Tubular Terrors: ‘The Woman in Black’

By Richard McKenna / October 28, 2026 The Woman in Black Directed by Herbert Wise ITV (1989) The year is 1989 and I am now a super cool punk rocker and art student. Okay, maybe not the “super cool” part, but I do have important punk rocker stuff to do (read: traipsing around in the drizzle, reading old comics, and feeling cold) and no access to TV listings, so I therefore foolishly miss out on the original transmission of The Woman in Black, British independent channel ITV’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s 1983 Gothic novel of the same name. I say foolishly because the adaptation was handled by Nigel Kneale, Britain’s most successful importer of scientifically-minded paranormality, doom, and anguish into the nation’s front rooms, who once again here creates something memorably uncomfortable. The Woman in Black inhabits that odd region of British TV where extremely accomplished but vaguely oppressive location work blends with the kind of eeriness and unease that the generation who had lived…