Tag: Surreal

Animated short: Anthropomorphic Dog on the London Underground

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ 1 Comment

Today we continue our exploration into the dark recesses of televisual and psychological do-they-or-don’t-they-exist mysteries, with this UWTV memory submitted by one of our followers, Kirsty Asher, of a strange animated claymation short film about an anthropomorphic dog, seen on TV around the turn of the millennium.

Over to Kirsty!

“I have searched and searched for evidence this animated short exists because I definitely remember watching it, but haven’t managed to locate any stills or IMDb clues. It would have been late 90s, possibly early 00s. No idea what channel it was on I was probably about 7 or 8 when I watched it.

It was a claymation short about an anthropomorphic dog (I think he was a black labrador?), living in London and he gets on the Underground with his CD Walkman. All the other background characters were some form of anthropomorphic animal, at least as best as I can remember. Puts his headphones on when he gets on the tube and falls asleep, has weird, trippy nightmares that he thinks are really happening, then when he wakes up he realises the tube’s reached the end of the line and he’s locked in the carriage. I remember it ending with him all stressed and banging on the doors of the carriage.

I realise this is such a vague synopsis to go on but I’m hoping someone might remember!”

As this sounds like a particularly intriguing, and possibly disturbing production, it would be well worth identifying and locating this animated short.

Does anyone else recall seeing this? Or does anyone know the title or have access to a copy?

UPDATE (03/04/25) – It seems someone else remembers this production and is looking for it, going from this thread on Reddit (click to read). According to this Reddit user, the dog’s dreams featured him in a time machine controlled by a computer, travelling to three different periods in the future, the final one of which features a meteor falling from the sky, which hits before the dog can get back into his time machine, causing him to wake up. The ending apparently sees the dog running out from the tube carriage yelling “I need to tell people about my prophecy!”

As of yet, other users on the thread above have not been able to identify this piece of lost media.

If you can help us out, please respond below or send us an email!

Image Credit: “Metal Dog” by oliva732000 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The Head of a Man in a Peat Bog – Unidentified 80s Kids’ Show (IDENTIFIED – BUT STILL UNFOUND!)

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ Leave a comment

Today’s UWTV entry takes on the task of searching for an unidentified piece of kids’ TV from the 80s that a follower of Scarred For Life contacted them about back in 2018. Five years on, this TV memory remains unidentified – so can any of our followers solve the mystery?

This weird TV memory was apparently a kids’ show, although it sounds terrifying… yet as we all know, kids’ TV of the 70s and 80s really pushed the boundaries as far as ‘terrifying’ was concerned, so it wouldn’t surprise us at all if this recollection is accurate!

The person’s recollection is of a children’s TV show about the mummified head of a man found in a peat bog, which is placed in the garden of a house – and lo and behold, paranormal events occur culminating in the mysterious peat bog man appearing in his entirety. The recollection of the person who saw this show is as follows:

“Here are the things I remember –

  • I think it was a rainy day at school and this programme was put on the tv for us. I seem to remember it was unplanned.
  • There was the discovery of the head of a man in a peat bog.
  • The head was put in somebody’s garden.
  • The child who lived in the house attached to that garden was wary of it. I think maybe the child was seeing it appearing in other places.
  • The child is alone in the woods and turns to see the full peat bog man.

That’s it. It’s not much to go on. I was born in 1981 and I watched this a primary school so it would have been the late 80s, likely.”

Does anyone have any recollection of this? Any idea what show it might have been? Any idea where it can be found…? If you can solve this mystery for us, please comment below or send us an email!

UPDATE, 10/09/23

Well, thanks to two of our followers on Twitter/X – Tom Kiehl and Tom Kitten – it seems this UWTV memory has been identified, as a 2-part episode of Picture Box from 1988, titled “The Man In The Moss“.

IMDb contains the following information about the episode(s):

“Unusually for Picture Box, this episode did not feature any on-screen presenter. The Man in the Moss had its own short title sequence, shown after the standard Picture Box opening titles, and the track Suspended Thoughts by James Clarke played over the film opening and closing credits. This is one of the few 1970s or 1980s episodes of Picture Box that was not presented by Alan Rothwell.”

As with other episodes of Picture Box, the 2-parter was screened in schools – and other viewer recollections have told us that the head of the bog man was apparently found while burying a recently deceased dog, presumably the pet of the child character, and (somewhat disappointingly) the story ends by revealing the supernatural events to have been a misunderstanding or the product of the child’s imagination, and a moral about not jumping to conclusions. Twitter/X user Folk Horror Revival tells us “it was a cautionary tale about jumping to conclusions, which is a good message but judging by people’s recollections it doesn’t seem to have got through, everyone just seems to remember the terror of the 1st episode”.

While the ending does sound like a let-down, we’re all still very intrigued to see the 2-parter in full – so if anyone has access to a copy or knows where we may be able to find one, please comment below, email us or drop us a message on Twitter/X!

Thanks to everyone who contacted us with their suggestions and recollections about this UWTV memory and helped identify it for us! And thanks also to those who suggested and linked us to the Welsh film O’r Ddaear Hen (From the Old Earth) – while this may not have been the production we were looking for, it’s definitely well worth seeing!

In the meantime, we’d like to say a huge thank you to Feedspot, who have featured this blog in their list of Top 25 British TV Blogs on the web! Huge thanks to all at Feedspot, and to all our followers and contributors – we couldn’t have got this far without you!

Top 25 British TV Blogs

Unidentified Short Film: Man Trapped in River

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ 2 Comments

Today’s UWTV memory comes from one of our blog followers, Stephanie Owens, who is looking on behalf of a friend for a strange short film or sketch, thought to have been shown on Channel 4, about a man trapped in a river.

This one may be slightly outside of our usual 1970s-90s range as the person who saw this thinks it was around 2002-2005 that they saw this. But it is certainly weird and seems to echo of classic Hauntology-era TV weirdness, so it is definitely worth an entry on UWTV.

So over to Stephanie, to relay the memory from her friend:

“Some time in the early 2000s – probably around 2002 – 2005 is a good time frame – there was a TV sketch (I think it was a Channel 4 thing) that revolved around a man that needed to be rescued from drowning. 

It is daytime and this man stands with water above his waist in a still river or canal, and is unable to move. Two men approach, walking along the towpath, wearing what seems to be Orthodox Jewish clothing. The man in the water asks for help, the two men realise that as it is the Sabbath they cannot help unless he is in danger. The man in the river considers his situation but does not think he is in immediate danger. The man in the water comes up with several suggestions including throwing the lifesaving ring, but the other men still say that as it is considered work, they can’t do that. The three enter into a dialogue to discuss the situation and to explore if there is an alternative. I believe it ended with no solution, and the man is left standing in the river.” 

This piece of lost media seems to echo of the much-emulated classic La Cabina, with its themes of someone becoming trapped, and unhelpful passers-by. Though it sounds from the description as though this one may have taken a more comedic approach as opposed to horror like the latter film and its many imitators.

Does anyone else recall seeing this film/sketch/clip, or know what it was or where to find it?

If you are able to help us identify this piece of lost media, please respond below or email us!

Surreal Breakfast Cereal Advert from the 90s (IDENTIFIED!)

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ Leave a comment

Today’s UWTV entry is about a surreal advert for breakfast cereal that was on UK TV in the 90s. From my recollection it was mid-to-late 90s, I think some time between 1994-98, but I can’t recall the exact year. Nor do I recall what cereal it was for but I’m fairly sure it was an ‘obscure’ cereal as opposed to the more well-known ones like Corn Flakes, All-Bran, Shredded Wheat etc. This advert was rather weird and (to me at least) perhaps unintentionally disturbing, so here goes…

The advert featured a comedic woman who was rather bumbling and silly, in a kitchen/dining room making a bowl of breakfast cereal for herself. (From memory the lady had quite long, thick hair, I think either blonde or possibly a reddish colour.) From my recollection there was a male voiceover and the lady didn’t say anything, it was more like a silent comedy thing, with her making the bowl of cereal. At the end of the advert, the lady sat down at the table to eat the cereal – and then, the room turned itself upside down, and the woman screamed as she and everything in the room fell crashing to the ‘floor’ (i.e. the ceiling that was now the floor). The advert ended with a shot of the cereal packet landing upright in front of the camera, and I think a male voiceover advertizing the cereal.

I recall seeing this advert quite a few times; I think it ran fairly regularly over a short period of time, but I cannot recall the exact year. Personally this advert always bugged me, because although it was obviously meant to be silly and comedic, it looked like a pretty nasty accident the woman was subjected to at the end, and what made it seem particularly unpleasant was the woman’s scream – if she’d let out a comical, light-hearted scream it probably would not have bugged me so much, but as she fell to the ‘floor/ceiling’, the woman let out a proper shrill, terrified scream that would rival that of Janet Leigh in Psycho – no way could I see this advert as being funny at all!

My search for this advert has brought me, naturally, to the Cereals & Other Ads channel on YouTube; I emailed the channel’s owner, but unfortunately he is not familiar with this advert, despite being a big collector of UK breakfast cereal commercials. If the advert managed to elude him I wonder if it may have been a regional advert rather than a national one (I live in the Northwest).

Of course there are hundreds if not thousands of commercial breaks from the 90s on YouTube, so I’m hoping this advert may be on one of them somewhere, but if so I have yet to come across it.

So it seems this elusive advert is deserving of a UWTV entry – does anyone recall this advert at all, know what it was for or know where we can find it? If so, please comment here or drop us an email!

UPDATE 30/03/23 – Thanks to one of our Twitter followers, @Carrigpudding, it seems this UWTV item has been found!

The advert is for Shredded Wheat, and can be viewed at the end of this ad break, at 3:20:

So it seems the advert was from earlier than believed, as this ad break is from November 1988. It’s possible the ad may have been repeated in the 90s, or it could just be a classic case of memory being unreliable. It’s also possible that a different ad reused the same idea in the 90s, but I see no real reason this particular advert isn’t the one I remembered.

And it’s yet another instance of childhood memory making an ad out to be more disturbing than it really was – as you can see from the video, the woman’s scream at the end is pretty comedic after all, and definitely not the ‘nasty accident’ I perceived it as when seeing it at a very young age!

Huge thanks to @Carrigpudding on Twitter for solving this mystery for us, and should anyone have any further info on similar adverts, don’t hesitate to contact us via the comments, Twitter or email!