Hammer House of Horror: Guardian of the Abyss

 "Don't you know the power of positive evil?"

This episode is one of the finest yet. Written by David Fisher, who had written some impressive episodes of Doctor Who over the preceding two years, this is essentially a Dennis Wheatley pastiche, played very straight. It reminded me very much of Hammer's The Devil Rides Out (although To the Devil a Daughter is much underrated) in its structure- a devil worshipping cult, scrying glasses, cows, invetrd crosses and all the iconography, all playing out over a landscape of posh country houses and deceased decadent aristocrats.

Yet it's more than that. The John Dee connection is clever. The use of voodo dolls is creepy. John Carson is a superb villain. Paul Darrow is great fun as a creepy cultist. And the twist at the end is excellent, the perfect capstone to a fine script, very much foreshadowed and earned. I can forgive the driving with no seatbelts (hey, it's 1980) and the amusing sex scene where Mike and Alison start doing foreplay while still wearing clothes over their naughty bits in the time-honoured television fashion.

This may ebe the best yet. Not many episodes left to beat it...

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Series 1- The Speckled Band

"You scoundrel, Sir! I've heard of you before. You are Holmes the meddler. Holmes the busybody. Holmes the Scotland Yard jack-in-office!"

We get a variation of the trope here. Holmes is visited by a young woman living in a big house that is being terrorised by a bounder and a cad acting as patriarch, yes, but this time she's the step-daughter and not, as is more usual, a governess. The villain revels in the splendidly dastardly name of Dr. Grimesby Roylott, and is plotting to kill his step-daughter for her inheritance. With a snake, naturally.

This episode ticks all the usual splendid boxes, with some suitably Holmesian dialogue for Jeremy Brett to deliver as only he can. And Holmes handles the case superbly, with rather more actual deductive ability that he showed last episode. Not bad for a case which begins at such an ungodly hour.

And, of course, beneath it all is the awful position of the unmarried young Victorian women at the mercy of such horrid patriarchs as this. No wonder so many of them seek Holmes' help.