''The World Beyond'' is the second of two pilots for an

occult detective Occult detective fiction is a subgenre of detective fiction that combines the tropes of the main genre with those of supernatural, fantasy and/or horror fiction. Unlike the traditional detective who investigates murder and other common crimes ...

television series. The first pilot, ''The World of Darkness'', also starring Granville Van Dusen as Paul Taylor, premiered on Sunday, April 17, 1977. ''The World Beyond'' followed as a sequel on

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainmen ...

Friday, January 27, 1978.

Premise

Sports writer Paul Taylor (

Granville Van Dusen Granville Van Dusen (born March 16, 1944 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota) is an American stage, screen, and voice actor who portrayed Race Bannon in the 1986 television series ''The New Adventures of Jonny Quest'', '' Jonny's Golden Quest'', ''Jonny Q ...

) died while undergoing a surgical procedure but was retrieved from the brink of death. His brush with "the world beyond" allowed the dead to communicate with him and ask him to help a living person.

''The World of Darkness''

Dead for two minutes and 37 seconds following a motorcycle accident, Paul Taylor hears ghostly voices that draw him to the New England town of Woodvale. Taylor becomes involved in supernatural activity surrounding the Sandford family, whose recently buried patriarch was an apparent suicide.

Cast

*Granville Van Dusen as Paul Taylor *

Tovah Feldshuh Terri Sue "Tovah" Feldshuh (born December 27, 1948) is an American actress, singer, and playwright. She has been a Broadway star for more than four decades, earning four Tony Award nominations. She has also received two Emmy Award nominations fo ...

as Clara Sandford *

Beatrice Straight Beatrice Whitney Straight (August 2, 1914 – April 7, 2001) was an American theatre, film and television actress and a member of the prominent Whitney family. She was an Academy Award and Tony Award winner as well as an Emmy Award nominee. ...

as Joanna Sandford *

Gary Merrill Gary Fred Merrill (August 2, 1915 – March 5, 1990) was an American film and television actor whose credits included more than 50 feature films, a half-dozen mostly short-lived TV series, and dozens of television guest appearances. He starr ...

as Dr. Thomas Madsen

''The World Beyond''

Taylor finds himself on a remote Maine island whose inhabitants are being menaced and killed by a

golem A golem ( ; he, , gōlem) is an animated, anthropomorphic being in Jewish folklore, which is entirely created from inanimate matter (usually clay or mud). The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th-century ...

made of mud and sticks.

Cast

*Granville Van Dusen as Paul Taylor *

JoBeth Williams Margaret JoBeth Williams (born December 6, 1948) is an American actress and television director. Her directorial debut with the 1994 short film ''On Hope'' earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film. In 2009 she began ...

as Marian Faber *

Barnard Hughes Bernard Aloysius Kiernan Hughes (July 16, 1915 – July 11, 2006), known professionally as Barnard Hughes, was an American actor of television, theater and film. Hughes became famous for a variety of roles; his most notable roles came after mid ...

as Andy Borchard *Richard Fitzpatrick as Frank Faber *Jan Van Evera as Sam Barker

External links

The World Beyond
on the

Internet Movie Database IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

1978 American television series debuts 1978 American television series endings 1970s American crime drama television series Occult detective fiction Television pilots not picked up as a series Television films as pilots American detective television series CBS original programming {{US-tv-film-stub