Out of This World: Little Lost Robot

Boris Karloff introduces the only surviving episode of the elusive sci-fi anthology series, an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s story about a rogue robot.

The only surviving episode of the sci-fi anthology series is an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s story on his recurring theme of the laws of robotics. In 2019 robots cater to every human need, following the ‘prime directive’ not to harm humans. But when a robot that’s been deprogrammed to disregard the directive gets lost amid a crowd of identical machines, a ‘robopsychologist’ is employed to help try and identify it.

Devised by television colossus Sydney Newman as an offshoot of the legendary Armchair Theatre, and paving the way for Irene Shubik’s later classic series Out of the Unknown, the short-lived Out of this World aimed to dramatise the cream of literary science fiction with the greatest flair and invention that Sixties television could provide.