
Irene Shubik
Production
Biography
Irene Shubik (26 December 1929 – 26 September 2019) was a British television producer and story editor, known for her contribution to the development of the single play in British television drama. Beginning her career in television at ABC Weekend TV, she worked on Armchair Theatre as a story editor, where she devised the science fiction anthology series Out of this World. Moving to the BBC, she briefly worked as a story editor before being promoted to producer, creating the science fiction anthology television series Out of the Unknown. Leaving Out of the Unknown after two seasons, Shubik co-produced The Wednesday Play, overseeing its transition into Play for Today in 1970. She left the BBC in 1976 and subsequently produced the first season of Rumpole of the Bailey for Thames Television before joining Granada Television, where she produced Staying On and devised The Jewel in the Crown. She also wrote film scripts and a novel, The War Guest.
Known For

A one-hour anthology television series of one-off contemporary and classic dramas produced by the BBC.
Playhouse

Out of the Unknown is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between 1965 and 1971. Each episode was a dramatisation of a science fiction short story; some were created for the series, but most were adaptations of already published stories. The first three years were exclusively science fiction, but that genre was abandoned in the final year in favour of horror and fantasy. A number of episodes were wiped during the early 1970s, as was standard procedure at the time.
Out of the Unknown
Story Parade specialized in adaptations of modern novels. It was broadcast on June 5, 1964 and repeated on August 28, 1964. The teleplay was by Terry Nation (who invented "Blake's 7" and the Daleks in Dr. Who), and Elijah Baley was played by the late Peter Cushing. It also starred John Carson John Carson as R. Daneel Olivaw and Kenneth J. Warren. The master tapes of the program were erased, however a few clips from the production have turned up in various documentaries about Isaac Asimov's work.
Story Parade

In India, during the final years of British rule in World War II, an unjust arrest for rape sets off questions of identity and personal responsibility being explored against a background of war and personal intrigue.
The Jewel in the Crown

Out of This World is a British science fiction anthology television series made by ABC Television and broadcast in 1962. A spin-off from the popular anthology series Armchair Theatre, each episode is introduced by actor Boris Karloff. Many episodes are adaptations of stories by sci-fi writers including Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and Clifford D. Simak. The series is generally seen as a precursor to the BBC science fiction anthology Out of the Unknown.
Out of This World

An anthology series based on the Wessex Tales, a collection of short stories by novelist Thomas Hardy.
Wessex Tales

Thirteen Against Fate is a series of thirteen hour-long episodes based on the novels of Georges Simenon. Noted for the sound psychology of his characters, Simenon's stories deal with many nationalities and are set in numerous European cities and villages. There are sequences filmed in these locations integrated into the episodes. In each of the novels chosen for this series, Fate plays a leading role in the development of the story and the characters.
Thirteen Against Fate

An eccentric Jewish writer is drawn into the world of an apparantly delusional young woman and her invalid father
The Cafeteria

A family gather together for the funeral and cremation of the head of the family.
Hearts and Flowers

A salesman learns a few lessons from the locals when he goes to Yorkshire for a business course.
Ackerman, Dougall & Harker

Dr Max Harrow is awakened from a re-current nightmare in which he is pursued by a barbaric accusing figures, to find a tramp collapsed on his doorstep, The tramp is suffering from a genetic radiation disorder that should killed him in infancy as it did Harrow's baby son. The man is the living image of Harrow's nightmare figures, Clutched in his hand is a human finger bone and he speaks a strange, unknown tongue,
Some Lapse of Time

A stolid British family from Bishops Stortford are adventurous and book a holiday in a villa in Morocco, where things befall them.
The Villa Maroc

NSPCC social worker Margaret Ashdown is given the case of investigating into the Gosse family, when the young mother, Sheila, is unable to explain her baby's fractured skull at the hospital. She discovers the family live in poverty and ignorance, and have a tradition of instability.
When the Bough Breaks

Earth is no more, destroyed by nuclear war; but itinerant handyman Bert Foster, wandering the canals of Mars, is possessed by a restlessness for a home which no longer exists. He considers a move to an isolated outpost on Venus.
No Place Like Earth

A boy is skilled at telepathy and in mind control. He attracts the attention of the government.
Stranger in the Family

Alf and Jack, two labourers hired to work in a quarry,have decided to go on strike because of the degrading nature of the job.
The Drummer and the Bloke

Jimmy Nicholson returns from working in the Middle East to visit his son at boarding school. He went to the same public school himself and is disturbed to find that things have changed and the traditions by which he has always lived and been guided now seem to be obsolete.
Alma Mater

Bisthorpe moves into a flat where a host of bizarre events occur: hands come through walls, light bulbs explode, furniture talks, he turns into a table-top model in an advertising agency, etc. Finally, it's revealed that the new flat is, in fact, a room in a psychiatric asylum.
House of Character

A married man forms a liaison with a woman he meets on a train, and is divorced by his wife who allows him access to their daughters on Sundays, which they usually spend at the zoo.
Access to the Children

Two aging, shabby men inhabit a decaying sewer pumping station. They live by stealing things, including beds, a piano and a gramophone.They're joined by a younger man who disrupts their dreary small talk with angry, upsetting arguments.