Tales That Witness Madness 1973

In the clinic link episodes, Donald Pleasence as Dr. Tremayne, a psychiatrist in a modern mental asylum, reveals to his colleague Jack Hawkins as Dr. Nicholas that he has solved four special cases. Tremayne lays out the case histories of the patients Paul, Timothy, Brian, and Auriol, presenting each in turn to Nicholas. The accounts unfold as a measured blend of psychology, memory, and uncanny phenomena, building a quiet tension around what these histories imply about the nature of reality and madness, and setting the stage for an unsettling convergence at the end.

Mr Tiger

Paul, [Russell Lewis], is the sensitive and introverted young son of constantly bickering parents, Sam [Donald Houston] and Fay Patterson [Georgia Brown]. In the midst of their troubled home, Paul forms a bond with an “imaginary” tiger who seems to reflect his loneliness and need for protection. As Tremayne recounts Paul’s inner world, the tiger becomes a symbol of the boy’s silence in a household that never seems to listen, a mirror held up to the fragility of his everyday life.

Penny Farthing

Timothy, [Peter McEnery], an antique store owner, uncovers a strange portrait of “Uncle Albert” [Frank Forsyth] and a penny-farthing bicycle inherited from his aunt. In a series of eerie episodes, Uncle Albert compels Timothy to mount the bicycle, sending him back in time to an earlier era. There, he meets Beatrice [Suzy Kendall], young Albert’s former love, and the romance unfolds with a sense of danger and consequence that spills over into Timothy’s present. These travels also place Timothy’s girlfriend Ann (also Suzy Kendall) in peril, linking love, danger, and the weight of history in a single, disorienting thread.

Mel

Brian, [Michael Jayston], brings home an old dead tree he affectionately calls Mel and installs it in his modern house as a startling piece of found-object art. His growing fixation on Mel edges toward obsession, straining his relationship with his wife Bella Patterson [Joan Collins], who senses an unsettling shift in her husband’s attention and mood. The strange object exerts a pull that unsettles the couple’s balance, hinting at a dangerous blur between affection, possession, and madness.

Luau

Auriol Pageant, [Kim Novak], an ambitious literary agent, begins to court her new client, Kimo [Michael Petrovitch], who also shows a growing interest in her daughter Ginny [Mary Tamm]. Auriol schemes to throw a lavish luau to seal the arrangement, but when the plans falter, Kimo’s associate Keoki [Leon Lissek] steps in to take control. The luau, orchestrated by Keoki, becomes more than a party; it is revealed as a ceremonial rite intended to ease Kimo’s dying mother, Malia [Zohra Sehgal], into heaven by appeasing a Hawaiian god, and it carries a chilling demand that he consume the flesh of a virgin: Ginny. The episode blends seduction, ritual, and a chilling ritualistic undertone as the characters navigate desire, duty, and the edge of moral peril.

In the epilogue, Tremayne watches as manifestations of the patients’ histories begin to materialize before him. Nicholas cannot see these apparitions and declares Tremayne insane, apparently doubting the very accounts Tremayne has laid out. As the tension peaks, Nicholas enters the patient holding area, where he is confronted by the prophetic power of the histories—an encounter that leaves his fate intertwined with the very stories Tremayne claimed to have solved, ending in a dramatic, fatal confrontation with the figure of the tiger.