Saturday Playhouse
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).
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Season 1
-
1
E1
S1.E1 ∙ The Man Upstairs
An anthology series of dramatisations of plays.
Jan 4, 1958 -
2
E2
S1.E2 ∙ The Distaff Side
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.
Jan 11, 1958 -
3
E3
S1.E3 ∙ Heroes Don't Care
Jan 18, 1958 -
4
E4
S1.E4 ∙ Britannia of Billingsgate
Jan 25, 1958 -
5
E5
S1.E5 ∙ The Corn Is Green
A spinster schoolteacher arrives in a Welsh mining valley and discovers a boy genius in her class.
Feb 1, 1958 -
6
E6
S1.E6 ∙ Design for Murder
Feb 8, 1958 -
7
E7
S1.E7 ∙ My Flesh, My Blood
Feb 15, 1958 -
8
E8
S1.E8 ∙ Ladies in Retirement
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.
Feb 22, 1958 -
9
E9
S1.E9 ∙ A Likely Tale
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.
Mar 1, 1958 -
10
E10
S1.E10 ∙ And No Birds Sing
Mar 8, 1958 -
11
E11
S1.E11 ∙ Carry On, Admiral
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.
Mar 15, 1958 -
12
E12
S1.E12 ∙ French Without Tears
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.
Mar 22, 1958 -
13
E13
S1.E13 ∙ High Heaven
Mar 29, 1958 -
14
E14
S1.E14 ∙ The Ware Case
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.
Apr 5, 1958 -
15
E15
S1.E15 ∙ The Fourth Wall
The host of a dinner party is murdered.
Apr 12, 1958 -
16
E16
S1.E16 ∙ Dr. Angelus
Apr 19, 1958 -
17
E17
S1.E17 ∙ A Young Affair
Apr 26, 1958 -
18
E18
S1.E18 ∙ The Dover Road
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.
Sep 13, 1958 -
19
E19
S1.E19 ∙ Day of Retirement
Sep 20, 1958 -
20
E20
S1.E20 ∙ A Private Eye for Pennsylvania
Sep 27, 1958 -
21
E21
S1.E21 ∙ Four for Solitaire
Oct 25, 1958 -
22
E22
S1.E22 ∙ Trespass
Nov 22, 1958 -
23
E23
S1.E23 ∙ The Duke in Darkness
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.
Dec 6, 1958 -
24
E24
S1.E24 ∙ The Magistrate
A widow weds a magistrate and makes her 19-year-old son act as a boy.
Dec 20, 1958 -
25
E25
S1.E25 ∙ So Many Children
Dec 27, 1958 -
26
E26
S1.E26 ∙ Trilby
in 19th-century Paris, a sinister hypnotist tries to turn a simple Irish girl into an opera star.
Jan 17, 1959 -
27
E27
S1.E27 ∙ Murder on the Agenda
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?
Feb 14, 1959 -
28
E28
S1.E28 ∙ Golden Rain
Feb 28, 1959 -
29
E29
S1.E29 ∙ While the Sun Shines
Mar 28, 1959 -
30
E30
S1.E30 ∙ The Cat and the Canary
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.
May 9, 1959 -
31
E31
S1.E31 ∙ The Larford Lad
The story of a young boxer's rise to fame.
Jun 20, 1959 -
32
E32
S1.E32 ∙ Black Chiffon
A woman who has an absolutely untarnished reputation unaccountably steals a black-chiffon nightgown days before her son's wedding.
Jul 4, 1959 -
33
E33
S1.E33 ∙ My Young Brother
Jul 18, 1959 -
34
E34
S1.E34 ∙ Love and Miss Figgis
Aug 1, 1959 -
35
E35
S1.E35 ∙ Unfinished Journey
Aug 8, 1959 -
36
E36
S1.E36 ∙ The Cathedral
Aug 15, 1959 -
37
E37
S1.E37 ∙ Last Day in Dreamland
Aug 29, 1959 -
38
E38
S1.E38 ∙ It Isn't Enough
Sep 26, 1959 -
39
E39
S1.E39 ∙ Haul for the Shore
Oct 24, 1959 -
40
E40
S1.E40 ∙ Bed and Breakfast
Nov 21, 1959 -
41
E41
S1.E41 ∙ The Farmer's Wife
After his daughter weds, a middle-aged widower with a profitable farm decides to remarry but finds choosing a suitable mate a problematic process.
Dec 5, 1959 -
42
E42
S1.E42 ∙ Through a Glass Darkly
Dec 19, 1959 -
43
E43
S1.E43 ∙ Conflict at Kalanadi
Jan 16, 1960 -
44
E44
S1.E44 ∙ The Difficult Age
Jan 30, 1960 -
45
E45
S1.E45 ∙ Going Like a Fox
Feb 13, 1960 -
46
E46
S1.E46 ∙ The Return of Peggy Atherton
Feb 27, 1960 -
47
E47
S1.E47 ∙ Home and the Heart
Mar 12, 1960 -
48
E48
S1.E48 ∙ A Matter of Age
Mar 26, 1960 -
49
E49
S1.E49 ∙ Devonshire Cream
Apr 9, 1960 -
50
E50
S1.E50 ∙ The Country Boy
Apr 23, 1960 -
51
E51
S1.E51 ∙ The Man Who Came to Dinner
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.
May 7, 1960 -
52
E52
S1.E52 ∙ Marriage Settlement
May 21, 1960 -
53
E53
S1.E53 ∙ The Guinea Pig
A working-class boy gets a scholarship to a public school.
Jun 4, 1960 -
54
E54
S1.E54 ∙ The Breadwinner
Jun 18, 1960 -
55
E55
S1.E55 ∙ On the Edge
Jul 16, 1960 -
56
E56
S1.E56 ∙ Dream Girl
A young lady is filled with daydreams until she meets her reality man.
Aug 13, 1960 -
57
E57
S1.E57 ∙ The Shop at Sly Corner
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.
Aug 27, 1960 -
58
E58
S1.E58 ∙ Family Occasion
What is Margaret hiding from the rest of the family when they arrive for their father's funeral?
Oct 8, 1960 -
59
E59
S1.E59 ∙ The Bachelor Brothers
Oct 22, 1960 -
60
E60
S1.E60 ∙ Your Obedient Servant
Nov 19, 1960 -
61
E61
S1.E61 ∙ The Druid Circle
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.
Dec 3, 1960 -
62
E62
S1.E62 ∙ The Colonel
Dec 17, 1960 -
63
E63
S1.E63 ∙ A Run for the Money
Dec 31, 1960 -
64
E64
S1.E64 ∙ A Sense of Guilt
Jan 14, 1961 -
65
E65
S1.E65 ∙ The Four Poster
The up-and-down lives of a married couple over decades, depicted as a series of bedroom scenes.
Jan 28, 1961 -
66
E66
S1.E66 ∙ The House with the Green Shutters
Feb 11, 1961 -
67
E67
S1.E67 ∙ A Perfect Stranger
Feb 25, 1961 -
68
E68
S1.E68 ∙ Seagulls Over Sorrento
A Navy lieutenant is borrowed by the British to supervise torpedo experiments after one of their scientists is killed.
Mar 4, 1961