Sight unseen since its first and only television broadcast on 28 June 1966, David Weir’s The Devil’s Eggshell, based on an idea by Alex Comfort, was given a very rare public screening by the BFI (who specially restored the original tape for the occasion) in December 2014 as part of their extensive science fiction season, Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder.

Directed by Gareth Davies, it tells the offbeat tale of strange egg-shaped objects that are found near the sites of both natural and man-made disasters around the world. The British Prime Minister (Leonard Rossiter, sporting a highly unlikely accent) over-reacts, allowing the country to fall into the fascist military clutches of Major General Atkins (John Phillips) and ignoring suggestions that the public be told about the potential danger from what is increasingly looking like an alien attack. But a group of scientists, led by Dr Quilliam (Keith Barron), decide to exploit the situation to unite the world against this unseen threat but things go horribly wrong and the plan only ends in disaster.

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Fans of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons comics masterwork Watchmen, and television viewers who remember the Outer Limits episode The Architects of Fear (30 September 1963) will immediately recognise the basic set-up, and there are no doubt plenty of similar tales peppering the history of pulp science fiction. Weir and Comfort give their take on the story a bleak, satirical edge that, like Watchmen and Architects of Fear, goes a lot deeper than a simple tale of an artificially created alien threat, taking aim at everything from the workings of the British press (as venal in 1966 as it is today) to the dangers of populist politics whipping up the public into a dangerous, frightened mob. In many respects it’s ahead of its time, but in 1966 the status quo had to be restored and by the time the end credits roll the old guard are back in power with no indication that they’ve learned anything from the mayhem they’ve created.

Typical of the time, The Devil’s Eggshell is well-intentioned but rather earnest and not a little stuffy. The cast of familiar faces (Rossiter, Barron, Nurt Kwouk, Bernard Hepton) smooths the way but in the end The Devil’s Eggshell never really makes much of its clever premise and the end result is rather bland and forgettable. It’s certainly no forgotten classic awaiting rediscovery, more a minor footnote in the history of British telefantasy.