Roald Dahl Once Hosted A TV Show Similar To The Twilight Zone
Beloved author, fighter pilot, spy and all around interesting guy Roald Dahl may be best known as the creator of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and The BFG, but he also wrote macabre adult stories that would scare the wits out of a kid.
Most of the short stories Dahl wrote in his parallel writing career were perfect for anthology TV, since they're often cautionary tales with a surprise ending.
So when CBS network producers were under the gun to fill the spot left behind by Jackie Gleason's epic failure of a talk show You're In The Picture they called Roald Dahl.
Roald naturally jumped at the chance to bring his strange and creepy stories to life on a TV show, and thus the series Way Out was born.
It aired right before The Twilight Zone for one season in 1961, and Roald provided the intro and epilogue much like Rod Serling or Alfred Hitchcock did on their shows, only smokier.
Strangely, only the first episode "William & Mary" was written by Dahl, even though the producers initially wanted to base every episode on one of Dahl's macabre short stories.
Read In 1961, Roald Dahl Hosted His Own Version Of "The Twilight Zone" at Atlas Obscura
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