Before The Twilight Zone, there were other spooky anthology series. One of my favorites is One Step Beyond, a show from which Twilight Zone seems to've taken some notes. Actor John Newland hosts our exploration of psychic phenomenon dramatized from actual events. The show seems to've inspired not only The Twilight Zone, but also the much later Unsolved Mysteries. One Step Beyond drew some pretty impressive guest stars and a cavalcade of familiar character actors. Newland himself seemed more personally involved than other such hosts, as if we were actually sharing stories from his private collection of accounts. The show was quite popular. Newland tried to revive the series in the 70's, as The Next Step Beyond, but the revival show failed to really find an audience the way the original did. Sadly, this seems to remain the case. Though popular with discount distributors because the show fell into public domain (and previously was still widely circulated on local TV stations for the same reason), an actual official remastered DVD release of the first season crashed on take-off and the remaining two seasons were not to receive the same treatment. "Next week, and every week, we'll be bringing you the personal records of the rarest kind of human experience: man's adventure in the world of the unknown, that mysterious psychic world beyond our five senses. This is your invitation to take with us that astonishing... one step beyond."
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