Athol Coats

With the exception of the poor central heating system, Ray and Penny Burns' newly-purchased country house seems ideal. While repairing the pipes, a handyman digs up the cellar and uncovers the body of the home's previous owner who was murdered twenty years earlier. A séance held in the home reveals something very disturbing.

Glimpses of Chaucer penning his famous work are sprinkled through this re-enactment of several of his stories.

Thirty-Minute Theatre is an anthology drama series of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, which was used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short running length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known. Thirty-Minute Theatre followed on from a similarly named ITV series, beginning on BBC2 in 1965 with an adaptation of the black comedy Parsons Pleasure. In 1967 BBC2 launched the UK's first colour service, with the consequence that Thirty-Minute Theatre became the first drama series in the country to be shown in colour.