With "The Frighteners" seeming removed from Youtube at the moment, I've decided to go on to a different anthology series, one closer to the horror aesthetic that I was looking for and that "The Frighteners" wasn't supplying. I settled on "Hammer House of Horror" from a few years later and started with the first episode "Witching Time".
On a farm in Southern England, David Winter (Jon Finch) is producing the music for a movie his wife, actress Mary Winter (Prunella Gee) is starring in. Drunk, Angry and (correctly) convinced that his wife is having an affair, he heads to the barn to settle their horse following a storm, and discovers a woman lying amongst the hay. The woman proclaims herself to be Lucinda Jessop (Patricia Quinn) a witch, who lived on the farm 300 years previous and who jumped through time to escape persecution. On Mary's return, Lucinda lays claim to David, body and mind, and tries to get rid of Mary.
Whilst not particularly scary, by any standard, this opening episode of the series was OK. A fairly straightforward possession story, just with a witch instead of a ghost, although she might as well be, given the limits of her powers. Lucinda is played by Patricia Quinn, who perhaps is most famous as Magenta, in the film version of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". It's a loud, OTT performance, but it suits the villainous role she's playing. Jon Finch and Prunella Gee are OK too, though (and I don't think this was necessarily a performance issue) I never really understood why she was having the affair, given that she seemed to care about David when she returned home, particular as she's having an affair with the relatively boring looking Charles, played by Ian McCulloch (the one from "Zombie Holocaust" not the one from Echo And The Bunnymen).
Where the show is different from the other I've watched recently is that there is a lot more sexual content. There's a couple of sex scenes, and some nudity (which was blurred on the Youtube version I saw) - Plus Prunella Gee spends a lengthy amount of time in just her underwear. This is, of course, in keeping with the way Hammer productions had gone across the 70's.
Whilst the storyline is lacking any true moments of fear, or surprise, the performances and effects are OK and it's a decent first episode in the run.