One of the greatest gifts delivered on Christmas Day 1924 was Rod Serling. Almost 35 years later, after establishing his credentials as an elite scriptwriter, censorship restrictions caused him to change tack and make the transition from live drama to filmed television. The result was the groundbreaking show that made his name synonymous with 'strange' TV - CBS's The Twilight Zone.
During an era when a US couch potato's staple viewing diet consisted of a never-ending succession of screwball sitcoms, crime shows and westerns, Serling's out-of-this world creation came like a triple-hit of espresso. The notion of a fifth dimension, where anything could happen, was a welcome recess from lame-ass laughs and hackneyed cops and cowboys. It presented viewers with the notion that life wasn't necessarily as cut-and-dried as everyone else in TV-land depicted it to be.
Plus, and this is probably the programme's X-factor, the characters who populated The Twilight Zone were, for the most part, regular Joes - people audiences could identify with. So it didn't require great leaps of faith for them to imagine the Zone's detours from reality could quite possibly happen to them, too. Or maybe they just dug the fact that, for all its bizarre and eclectic attributes, almost every tale from the Zone wound up with a moral note - albeit of the non-preachy variety. Whatever their reasons, close to 18million woke up, smelled the sci-fi/fantasy coffee, and tuned in every week to watch aliens, time travellers and supernatural forces interact with society - often with hideous results.
As well as being a phenomenal contributor to the show (he wrote 92 of its 156 episodes), Serling also had a nose for both writing and acting talent. He produced scripts by such genre legends as Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) and Charles Beaumont (The Howling Man). And on the acting front, while established performers including Buster Keaton, Mickey Rooney and John Carradine graced the Zone, the programme also proved a springboard for future big- and small-screen stars - among them Dennis Hopper, Robert Duvall and William Shatner.
Sadly, after five years the series was unceremoniously buried. But while CBS-TV may have considered it past its sell-by date, The Twilight Zone has stood the test of time and become one of the most legendary and innovative TV shows ever, now available on DVD (the latest release being the concluding fifth season, first shown in 1963). These days, Serling has his own star on Hollywood Boulevard - not bad for the son of a wholesale butcher.
*Twilight Zone 'Series 5' Out Now
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