Chris Harrald

Photographer Charles Castle is numbed with grief following the death of his beautiful bride. He goes off to war, working in the trenches as a photographer. Following the war and still in grief Charles is given some photographs purporting to be of fairies. His search for the truth leads him to Burkinwell, a seemingly peaceful village seething with secrets

Each episode adapts — and sometimes quite radically alters — a short story written by Wells: The New Accelerator, The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper, The Crystal Egg, The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes, The Truth About Pyecraft and The Stolen Bacillus. Each is presented as if it were a 'real' incident that Wells had investigated with his girlfriend, Jane Robbins, and as if it had served as an inspiration for a short story. The flashbacks are to 1893 within the 1946 frame story, near the end of Wells's life, when he is interviewed by a secret military research institute interested in his past exploits.

The Robinson family set sail for a new life in America. After only a short time at sea, they are caught in a terrible, relentless storm that shatters their ship and they find themselves on the sandy beach of a deserted tropical island.