Sign inJoin
Series

Sunday Night Theatre

1950 · 10 seasons · 134 episodes · Returning Series · BBC One

Drama

TMDB 3.5 · 2 votes

Sign in to track this

Sunday Night Theatre was a long-running series of televised live television plays screened by BBC Television from early 1950 until 1959. The productions for the first five years or so of the run were re-staged live the following Thursday, partly because of technical limitations in this era, and the theatrical basis of early television drama. Some of the earliest collaborations between Rudolph Cartier and Nigel Neale were produced for this series, including Arrow to the Heart and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Sunday night drama slot was subsequently renamed The Sunday-Night Play which ran for four seasons between 1960 and 1963. ITV transmitted its own unrelated run of Sunday Night Theatre between 1971 and 1974.

Episodes

  • S01E01Hindle Wakes1950-01-01
  • S01E02Rope1950-01-08

    Two young men strangle their "inferior" classmate, hide his body in their apartment, and invite his friends and family to a dinner party as a means to challenge the "perfection" of their crime.

  • S01E03Twelfth Night1950-01-15

    Viola and Sebastian are lookalike twins, separated by a shipwreck. Viola lands in Illyria, where she disguises herself like her brother and goes into the service of the Duke Orsino. Orsino sends her to help him woo the Lady Olivia, who doesn't want the Duke, but finds that she likes the new messenger the Duke's sending. Then, of course, Viola's brother shows up, and merry hell breaks loose. Meanwhile, Olivia's uncle and his cohorts are trying to find some way to get back at Olivia's officious majordomo, Malvolio.

  • S01E04Cheapside1950-01-22
  • S01E05Trespass1950-01-29
  • S01E06The Scarlet Pimpernel1950-02-05

    A noblewoman discovers her husband is The Scarlet Pimpernel, a vigilante who rescues aristocrats from the blade of the guillotine.

  • S01E07The Indifferent Shepherd1950-02-12
  • S01E10The Seagull1950-03-05

    This quintessential Chekhov drama--his first success--is both comic and tragic. A group of friends and relations gather at a country estate to see the first performance of an experimental play written and staged by the young man of the house, Konstantin, an aspiring writer who dreams of bringing new forms to the theatre.

  • S01E11The Lady's Not for Burning1950-03-12
  • S01E16Promise of Tomorrow1950-04-16

    Marius Goring stars as Tommy Savidge, a crippled poet who longs to compose verse dramas but is forced to write trashy plays for dingy provincial repertory companies to make a living.

  • S01E17Othello1950-04-23
  • S01E21The Title1950-05-21
  • S01E22The Insect Play1950-05-28
  • S01E24The Admirable Crichton1950-06-11

    A group of people are shipwrecked when their yacht runs around on a South Pacific island. The usable hierarchy in a upper-class British family breaks down quickly when it becomes apparent that only the servant Crichton is capable of surviving on his own and he becomes the communities leader.

  • S01E30Dark Tribute
  • S01E31Adventure Story1950-07-30

    The story of Alexander the Great, a compulsive conqueror.

  • S01E33The History of Mr. Polly1950-08-13
  • S01E36Vanity Fair1950-09-03
  • S01E40Party Manners1950-10-01
  • S01E48The Secret Sharer1950-11-26

    A ship's captain must conceal a stowaway from his crew.

  • S01E49An Enemy of the People1950-12-03

    A scientist stands against an entire town when he discovers their medicinal spa is polluted.

Cast