Long before Robert Redford played Bob Woodward, Jay Gatsby, Jeremiah Johnson or the Sundance Kid, he was Death. In a memorable 1962 episode of “The Twilight Zone” — often cited as one of the anthology’s best — the blond, handsome actor, still in his early 20s, played the most charming, calming emissary of the afterlife imaginable, assigned to escort a wary old lady into the great beyond.

That episode, titled “Nothing in the Dark” (streaming on Paramount+), was also the beginning of the end of Redford’s brief but prolific TV career. Watching him now as Mr. Death, it’s easy to see how he became one of the most beloved movie stars of the late 20th century. His presence is uncanny. He looks like he belongs somewhere else — on a bigger screen, perhaps.

We hear Redford before we see him in “Nothing in the Dark.” As the episode opens, the lady, Wanda Dunn (Gladys Cooper), is cowering in the basement apartment of a tenement building, avoiding any visitors because she knows her date with Death is past due. Then she hears a gunshot, and a young, nonthreatening voice from outside asks for help. She opens the door a crack and sees a policeman on his back in the snow.

Our first glimpse of Redford as the policeman is the same as Wanda’s. He looks small and helpless. He also seems, well … nice. Sunny, even. The very opposite of doom.

“Nothing in the Dark” was written by the frequent “Twilight Zone” contributor George Clayton Johnson, whose work on the show was highly compatible with the vision of its creator, Rod Serling, who liked to tell stories about frightened, ordinary people confronting their own weaknesses. (Death appears as a person in multiple “Twilight Zone” episodes.) To that end, another series regular, the director Lamont Johnson — no relation to George — goes deep into Wanda’s mind by exploring the cluttered, shadowy space where she has dwelled for too long, avoiding the light.