Based on a short-story by the English writer, John Collier, of whom there are more details available online (wiki). Some of his work dealt with the fantastical. I enjoyed this episode more than the one that followed it on Sky Arts (I Like It in Wilmington). It is a variant on the cuckoo in the nest & I think things are left deliberately ambiguous.. Are we seeing events through the eyes of a husband who is losing his grip on reality? I'm not familiar with the original story but would assume that much of it is seen through the husband's point of view (unreliable) and an increasing paranoid jealousy.
A cute parrot, family pet, lays an egg that hatches into a dark malevolent bird of prey, given the ironic nickname 'Handsome'. Is the bird meant to be a symbol of the malignant jealousy that consumes Jack the husband, or are his suspicions that he is being cuckolded indeed justified & finally confirmed? A mood of foreboding is built up in this episode until the obviously dark finale where things come home to roost.
I thought it was well-acted, a three-hander, Frank Converse plays an increasingly withdrawn Jack, Sondra Locke, his apparently good-natured wife Edna & Charles Hallahan is Charlie, the ebullient work colleague who sows discord between the couple in the same way that the mysterious egg is laid by the parrot.
A cute parrot, family pet, lays an egg that hatches into a dark malevolent bird of prey, given the ironic nickname 'Handsome'. Is the bird meant to be a symbol of the malignant jealousy that consumes Jack the husband, or are his suspicions that he is being cuckolded indeed justified & finally confirmed? A mood of foreboding is built up in this episode until the obviously dark finale where things come home to roost.
I thought it was well-acted, a three-hander, Frank Converse plays an increasingly withdrawn Jack, Sondra Locke, his apparently good-natured wife Edna & Charles Hallahan is Charlie, the ebullient work colleague who sows discord between the couple in the same way that the mysterious egg is laid by the parrot.