Something Weird on TV: Tales to Keep You Awake Part Four – The Hiatus

Next up on Tales to Keep You Awake is yet another science fiction episode, this one set in the distant future of 2026, some twenty years after Americans founded and then abandoned colonies on Mars – does everyone remember that happening twenty years ago? It is once again adapted from a story by Ray Bradbury and, like “The Rocket” before it, is another of the sad, sleepy fables that Narciso Ibanez Serrador has said are his favorites.

“The Wait” has a fairly predictable twist in the tail that is somewhat oddly belabored by the script, but it is nonetheless difficult to suggest that Serrador isn’t good at writing these kinds of melancholy tales, nor that the show’s frequent star, Narciso Ibanez Menta, isn’t equally good at selling them. And while “The Wait” isn’t quite a one man show for Menta, he certainly gets all the heavy lifting. As someone who is more a fan of the series’ gothic tales than its science fictional ones, however, the real star of “The Wait,” for me at least, is the decayed Martian Norman Rockwell town with its picket fences, dead leaves, and blowing ash.

In this case, the Bradbury story being adapted is one of his tales from The Martian Chronicles, where it appears as “The Long Wait,” although it was previously published as “Dwellers in Silence” in a 1948 issue of Maclean’s magazine. As far as I know, this was its first adaptation onto film, although it was later redone as an episode of Ray Bradbury Theater in the ‘90s, where it starred Robert Culp.

Mondo Digital features one of the few places online where you can find even a brief English-language writeup of all the various episodes of Tales to Keep You Awake. There, the two-part episode “The Alarm” is described as having “a very Nigel Kneale vibe,” which was enough to get me excited to watch.

Unlike many of the other episodes we’ve covered, “The Alarm” is not an adaptation, but an original by Narciso Ibanez Serrador, writing under his nom de plume Luis Penafiel. Like most of the episodes of Tales to Keep You Awake, it stars Narciso Ibanez Menta as a scientist who is checking the radiation levels in the harbor of a Spanish city when he discovers instead a local dancer who appears to be radioactive herself.

Like a good Nigel Kneale story, it starts off small and builds to extraordinarily big revelations that reach backward through time while also having apocalyptic stakes for humanity’s future, making it one of the best of the science fiction episodes of the series thus far.

With “The Smile” it’s Bradbury time again, this time adapting the short story of the same name, a post-apocalyptic tale in which a nuclear war in 1970 (remember that) has led to an almost medieval lifestyle some 105 years later. It opens with some rather grisly images of a “witch” brewing potions to help a feverish girl, only to secretly dump the potions out and give her actual medicine instead.

It seems that the people of this imagined future hate the past because it was “civilization” which led to the creation of nuclear weapons and, therefore, to the war that destroyed everything and left their future so destitute. To keep this hatred alive, they hold regular hatred festivals, where they destroy any remnants of the old world that they can find, including musical instruments, books, and so on, all of which are outlawed, as are machines or medicines known to the previous civilization.

The title comes both from a monologue given by the “witch,” about how a smile is a gentle, fragile thing compared to a laugh, and how such gentleness has been lost by the hatred of the present people, who insist that all things be hard and strong, and from the end of the episode, when it is revealed that one of the objets d’art to be destroyed in the latest festival is the Mona Lisa. As the villagers tear the painting apart in a frenzy of hatred, the episode’s protagonist manages to grab just one piece, which of course is the painting’s famously enigmatic smile.

The first season of Tales to Keep You Awake ends on an extremely odd note. Narciso Ibanez Menta is back (he was absent for “The Smile”) in this adaptation of a story by Carlos Buiza. While there have been elements of black comedy and satire in previous episodes, and while just about every episode introduction has been jokey, “The Asphalt” is the first overtly comedic episode of Tales – and even it ends with a haunting melancholy.

It isn’t just the change in tone that sets “The Asphalt” apart, though. Unlike other episodes so far, there is no introduction from Serrador this time around. Instead, we get right into the “action,” such as it is. Menta plays a man wearing a cast on his leg who gets stuck in some asphalt on a hot day. Unable to extricate himself, he reaches out to those who pass by, all of whom are unwilling or unable to help as he sinks deeper and deeper.

In keeping with the episode’s satiric and comedic tone, “The Asphalt” also looks considerably different from every previous episode of the series. The backdrops and props are all hand-painted and made to look intentionally fake, in a style aping a children’s storybook. This extends to things such as cars passing on the road, which are two-dimensional, illustrated cutouts, carried by the actors who are “driving” them.

And that’s the end of the first season of Tales to Keep You Awake. “The Asphalt” originally aired on June 24, 1966. Season 2 would pick up just over a year later, in October of 1967. It was not as robust as its predecessor, however, spawning only 8 episodes before a lengthy hiatus. The show (and our coverage of it) doesn’t end there, though. After the second season, there was a one-off in 1974, featuring the show’s first switch to color, as well as a brief 1982 revival boasting one of the series’ best-remembered episodes. So, be sure to join us next time as we begin our coverage of the second season of this classic Spanish anthology series!