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

We are chugging right along, are we not, Blog-o-weeners. It is  already day six of The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale. Can you believe it? I can’t, and I’m the fellow writing these darn things. Days one through five have brought us stories about haunted houses, haunted phones, haunted photographs, ghosts from the past and the future, and the return of repressed ancient beliefs. What kind of outré spookiness can we expect from today’s story? Let us find out...

In 1976, a year after his script “Murrain” (see previous post) was broadcast on ITV, Kneale was offered the chance by producer Nick Palmer to write an entire series himself. The series would, like Against the Crowd, be made up of six stand-alone episodes that would all follow a single theme: humanity’s relationship with the animal kingdom. Each episode was written to be as different from each other in tone as possible, but each was to be undergirded by a particular animal. There were ghostly cetaceans, a man trying to turn himself into a wolf, swarms of rats, and. . .the “Baby”.

Peter Gilkes (Simon MacCorkindale) and his wife Jo (Jane Wymark) have just moved from the city to the country. Peter is hoping to take over the veterinarian practice of established vet Dick Pummery (T.P. McKenna). Jo, very pregnant, is overseeing the renovations that local workers Mr. Grace (Mark Dignam) and Mr. Biddick (Norman Jones) are undertaking. While knocking down a thick, brick wall in the kitchen, a clay urn is found. Inside of which is. . .well. . .something quite strange.

It is neither cat nor dog, neither pig nor lamb. “A farmyard monster,” Peter says during his initial investigation:

“A cross between two animals that ought to have know better, eh? Mind you, it is interesting. You know, I’m not sure if it was ever actually born.”

Mr. Pummery is equally flummoxed. He can’t make heads or tails of it, but he and Peter are determined to solve the mystery. Peter promises Jo that Mr. Pummery will take the creature away, but at the last moment he decides to keep it in the house. Inexplicably, he hides it in the cupboard of their future child’s bedroom.

The next day, Mr. Grace, who seems to know more than he is letting on, asks Jo what happened to the creature. Jo tells him that the thing had been taken away to be studied. (Little does she know!) Mr. Grace then informs her that something like that thing wouldn’t have been bricked up by accident:

Mr. Grace: It’d had purpose. 

Jo: You mean bad purpose? 

Mr. Grace: Most like. 

Jo: That’s saying it was some kind of charm? 

Mr. Grace: You see, if a thing wouldn’t happen by nature, if nature wouldn’t bring it about, then such as that might serve. 

Jo: To do what? To bring what about? 

Mr. Grace: ...It’d be a harm. You see, in them days, they’d believe they could put a harm on a person or place... 

Jo: ...You said “they.” Who do you mean? 

Mr. Grace: Somebody 

Jo: Somebody bad? 

Mr. Grace: Wise in them powers. To cast them and to fix them.  

Worse still, Mr. Grace tells Jo that a creature such as the one that had been found in her kitchen wall would have been “suckled. . .Human suckling. To set it to work.”

That night, Mr. Pummery and his wife Dorothy (Shelagh Fraser) come to console poor Peter, who has had a very trying day. Falling in pig droppings will do that to you. Even above the noisome noises of the drunken men, Jo can hear something in the house, can sense that there is something not right. She has been hearing odd sounds and seen shady figures out of the corner of her eye all day. (After Mr. Grace’s stories, can you blame her?) First, she heard and saw them in the woods. Then, she heard them in the house. Finally, long after the Pummerys have gone home and Peter and Jo have gone to bed, Jo is awakened by noises coming from downstairs in the sitting room. But what on earth could it be?

I won’t ruin the ending of “Baby” for you. Better that you should experience it for yourself. Then, you can be like British scriptwriter Russell T. Davies (Doctor Who), who when asked about seeing “Baby” as a teenager said:

“It’s still the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen. Seriously, I’m getting the creeps just thinking about it. There’s a stunning lack of hope in that story. It’s doom-laden from the start, and the misery and fear escalates until there’s no escape. There’s not even a catharsis; just a lingering despair. Powerful stuff.”

Mark Gatiss (The League of Gentlemen) said that “Baby” was “probably the most disgusting piece of television I’ve ever seen.”

If those two recommendations don’t make you want to hit play on the video link below, then I don’t know what to tell you. What are you even doing here? Do I even know you?

That’s a wrap on day six of The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale. We’re going to be watching something a tad longer than what we’ve been used to around here thus far. Once again we’ll be traveling into the country, only this time we will be staying in a real castle. It’s not for fun and games though. It’s a busman’s holiday that finds us with the engineers of a high-tech company who are looking for a new state-of-the-art recording format. Little do they know that what they seek is all around them. You’ve heard the phrase “If only these walls could talk”? Well, these can. And you can play what they’ve recorded like. . .The Stone Tape.

If watching the ending of “Baby” has made you question your morals, you’ve go nothing to worry about. Just remember to...