mystery with an autopsy introduces Kneale’s tried and trusted clash between rational science and irrational superstition, much as he’d done in The Stone Tape, Murrain and other works. Murrain had also featured a country vet trying to use scientific explanations to persuade “irrational” locals – Jo mentions early on that she was raised in the country and Peter seems to use this as just one more stick to beat her with – of the error of their ways and in both cases it’s not at all clear that they either succeeded or were indeed right.
Like the very best of Kneale’s work he leaves enough wiggle room in Baby to allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions. If one chooses to accept that there really has been a supernatural presence stalking Jo, Baby allows for that. If on the other hand we choose to believe that Jo is cracking under inordinate pressure and that much of the story is taking place in her head then that works too. As such it’s a play that continues to offer rewarding insights with every successive viewing. They won’t be easy viewings but they’ll be ones that stay with you long after any similar piece of 70s British horror TV has faded into a half-remembered haze.
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