One Step Beyond was an anthology series about the paranormal, in which all of the stories are supposedly based on true stories. The series is sometimes referred to as Alcoa Presents — Alcoa being the Aluminum Company of America, who sponsored the programme.

The series was presented by John Newland and ran for three seasons, with thirteen of the episodes during the final year being filmed in the UK.

The series made a one-season comeback in 1978 under the title The Next Step Beyond with Newland reprising his role as series host.

Unfortunately, at some point the paperwork relating to the series was overlooked, and as a consequence the vast majority of episodes of One Step Beyond have fallen out of copright in the United States, leading to a whole swathe of public domain DVD releases, all of which use extremely poor quality prints. As a result, only the first season has been released officially using the properly archived episodes.