Blog-O-Ween 2025: The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale: Day Five — “Murrain”

We are officially at the midpoint of this year’s Blog-o-ween, Blog-o-weeners. It is day five of The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale. It is time to leave behind the short stories and radio dramas that Kneale wrote earlier in his career and move into the medium that really made the Manxman’s name: television.

We will be digging into the crème de la crème of Kneale’s tv work later in Blog-o-ween. (Pun intended! If ya know, ya know...) For now, let’s hop over the 1950s and 1960s and land square in the 1970s. After working at the BBC for the previous twenty-five years, Nigel Kneale spent most of the "Me Decade" writing scripts for relative newcomers ITV. His first produced script would be for the network’s seven-episode series Against the Crowd. While none of the episodes are connected by characters or storyline, all deal with the same basic situation: a lone individual standing against the majority. Kneale’s contribution, “Murrain,” was the third episode and was originally broadcast on ITV on July 27, 1975. It was rebroadcast (along with the rest of the series) two years later in early 1977.

After the first four days of Blog-o-ween 2025, you should have a pretty good idea of what is meant when I say that “Murrain” is quite “Knealean” in its themes. Although things begin in a fairly straightforward manner, we soon get the sense that behind this perceived normality lies a world that is more akin to the worldview of William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” By the end of the program, the viewer (like the very modern main character of the story) is left staring at an ever-widening crack in what had once been the smooth facade of reality.

Things begin in an ordinary, even mundane, manner. Mr. Crich (David Simeon), a veterinarian, is making a follow-up visit to the pig farm of Mr. Beeley (Bernard Lee). Tests have been made, precautions taken, but Beeley’s pigs are still dying, and Crich is unable to discover the cause. Crich preaches patience and assures the farmers that it is only a matter of time before science solves the problem. Beeley and his men, however, have another solution in mind.

Crich is escorted around the farm and the surrounding area by Beeley and his men. In addition to the sick hogs, Crich is shown empty pipes where water used to flow. He is introduced to Mr. Leach’s (David Neal) sick and bedridden child (Philip Gilman). Mr. Coker (John Golightly) walks with a noticeable limp on a twisted leg. According to Beeley, the problems on his farm are all caused by a “murrain.” Murrain is an archaic word meaning quite literally death. It is a term used to describe a number of infectious plagues affecting animals, as well as humans.

Beeley: It’s what I got in my pigs, like a plague on them. And your science can make nothing of it. Well, when that happens you got to look around for other reasons. And when it takes on people, too. And young kids. 

Crich: Then you find somebody to blame.  

Beeley: Find out who is to blame.

And who does Beeley blame? Simple — a witch.

Next door to Beeley’s farm is the dilapidated house of Mrs. Clemson (Una Brandon-Jones). It was Mrs. Clemson who gave blackberries to Leach’s son for trespassing on her land caused his sickness. It was Mrs. Clemson who passed a pot of jam into Mr. Coker’s hands, paralyzing his body and making him lame, after he confronted her about drying up the farm’s water supply. “How do you suggest she did that,” Crich asks with a sardonic smile on his face. “Oh, she’s got her ways,” Beeley replies.

Beeley and his men have chosen Crich to deal with Mrs. Clemson and her murrain because of his outsider status. The men empty Crich’s doctor’s bag onto the ground and fill it with grit, gravel, and dirt. Once invited into her house, Crich is to dump the detritus onto the old woman’s head, thus breaking the spell.

Crich refuses to partake in Beeley’s archaic ritual and tosses the bag aside. In the ramshackle stone house, he finds not a witch, but merely a lonely old woman made lonelier due to isolation from the surrounding community. The Leaches won’t sell her goods from their store; Beeley cut off her water supply for his piggery. Crich is appalled at Mrs. Clemson’s treatment and determined to help her. He promises to bring her back supplies from Leach’s store.

As he shops at the store, Crich is surrounded by Beeley and his men. They demand to know what he saw in Mrs. Clemson’s house. Crich promises to notify the authorities about their treatment of their old pensioner neighbor. The men put two and two together, notice that Crich is purchasing supplies for the old woman, and chase him out of the shop empty-handed. Mrs. Leach (Marjorie Yates), the shopkeeper, screams when she realizes that the money that Crich handed her was from Mrs. Clemson.

The following day, Crich returns to the old woman’s house with a box of supplies. The men at the nearby farm watch him from afar. As Crich makes another trip to his car for more goods, Beeley drags the vet to Leach’s store. There, Mrs. Leach sits in a daze next to her son, suffering from the same sickness, her hands swollen and useless. Beeley attributes her condition to her handling of Mrs. Clemson’s money, but Crich says it is due to something else:

Crich: Suggestion!  

Beeley: What?  

Crich: Well, that’s what’s done it. The power of suggestion. She’s brought it on herself through hysteria, if you like. She believes this influence to exist and that it can do this to her, and so it has.

The possibility that Mrs. Leach’s sickness is her own fault, that it was conjured up by her own mind and not by Mrs. Clemson’s witchcraft, sends a shockwave through the men. But, here, Kneale adds another twist to the tale. Belief, it would seem, is a double-edged blade:

Beeley: It’s a powerful thing, belief.  

Crich: It is. Very.  

Beeley: Suppose her over there.  

Crich: Mrs. Clemson.  

Beeley: Aye. Suppose she believes, too, that she’s...that.

What happens when the men decide to put a stop to events once and for all? Can Mr. Crich stop them? Is Mrs. Clemson really the source of the murrain? You’ll have to find out for yourself by watching.

I’ve written about this episode of Against the Crowd elsewhere here on LARPing Reel Life. If you want a tad more discussion and explication about “Murrain” in particular and Folk Horror in general, then you can click here to read more.

That’s it for today, Blog-o-weeners. Come back tomorrow for day six of The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale and be sure to wear work clothes. We will be doing a little home renovation, and I wouldn’t want you to get your clothes all dirty. We’ll have to work quietly, however. You don’t want to wake the. . .“Baby.”

Be careful out there, Blog-o-weeners. Watch you don’t go taking any wooden nickels or jam jars from strangers, okay? Oh, and be sure to...