Sci-fi/horror anthology TV episode featuring a man and a woman waking up and restarting events repeatedly

Question

I can't remember this episode or show and have been searching for years. It must be something in the vein of Monsters, The Twilight Zone revival, The Outer Limits, Tales from the Crypt, Tales from the Darkside, Night Gallery, etc. But here's what I remember.

The episode featured a man and a woman waking up and restarting events repeatedly, driving their car, and often arriving at a diner and, I believe, seeing a telephone booth. Everything was abandoned; there were no people and it was in the middle of the night. This happens several times as they start to realize that things are repeating and they try to figure out what's going on. Eventually, we learn that they are just characters in an author's draft of a book/novel, and he keeps rewriting their story, tossing away old versions, because the author is never satisfied.

Answer 1

This is "Midnight Never Ends" (1971), the first segment of S02E07 of Night Gallery (1969–1973).

Hitch-hiking Marine Vince Riley feels he has met the woman who picks him up before.

This first of two roughly 20-minute-long segments, introduced by Rod Serling, involves a woman, Ruth, picking up a hitchhiker, Vincent, in her car and stopping at a diner just before midnight, where they meet the owner and a sheriff who walks in after them. Vincent in particular seems convinced that he's experienced variations of these events before, and all four of them increasingly feel weirded out, haunted by faint clicking sounds coming from above and unable to remember much about their respective pasts.

It's ultimately revealed that they're all characters in a story an author is attempting to hammer out on a typewriter, but he's making it up as he goes along and keeps changing his mind about certain details and starting again from scratch. The clicking sounds were the sound of the keys on his typewriter being pressed and a waste paper basket beside him is full to the brim with crumpled-up, previous drafts.

The segment ends with the story starting over again, which is the only time we actually see it 'reset,' although the clear suggestion is that this has happened several times over.

You can watch the whole thing at the Internet Archive.