User Reviews

Tales of the Unexpected: Georgy Porgy is set in an English village where Reverend George Duckworth (John Alderton) has some serious psychological problems stemming from when he was a young boy & the way his weirdo mother Clare (Joan Collins) raised him, these are problems which he has grown up with ever since. George has a problem with women & the female members of his parish make him nervous especially when sexy Julia Roach (Joan Collins again) arrives in town...

This Tales of the Unexpected story was episode 9 from season 2 & originally aired here in the UK during April 1980, the third of twelve Tales of the Unexpected episodes to be directed by Graham Evans this is one of the more distinctive & memorable stories from this show. The story by Roald Dahl was dramatised by Robin Chapman & is a real oddity, during his introduction to this episode Dahl claims he got the idea from watching a snake eat a rat & then wondered how long it would take a woman to eat a man or something like like. Anyway, this is an odd psychological horror drama that is down right bizarre & a little bit disturbed too, for instance like when George looks across his Church while giving a sermon & 'sees' all of his female audience naked! This touches various themes including suggested incest & child abuse, psychological torture & a very twisted view of the male female relationship. I'm not sure this is a particularly great way to spend 25 minutes but it's strange & you probably won't forget it in a hurry as George completely loses it & even turns down sex with Joan Collins in her prime! I'm not sure who this will appeal to but I found it a fascinating & sometimes freaky little tale, it ain't no masterpiece & the ending is a clichéd cop-out but it's watchable & it's certainly different.

This one hasn't dated too badly actually, it looks nice enough & is generally well made. There's no scares or suspense but there's a sinister & bizarre atmosphere throughout. Considering tales of the Unexpected is as tame as they come this episode unusually has a touch of female nudity in it. The acting is alright & amongst yet another familiar cast is the one & only Joan Collins who actually gets two parts in this & a wet shirt scene! To be fair to her though she does good with both roles.

Georgy Porgy is one of the strangest Tales of the Unexpected stories I've seen so far, that still doesn't make it brilliant but it's worth a watch & is certainly unique if nothing else.

Full of double entendres and sexual innuendos, this episode is one of the more bizarre entries to 'Tales of the Unexpected'. The principal character, Vicar George Duckworth (John Alderton), is the product of an upbringing that borders on the incestuous, resulting in a questionable approach to the female members of his parish. Joan Collins, who met an untimely end in a prior episode of this series titled 'Neck', fares only somewhat better in this story, in which she handles the dual role of young George's free spirited mother, and a visiting congregant who's flirtatious nature is bound to tie the vicar in knots. The repressed childhood leading to an adulthood mired in guilt eventually leads to George being fitted for a straight jacket following his ambiguous request to touch Julia Roach's (Collins) ear. Connecting the dots from the vicar's questionable childhood to his problematic vocation isn't all that difficult, nor is his final refuge in a sanitarium all that unexpected.

George Duckworth is a young vicar, with an awkward behaviour towards women, when doing his Sermon he witnesses them naked. Growing up he had a very strange upbringing, a domineering, inappropriate, free spirit of a mother, who had a massive influence on Goergy Porgy's behaviour. He is the object of desire for many of the spinsters in his Parish, when Julia comes to stay she sets about getting him drunk and seducing him, with tragic consequences.

I can't get used to John Alderton looking so young somehow, but he is very good in the role. Lally Bowers is absolutely glorious as the flirtatious older woman Miss Elphinstone, Ann Beach is also utterly wonderful, I would also say Joan Collins gives a cracking performance, so much better then in her last episode 'Neck,' there is a femme fatale performance about her character Julia. She's so much better suited to this kind of role.

Fiendishly dark, funny, massively disturbing, there is something irresistible about this story, I'm sure a lot of men would have dreamt of being pursued by Joan Collins, such a beauty!!

Very good episode, bizarre and very twisted, 8/10

Some of the more ambitious episodes in the series contain enough material & themes for an hour long+ play/film, let alone a stand-alone drama of twenty five minutes. This peculiar episode, and it is most peculiar, almost feels like it is straying into the territory mined by a writer like Dennis Potter.

It is ambitious, perhaps too much so, but this strange compelling episode is much the better for it, covering events such as a dysfunctional childhood, corrupted innocence (hints of incest) as well as a tragedy that has left George nursing a lifetime of guilt.

It is an episode which deftly handles all these topics and is directed adroitly, the flashback sequences fit seamlessly and help us, the viewer, to get an insight into the Rev George's complex relationship with women.

George, the vicar, arouses the passions amongst the female members of his parish. Into his life steps the free-spirited, Julia. It is a masterstroke to have the same actress, Joan Collins, play both roles and this is one of her finest performances. She is able to find a different emotional register for both George's bohemian mother (past), whose child-rearing techniques are highly questionable at best, and who treated George more as a surrogate husband than a child; and Julia (present), whose intentions may be flirtatious but who ultimately comes across as good-natured.

Julia engineers a situation where she is finally able to get George alone & vulnerable to her amorous attentions. However, an inadvertent remark, amidst the throes of passion, arouses traumatic associations in George and unleashes an act of almost catastrophic violence.

This is a clever episode that relies on a number of ways to elaborate its themes to build up an eerie atmosphere of a man being led into a trap from which there is no escape.

The music has an haunting, eerie quality as if there are satanic forces at work, ready to wreak havoc on the poor vicar. There is a risque visual wit that strays on the right side of taste without being obscene (a gingerbread man in a rather suggestive pose, the bookmark at the beginning placed in the bible from which George is about to give a reading). For instance, at the beginning, George is in church, giving a sermon to his female parishioners when he suddenly experiences a disorienting vision of them all being naked (still wearing their hats. Calendar Girls , it is not).

It is also a well-written episode with key words & phrases resonating throughout (like the rhyme Georgy Porgy,) thus linking the past with the present.

The ending worked for me. It is bleak & dark as George finds himself being monitored in another sort of cage (his pet rabbit). He is safe at last, or so he thinks, but at what cost?