I know what you’re thinking. Or I know what I was thinking before I saw this half-elegant hodgepodge of musical theatre noir. How will Alfred Hitchcock Presents — The Musical hang together during its two hours?

After all, the original half-hour American TV anthology, which ran from 1955 to 1962, was hosted by — but only occasionally directed by — the master of suspense himself. In that time it offered 268 twisty tales, a handful of them written by Roald Dahl, who later hosted the equivalent British show, Tales of the Unexpected. The bones of one of them, Lamb to the Slaughter, turn up here too.

So this fond exercise in asset stripping, done under the auspices of the copyright holders Universal —