Old-School TV: One Step Beyond- 'Message From Clara'

At long last, I'm done with the Disc.  Will the final Review (most likely for quite a while) deliver the goods?  To see, let's take...

Mr. Newland appears to tell us the Tale of a woman teaching an English Class for Immigrants.  She ends up having a strange experience.

One of the Students- who has a thing for her- gives her a present...

A cameo pin that belonged to his dead wife.  What could go wrong?

While doing her lesson, the woman seems to go into a trance and starts writing in Swedish.

She can't explain it and it all seems to bother her quite a bit.

Being checked out by a Doctor the next day proves to be no help.  Curse you, Science!

After talking to another person who reads/speaks Swedish, she gets one more thing written and translated in a trance.  The message- don't trust this man- he'll kill you like he killed me.

Said man shows up and breaks down at the sight of it all, seemingly to be arrested.  The End.

An odd bit of Melodrama for sure.  Can I explain how someone can spontaneously-write in a Language they don't speak?  Other than the fact that Trump can sign his name, but thinks that 'convefe' is a word, no.  That said, I don't put a lot of 'stock' into this whole thing.  Like so much of this, it is nearly impossible to prove.  With that said, the Episode is still pretty good.  It is *very* melodramatic, which is something that you will see a lot in older Shows.  As I mentioned in covering Tales of Tomorrow (cheap plug), this is the *very* early days of TV.  People weren't sure whether TV Shows should be short Films or filmed Plays.  As such, the Acting and Production Values are all over the map.  Plus, nearly every Show aired live!  Could you imagine if they had to do that today!  The actual Story here is kind of interesting, even if I don't buy into it.  It makes for an interesting idea, if nothing else.  At the end of the Episode, Newland tries to sell the idea by mentioning some Books that were supposedly written by 'spirits from 300 years in the past.  While I don't buy it, I apparently can buy the Book he mentioned nearly 60 years ago...

Well, that is the last Step Beyond for a while.  Unless there's some massive demand, I'll move on to the 6,000,004 other Shows I need to cover.