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HERE'S another serving of 17 "unexpected" pleasures from the long-running TV series of half-hour dramas. The focus, as before, remains on darkly humorous, often macabre stories with a scorpion sting in the tail.

By this point Roald Dahl's best stories had been used up - he stopped introducing the shows after the second series - and the work of other writers increasingly provided the raw material.

Script quality and production values are variable (some of the programmes are on film, others videotaped) and the surprise endings can be just a tad predictable. But there's plenty to enjoy here and spotting the famous faces is just one of the incidental pleasures.