The forgotten 1960s show that was the original Black Mirror

Out of the Unknown was the idea of pioneering producer, Irene Shubik. Initially working as story editor at the now defunct UK broadcaster ABC television on the show Armchair Theatre, her enthusiasm for sci-fi eventually led to the production of 13 episodes of the series Out of This World (1962) for UK broadcaster ITV. Later, Shubik was story editor on the BBC anthology series Story Parade (1964-65) which was a series of standalone adaptations of modern novels, and which tellingly dramatised Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel. The success of both ventures convinced the BBC Head of Drama Sydney Newman, who had worked with Shubik at ABC, that she should devise an anthology show dedicated to intellectual sci-fi.

I think that science-fiction is a way of talking about now and the world we live in today, but disguised as something fun… You can bend the rules of your reality into a funhouse mirror version of the issue you’re talking about – Charlie Brooker

Television historian Jon Dear explains the initial rationale behind the series. “Out of the Unknown was really the first time that sci-fi was presented as serious and intelligent adult drama,” he tells the BBC. “Today, series like Alien: Earth and Andor are unremarkable as being made for adults, and obviously have their origins in cinema, but this series was the first time many people would have watched speculative fiction, having found things like Doctor Who too juvenile.”

The series began broadcasting in 1965, with its first story, John Wyndham’s No Place Like Earth, going out on 4 October. Shubik produced the first two series, comprised of 26 episodes, before leaving to pursue other work, handing over to producer Alan Bromly, who took over for a further two series that ran from 1969 to 1971.

Out of the Unknown boasted a wealth of talent behind and in front of the camera. As well as the great writers whose work was adapted, each episode was populated by the very best of British character actors such as former Doctor Who Patrick Troughton, future leading man David Hemmings and noted faces from British theatre including Yvonne Mitchell, Sylvia Coleridge and Lynn Farleigh, to name but a few. Famous faces even appeared in production roles – future Alien and Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, for example, worked as a production designer on one of the series’ most powerful episodes, an adaptation of John Brunner’s Some Lapse of Time.