I've wanted to watch more of the 70's anthology style horror shows for a while, but a tweet by Jeremy Dyson inspired me to Youtube, to find this specific example, as a start point for looking, if nothing else. I found this episode to be a wonderfully atmospheric thrlller, though if I'm honest was a little let down by the effect at the end.
A young couple, Jo (Jane Wymark) and her husband Peter (Simon MacCorkindale) move to the country so Peter can take his veterinary skills to the next level. They are doing up an aging farm that they purchased and one night, whilst knocking down a wall, they discover a sealed pot, bricked up, within the wall. The pot contains some unidentifiable animal remains, which Peter intends to take away for a post mortem. The move, and the grim discovery, take a toll on the heavily pregnant Jo who longs to return to the city and away from the oppressive nature of the farm. Then she hears a noise downstairs. . .
There's a lot going on thematically with the show. The idea of failed pregnancies is set up in the first scene and continues throughout. In the finale, where you're left to assume that Jo miscarries on her kitchen floor (It's not particularly graphic, but it has to be what's happening) there could be a debate about whether the demon/witch/curse genuinely causes the miscarriage, or whether the curse is her mind processing it, as its taking place. Either way, it's a very human nightmare away from the other worldly aspects. You also have the fact that it's not a happy marriage - Peter is at the very least a brash jerk, gaslighting and lying to his wife but it's not hard to see in his moment of anger that he might previously have previously hit her. It's a stretch perhaps, on my part, but we also discover that the couple have lost an unborn child once before and perhaps with was the reason. Either way, for the most part the show remains atmospheric and unsettling, the first little scare of the ending (the movement in the shadows) is really effective too.
Then there's the full final reveal. I'm willing to accept that seeing this in 1976 would have been a decent and memorable scare, but forty years later the effectiveness of it is rather undone by the shoddiness of the costume. It's looked not unlike a pile of binbags on the rocking chair.
I like this as a starting point for me though, and I'm going to try and dig out the rest of the series and watch them all.