"One Step Beyond" Legacy of Love (TV Episode 1960) Poster

(TV Series)

(1960)

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6/10
Forced Fates
AaronCapenBanner18 April 2015
Romantic themed episode stars Norma Crane as Marianne, a woman who is trying to reach the town of Woodmere, but fate keeps conspiring to send her to another town called Seaside, where she meets a married man named Bromley(played by Charles Aidman) with whom she begins a most unusual relationship, as they feel drawn to each other, but not physically, as they share memories from long ago events they were not concerned with, but as it turns out, her mother, who shares her own past and theories with them both later on when they visit her home. Mediocre episode is well acted but unremarkable and none too compelling, though is at least innocuous.
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6/10
"I thought you said you were never here before."
classicsoncall15 February 2015
Warning: Spoilers
In his opening remarks, series host John Newland looks to the world of nature and explains how the single limb of a starfish will use animal memory to regenerate an entire new and wholly formed creature. The story then goes on to tell the tale of a married man and an engaged woman who meet by chance and almost instantaneously fall in love with each other. At one point it appears that the couple will both call it off and in an unusual jump cut, they're both seen riding on horseback together to what they imagine was a former rendezvous point.

The upshot of this unusual story is that Marianne Darrell's (Norma Crane) mother was once in love with Norman Bromley's (Charles Aidman) father, and through some unexplained circumstance they were reliving the mother's dream from decades ago. With the mother's admission, the bond that seemed to have catapaulted the couple into an intractable affair dissolves and the two are free to pursue their own lives again.

I'd need John Newland to explain to me why it feels like I saw this story once before.
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10/10
Heartbreaking
joseph_nowak7 March 2014
I won't go into the story line except to say that you will fall I love with one of the two main characters depending on your gender! I'm a guy and guys aren't supposed to like romantic stories. This story is different! It's also one of the VERY best episodes of One Step Beyond. I used to watch this show when I was a preteen with my parents, but I don't remember this episode... possibly because I wasn't much into relationships at age 11. Have you ever gone somewhere for the first time, or experienced something for the first time, yet you feel like you've living the experience all over again? This story is a little like that. The last 5 minutes of the show will tie it all together and will SURPRISE YOU!
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1/10
Legacy of Lousy
jrdodson9 January 2012
The plot of this tale is told elsewhere on this page, and does not bear repeating for the simple fact that is is one of the most muddled and confusing half hours you will ever watch. While the cast is superb, the writing is sub par. The script must have gone through multiple rewrites by several different authors who never bothered to consider previous changes. The female lead wants to leave town the very day after she arrives, and yet, based on all that takes place, it seems she stays for two or three and you are never sure which day is which. Costume changes inexplicably take place. Major characters disappear at crucial junctures in the story with no explanation.

And some of the lines are downright baffling. The cab driver's offer to transport two fares for "not even two or as little as one"--is he giving them a free ride? The idea about birds returning to nests they have never seen is ludicrous; how could you live in and leave a nest you have never seen?

Charles Aidman and Norma Crane are two fine actors, but even they are incapable of rising above the sludgy script, and it makes me angry to see such terrific talent wasted on such abysmal writing. Shame on OSB for releasing this horrible episode.
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4/10
Seaside Rendezvous
wes-connors4 July 2011
After a story explaining how starfish reproduce themselves through will power, nervous Norma Crane (as Marianne Darelle) gets our story started by trying to exchange a ticket she can't remember purchasing - to small-town "Seaside". After solving the ticket problem, Ms. Crane gets on the wrong train anyway. As it turns out, she is being drawn to Seaside by some unknown force. On the train, she finds herself staring at Charles Aidman (as Norman Bromley), who is traveling with his wife. The married man and engaged woman are apparently in love, but can't explain how it happened...

**** Legacy of Love (12/20/60) John Newland ~ Norma Crane, Charles Aidman, Barbara Eiler
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1/10
Written by the Tea Boy
Goingbegging15 October 2021
Sixty years on, it's easy to sneer at this long-running series which can still give us a few half-hours of mildly intriguing entertainment, but this one seriously lets down the standard.

Your eternally gracious host John Newland starts by explaining DNA ("genetic memory") to an audience that might well have needed this entry-level overview. But it's about the only convincing dialogue in the whole episode.

The glamorous Norma Crane is cast as a woman about to be married, yet off on a rail journey unaccompanied, apparently for just one night. When she finds she has been given the wrong ticket, the clerk says it was the one she asked for, but replaces it anyway. Somehow she gets on the wrong train, where she can't help staring at a man across the aisle, travelling with his wife and son, and he can't stop staring (rather dumbly) at her.

Arriving at a small seaside resort, she shares a taxi to the same hotel as the other family, after some utterly meaningless exchanges with the driver. Suddenly, and with no explanation, she and the strange husband are together, and acting quite intimately, with the wife and son conveniently nowhere to be seen. As for continuity, that goes right out of the window. Cut straight to a forest, where they're riding on horseback. She takes a fall, with her face untouched, yet there's a graze showing on it. She starts talking in a haunted way about a "second chance", whatever that's supposed to mean. He tells his wife "I have to see her once more". And there we have to leave it, so as not to spoil what little story there is.

It all puts us in mind of the words jokingly attributed to Marie Corelli: "I feel there is a something, somewhere, if only we could put our finger on it."

Worst one so far. Skip it.
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