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First broadcast in 1980, Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World is a coll­ection of 13 25-minute episodes, all of which are, to quote the opening narration, “Mysteries from the files of Arthur C Clarke, author of 2001 and inventor of the comm­unications satellite. Now living in retreat in Sri Lanka after a lifetime of science, space and writing, he ponders the riddles of this and other worlds”. And ponder them he does.

Each episode is introduced by Clarke himself, usually walking along a Sri Lankan beach (and looking slightly more than the 63 years old he was at the time). The first episode is an overview of the series as a whole and the last is a bit of a miscellany (seemingly, anything that the series’s makers couldn’t fit into the previous episodes went here) – but quite frankly, who cares? These alone are worth the price of the two DVD set.

And that still leaves us with another 11 episodes to drool over. OK, some of the fashions have not aged well, some of the hairstyles are laughable and there is a totally distracting wig (worn by someone who really should know better – I’m sure you will notice as you’re watching) but there is also a wealth of solidly presented information. Some episodes focus on a single topic (“The Great Siberian Explosion” on Tunguska) while others are more wide-ranging (“Out of the Blue” covers an array of falls from the sky, and it’s the only episode to give Charles Fort a name check), but both types are equally interesting. In relation to most of the phenomena covered by the series, time has marched on and there are new examples (can you imagine a UFO documentary without Rendlesham Forest?) or updated explanations, but that doesn’t negate the value of the explorations presented here. The show contains some fantastic interviews – Aubrey Burl in “The Riddle of the Stones”, Kenneth Arnold in “UFO’s”, Grover Krantz and Bob Gimlin in “The Missing Apeman”, Tim Dinsdale and Robert Rines in “Monsters of the Lakes”, Bernard Heuvelmans in “Clarke’s Cabinet of Curiosities” and Roy Mackal in “Dragons, Dinosaurs and Giant Snakes”. And there are a wealth of interviews with witnesses, mostly now long gone. The whole 325 minutes also contains an astounding amount of archival film, most of it infrequently encountered these days – the best example of this is the Tunguska episode, replete with footage of the first scientific expedition to actually try to find out what happened.

Ever since its original 1980 broadcast, the show has remained steadfastly unavailable in any format (apart from the tie-in book) so this is a welcome release on DVD. It’s also good to see it has held up so well – no memory cheats here! One question remains though: When can we expect to see the 1985 Arthur C Clarke’s World of Strange Powers? For forteans of a certain age, this is a part of our heritage, and one that probably had a great deal to do with getting us here. For the rest of you, go out and buy a copy and see how the Discovery Channel should be doing it!

One slightly disappointing aspect – no extras. Surely somewhere there is a relevant interview with Clarke? Or how about a documentary following up some of the cases? Or even a new interview with the now 90-year-old ponderer himself? But perhaps I’m just being greedy.