My final visit to the world of "Beasts" was this one "The Dummy" which whilst not quite hitting the high spots of "During Barty's Party" was one of the better entries to the series.
Clyde Boyd (Bernard Horsfall) is a struggling actor, his wife has left him for another thespian, they've taken his daughter and he's turned to the bottle. He agrees to make one more appearance in a series of cheap but successful horror films in which he, unrecognisable beneath a heavy rubber suit, plays a gruesome monster. Already struggling, his mood worsens when Peter Wagner (Simon Oates) his wife's new lover is revealed to have a part in the film. It falls to the film's producer 'Bunny' Nettleton (Clive Swift) to talk him around.
I really liked the setting of this one, behind the scenes of a movie studio, but a quintessentially British 70's set. The near constant presence of the tea lady, the old classically trained actor slumming it, the put upon production assistants. The performances were pretty good too. Horsfall, whose 60 year long career of mostly TV roles was good when he gets to take off the mask in the first half, getting towards the desperation required to justify the actions of the second half. Clive Swift is probably most famous as Richard in "Keeping Up Appearances" but has had a long and varied career himself, it was interesting to see him in this slightly darker role. The story was OK, perhaps lacking in a final twist to take it over the top but at least it made sense. I'd half expected to see that Boyd wasn't really in the suit after all, rather it had come to life on its own, but then that's not really in keeping with the episode, which again is more about human psychological breakdown than anything truly supernatural.
"Beasts" as a series has been an interesting and varied introduction to some TV that was made before I was born, I'm looking forward to see what other anthological gems I can find.