Few horror films have acquired the cult reputation of Herbert Wise’s TV production of The Woman in Black. Adapted by visionary British sci-fi screenwriter Nigel Kneale from Susan Hill’s 1983 novella, it stars a 31-year-old Adrian Rawlins as Edwardian solicitor Arthur Kidd, sent to settle the estate of an eccentric widow, Mrs Drablow, on the north-east coast of England. There, in a remote house at the end of a shingle causeway, he is tormented by terrifying noises and cries – and appearances from a tall woman dressed in black (Pauline Moran), who comes to exert a malevolent hold over his life.

First broadcast on ITV, at 9pm Christmas Eve 1989, it haunted all who watched it, thanks in part to Wise’s tense, economical direction, and one of the greatest jump-scares in the history of horror. “[It created] a genuine physical reaction,” wrote Nancy Banks-Smith in the Guardian, “as if one layer of your skin had shifted over another.”