Are You Afraid of the Dark was the highlight of my week back in the day and I was delighted to see it had been released on DVD. A lot of excellent children's shows don't make it to home release, particularly those made before we regularly blitzed children with manipulative advertising and tie-in merchandise. Thankfully, this excellent children's series has survived.

The show depicts a group of teens, "The Midnight Society," meeting in the woods at night to tell scary stories. Each episode depicted one of these spooky tales to the viewer. Similar in style to the TV adaptation of the Goosebumps series, Are You Afraid of the Dark took itself a little more seriously while keeping a sense of humour. Stories ranged from the usual monsters and vampires to more unsettling ghost stories or sometimes retellings of classic gothic short stories.

All grown up now and Are You Afraid of the Dark has lost a little of its appeal. I suppose I don't scare as easily as I did when I was nine. However I have watched lots of these with the kids in the family during the dark winter evenings and they can't take their eyes off the screen. It is still a hit with its original target audience and I think that's what really matters.

The transfer to DVD is acceptable though these episodes were produced on a kids TV budget and look like a nineties relic these days. Slightly disappointing is the complete lack of bonus features on the disc. Fortunately you can probably pick this up for less than £10 and the episodes are worth the price for the kids in the family.