Jake Anthony

Strangers is a 1978–82 ITV police procedural created and principally written by Murray Smith, based on characters created by Kenneth Royce in his novel series and subsequent 1977–78 television adaptation The XYY Man. Don Henderson and Dennis Blanch reprise their roles, respectively, of Detective Sergeant (DS) George Bulman and Detective Constable (DC) Derek Willis. A group of police officers are brought together from across the country to the north of England. There, the fact that they're not well-known gives them the advantage to infiltrate where a more familiar local detective could not. Despite being based around a comparatively small team of detectives, a regular feature in its early years is that few episodes feature the entire team, with most using just two or three regulars in any major role.

The Bed opens with Jamie, a young man, looking round an old, deserted country house. Through flashback we see Jamie as a boy, scared out of his wits when his older sister and her boyfriend, left alone in the house to babysit Jamie for the evening, play cruel tricks on him. His sister makes believe she’s been sucked under Jamie's bed by a monster and her boyfriend pretends he’s been stabbed. Jamie has his revenge at the end when the couple, laughing at scaring Jamie half to death and frolicking on The Bed, are suffocated by its sheets and consumed by it. We come back to present day; Jamie looks at the empty room where the bed once stood then is called by someone outside: an ambulance driver beckons him down in a friendly voice. We assume it’s Jamie's day out from the mental asylum. The final shot is of the lighter part of flooring where the bed once stood disappearing once Jamie has left the room.