First viewed : 1 May 1981
I knew this one must be cropping up soon. BBC 1 slotted a modest little science fiction serial into the Friday night slot usually occupied by their less popular sitcoms.
The Nightmare Man was an adaptation of the novel Child of Vodyanoi by David Wiltshire about a genetic experiment gone wrong and wreaking havoc on a remote Scottish island. It was written by Robert Holmes and directed by Douglas Camfield both Dr Who stalwarts and it showed in both the structure and the pacing of the story.
Though filmed on VT with a modest budget ( with Cornwall standing in for Scotland ) it was always watchable. In its pre-9pm timeslot the gore had to be discussed rather than shown. Comprising four 30 minute episodes it didn't allow too much room for character development and the romance between rugged English dentist ( James Warwick ) and pharmacist Fiona ( the not very Scottish Celia Imrie ) was pretty dull though Celia flashed a fair amount of cleavage in one scene. Jonathan Newth was authoritative as the army colonel who wasn't quite what he claimed to be and the reliably Scottish duo of hatchet-faced Maurice Roeves and James Cosmo made a good pairing as the local plod.
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