Series

Saturday Playhouse

1958 · 1 season · 68 episodes · Returning Series

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Saturday Playhouse was a 60-minute UK anthology television series produced by and airing on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from 4 January 1958 until 1 April 1961. There were sixty-eight episodes, among them adaptations of the plays The Man Who Came to Dinner and The Cat and the Canary. One of the episodes, Alex Atkinson’s classic thriller Design for Murder, was featured twice on the BBC: first on Saturday Playhouse (Saturday, 15 March 1958; S1/Ep.6) and again from the BBC's own theatre in Bristol (Thursday, 6 July 1961).

Episodes

  • S01E01S1.E1 ∙ The Man Upstairs1958-01-04

    An anthology series of dramatisations of plays.

  • S01E02S1.E2 ∙ The Distaff Side1958-01-11

    An upper middle-class family is ruled by the ancient and churlish matriarch. Her daughters' marriages are all in jeopardy, with affairs and communions with the dead. It's difficult to find any solitude or sanity in the family.

  • S01E03S1.E3 ∙ Heroes Don't Care1958-01-18
  • S01E04S1.E4 ∙ Britannia of Billingsgate1958-01-25
  • S01E05S1.E5 ∙ The Corn Is Green1958-02-01

    A spinster schoolteacher arrives in a Welsh mining valley and discovers a boy genius in her class.

  • S01E06S1.E6 ∙ Design for Murder1958-02-08
  • S01E07S1.E7 ∙ My Flesh, My Blood1958-02-15
  • S01E08S1.E8 ∙ Ladies in Retirement1958-02-22

    Ellen Creed struggles to hold down her job as housekeeper-companion to the retired actress Leonora Fiske whilst trying to protect her two disturbed sisters from the threat of incarceration.

  • S01E09S1.E9 ∙ A Likely Tale1958-03-01

    A dying old man changes his will to leave everything to the new housemaid who has caught his eye, much to the alarm of his three grown up children and grandson.

  • S01E10S1.E10 ∙ And No Birds Sing1958-03-08
  • S01E11S1.E11 ∙ Carry On, Admiral1958-03-15

    The action takes place in a bedroom in a Portsmouth hotel, the wardroom of H.M.S. Sherwood, and the living-room at Admiralty House.

  • S01E12S1.E12 ∙ French Without Tears1958-03-22

    The love affairs of three young Englishmen at a language cramming school in the south of France. Diana, the sister of one of the boys, arrives in town to flirt with all of her brothers' schoolmates.

  • S01E13S1.E13 ∙ High Heaven1958-03-29
  • S01E14S1.E14 ∙ The Ware Case1958-04-05

    A financier is accused of murder when his brother-in-law is found dead in his garden pond. After winning the court case he returns home to find that his lawyer has romantic inclinations towards his wife.

  • S01E15S1.E15 ∙ The Fourth Wall1958-04-12

    The host of a dinner party is murdered.

  • S01E16S1.E16 ∙ Dr. Angelus1958-04-19
  • S01E17S1.E17 ∙ A Young Affair1958-04-26
  • S01E18S1.E18 ∙ The Dover Road1958-09-13

    A wealthy man lives on the Dover Road, a traditional path of elopers. His practice of forcing such couples to see one another in the sober light of home life in his house leads to a personal involvement for him.

  • S01E19S1.E19 ∙ Day of Retirement1958-09-20
  • S01E20S1.E20 ∙ A Private Eye for Pennsylvania1958-09-27
  • S01E21S1.E21 ∙ Four for Solitaire1958-10-25
  • S01E22S1.E22 ∙ Trespass1958-11-22
  • S01E23S1.E23 ∙ The Duke in Darkness1958-12-06

    A duke imprisoned for 15 years in a castle in France feigns blindness for five years to lull the suspicions of his captors in order to plan his escape.

  • S01E24S1.E24 ∙ The Magistrate1958-12-20

    A widow weds a magistrate and makes her 19-year-old son act as a boy.

  • S01E25S1.E25 ∙ So Many Children1958-12-27
  • S01E26S1.E26 ∙ Trilby1959-01-17

    in 19th-century Paris, a sinister hypnotist tries to turn a simple Irish girl into an opera star.

  • S01E27S1.E27 ∙ Murder on the Agenda1959-02-14

    Eynon Evans plays the part of Inspector Probert George, who was tortured in a prisoner-of-war camp when his plans for escape were discovered, is dead after five years in a mental home. His five fellow prisoners had sworn that if George died they would kill the man who had betrayed him to the Germans. But which of them was to do the killing? And how?

  • S01E28S1.E28 ∙ Golden Rain1959-02-28
  • S01E29S1.E29 ∙ While the Sun Shines1959-03-28
  • S01E30S1.E30 ∙ The Cat and the Canary1959-05-09

    At an old, dark house, on a dark and stormy night, an ill-assorted group of people meet for the reading of a millionaire's will. But there's a madman on the loose.

  • S01E31S1.E31 ∙ The Larford Lad1959-06-20

    The story of a young boxer's rise to fame.

  • S01E32S1.E32 ∙ Black Chiffon1959-07-04

    A woman who has an absolutely untarnished reputation unaccountably steals a black-chiffon nightgown days before her son's wedding.

  • S01E33S1.E33 ∙ My Young Brother1959-07-18
  • S01E34S1.E34 ∙ Love and Miss Figgis1959-08-01
  • S01E35S1.E35 ∙ Unfinished Journey1959-08-08
  • S01E36S1.E36 ∙ The Cathedral1959-08-15
  • S01E37S1.E37 ∙ Last Day in Dreamland1959-08-29
  • S01E38S1.E38 ∙ It Isn't Enough1959-09-26
  • S01E39S1.E39 ∙ Haul for the Shore1959-10-24
  • S01E40S1.E40 ∙ Bed and Breakfast1959-11-21
  • S01E41S1.E41 ∙ The Farmer's Wife1959-12-05

    After his daughter weds, a middle-aged widower with a profitable farm decides to remarry but finds choosing a suitable mate a problematic process.

  • S01E42S1.E42 ∙ Through a Glass Darkly1959-12-19
  • S01E43S1.E43 ∙ Conflict at Kalanadi1960-01-16
  • S01E44S1.E44 ∙ The Difficult Age1960-01-30
  • S01E45S1.E45 ∙ Going Like a Fox1960-02-13
  • S01E46S1.E46 ∙ The Return of Peggy Atherton1960-02-27
  • S01E47S1.E47 ∙ Home and the Heart1960-03-12
  • S01E48S1.E48 ∙ A Matter of Age1960-03-26
  • S01E49S1.E49 ∙ Devonshire Cream1960-04-09
  • S01E50S1.E50 ∙ The Country Boy1960-04-23
  • S01E51S1.E51 ∙ The Man Who Came to Dinner1960-05-07

    Sheridan Whiteside, famous as an author, broadcaster and expert on just about everything, is invited to dinner by a pompous small-town businessman - and stays rather longer than anyone anticipated.

  • S01E52S1.E52 ∙ Marriage Settlement1960-05-21
  • S01E53S1.E53 ∙ The Guinea Pig1960-06-04

    A working-class boy gets a scholarship to a public school.

  • S01E54S1.E54 ∙ The Breadwinner1960-06-18
  • S01E55S1.E55 ∙ On the Edge1960-07-16
  • S01E56S1.E56 ∙ Dream Girl1960-08-13

    A young lady is filled with daydreams until she meets her reality man.

  • S01E57S1.E57 ∙ The Shop at Sly Corner1960-08-27

    Descius Heiss is a French expatriate, and former Devil's Island prisoner, with two passions; driving shrewd bargains in antiques at his Sly Corner Shop, and the care of his motherless, violin-playing daughter, Margaret. But, his comfortable wealth comes more from being a fence for stolen goods than it does buying-and-selling antiques. His secret is discovered by his shop assistant Archie Fellowes, a nasty, sniveling young rat, and he begins blackmailing Heiss. Heiss employs the usual solution to blackmailers, and the film ends in a London concert-hall where Margaret is playing the Mendelssohm Violin Concerto.

  • S01E58S1.E58 ∙ Family Occasion1960-10-08

    What is Margaret hiding from the rest of the family when they arrive for their father's funeral?

  • S01E59S1.E59 ∙ The Bachelor Brothers1960-10-22
  • S01E60S1.E60 ∙ Your Obedient Servant1960-11-19
  • S01E61S1.E61 ∙ The Druid Circle1960-12-03

    An embittered professor comes near to wrecking the lives of a young man and young woman whose love for each other has been accidentally revealed to him through a letter written by the boy to the girl.

  • S01E62S1.E62 ∙ The Colonel1960-12-17
  • S01E63S1.E63 ∙ A Run for the Money1960-12-31
  • S01E64S1.E64 ∙ A Sense of Guilt1961-01-14
  • S01E65S1.E65 ∙ The Four Poster1961-01-28

    The up-and-down lives of a married couple over decades, depicted as a series of bedroom scenes.

  • S01E66S1.E66 ∙ The House with the Green Shutters1961-02-11
  • S01E67S1.E67 ∙ A Perfect Stranger1961-02-25
  • S01E68S1.E68 ∙ Seagulls Over Sorrento1961-03-04

    A Navy lieutenant is borrowed by the British to supervise torpedo experiments after one of their scientists is killed.

Cast