Platform 7

This four-part drama with a supernatural element to it is set almost exclusively around an unnamed train station where a young woman named Lisa apparently committed suicide a year ago. Her restless spirit however can't recall the circumstances of her death and so roams and indeed is trapped within the confines of the station as she struggles to restore her memory. When she witnesses another, this time deliberate suicide at the same station, the tear of the dead man's apparently grieving daughter magically frees her from the station enabling her to now return to her old haunts (no pun intended) to finally piece together the sequence of events which led to her demise.

Before she does that, she has another mystery to clear up as the ghost of the other suicide is also hanging around the station. This is an apparently crotchety middle-aged man who shuns any attempt at friendship with her. It soon becomes clear why he's as cold as he is as we learn the true nature of his relationship with his daughter who returns to the site, not to mourn but instead to rage at him for his sexual abuse of her as a child which has scarred her psychologically.

The main story however focuses on Lisa gradually recovering her lost memories and finally learning exactly how and why she died that fateful night. We see her return to her first meeting with her young doctor boyfriend an encounter which soon blossoms into romance and sees him move into her flat. But why did she fall out with her best friend just before she died and what exactly does the rather shifty young doctor colleague and ex-flatmate of her boyfriend know and seem to want to tell her?

With the help of an eager young transport policeman, the truth is finally revealed but just when you think this ghost has busted the case by the end of episode 3, there's more work for her to do in the next episode to rescue the next victim, ensure justice is done and naturally bring about closure for all including herself.

It has to be said that things really only kick off in the final episode when sad-eyed Lisa, who for three episodes has been padding about in her pyjamas and slippers, finds a way to manifest herself and make things happen without quite becoming visible. It's amusing in the end to watch her toy with her prey in a reversal of roles although some sensitive souls might carp at her ultimate victory in breaking the spirit of her nemesis to the point that they end up in an asylum for the mentally ill.

Still, this ghostly fantasy, far-fetched as it was, managed to happily remind me of some of my favourite ITC shows from my youth when growing up in the 60's although naturally in today's world, it stops along the way to make big points about child abuse and coercive behaviour towards women.

A refreshing change from the more conventional crime shows and police procedurals of the day, while it may not have been absolutely phantasmic, it's certainly worth at least the ghost of a chance.