Insep

Explore now...

Login

Saturday Playhouse

1958 •
US

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

No image

S1.E1 ∙ The Man Upstairs

E1

An anthology series of dramatisations of plays.

No image

S1.E2 ∙ The Distaff Side

E2

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.

No image

S1.E3 ∙ Heroes Don't Care

E3
No image

S1.E4 ∙ Britannia of Billingsgate

E4
No image

S1.E5 ∙ The Corn Is Green

E5

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

No image

S1.E6 ∙ Design for Murder

E6
No image

S1.E7 ∙ My Flesh, My Blood

E7
No image

S1.E8 ∙ Ladies in Retirement

E8

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.

No image

S1.E9 ∙ A Likely Tale

E9

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.

No image

S1.E10 ∙ And No Birds Sing

E10
No image

S1.E11 ∙ Carry On, Admiral

E11

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.

No image

S1.E12 ∙ French Without Tears

E12

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.

No image

S1.E13 ∙ High Heaven

E13
No image

S1.E14 ∙ The Ware Case

E14

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.

No image

S1.E15 ∙ The Fourth Wall

E15

The host of a dinner party is murdered.

No image

S1.E16 ∙ Dr. Angelus

E16
No image

S1.E17 ∙ A Young Affair

E17
No image

S1.E18 ∙ The Dover Road

E18

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.

No image

S1.E19 ∙ Day of Retirement

E19
No image

S1.E20 ∙ A Private Eye for Pennsylvania

E20
No image

S1.E21 ∙ Four for Solitaire

E21
No image

S1.E22 ∙ Trespass

E22
No image

S1.E23 ∙ The Duke in Darkness

E23

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.

No image

S1.E24 ∙ The Magistrate

E24

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

No image

S1.E25 ∙ So Many Children

E25
No image

S1.E26 ∙ Trilby

E26

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

No image

S1.E27 ∙ Murder on the Agenda

E27

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?

No image

S1.E28 ∙ Golden Rain

E28
No image

S1.E29 ∙ While the Sun Shines

E29
No image

S1.E30 ∙ The Cat and the Canary

E30

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.

No image

S1.E31 ∙ The Larford Lad

E31

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

No image

S1.E32 ∙ Black Chiffon

E32

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

No image

S1.E33 ∙ My Young Brother

E33
No image

S1.E34 ∙ Love and Miss Figgis

E34
No image

S1.E35 ∙ Unfinished Journey

E35
No image

S1.E36 ∙ The Cathedral

E36
No image

S1.E37 ∙ Last Day in Dreamland

E37
No image

S1.E38 ∙ It Isn't Enough

E38
No image

S1.E39 ∙ Haul for the Shore

E39
No image

S1.E40 ∙ Bed and Breakfast

E40
No image

S1.E41 ∙ The Farmer's Wife

E41

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

No image

S1.E42 ∙ Through a Glass Darkly

E42
No image

S1.E43 ∙ Conflict at Kalanadi

E43
No image

S1.E44 ∙ The Difficult Age

E44
No image

S1.E45 ∙ Going Like a Fox

E45
No image

S1.E46 ∙ The Return of Peggy Atherton

E46
No image

S1.E47 ∙ Home and the Heart

E47
No image

S1.E48 ∙ A Matter of Age

E48
No image

S1.E49 ∙ Devonshire Cream

E49
No image

S1.E50 ∙ The Country Boy

E50
No image

S1.E51 ∙ The Man Who Came to Dinner

E51

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.

No image

S1.E52 ∙ Marriage Settlement

E52
No image

S1.E53 ∙ The Guinea Pig

E53

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

No image

S1.E54 ∙ The Breadwinner

E54
No image

S1.E55 ∙ On the Edge

E55
No image

S1.E56 ∙ Dream Girl

E56

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

No image

S1.E57 ∙ The Shop at Sly Corner

E57

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.

No image

S1.E58 ∙ Family Occasion

E58

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

No image

S1.E59 ∙ The Bachelor Brothers

E59
No image

S1.E60 ∙ Your Obedient Servant

E60
No image

S1.E61 ∙ The Druid Circle

E61

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.

No image

S1.E62 ∙ The Colonel

E62
No image

S1.E63 ∙ A Run for the Money

E63
No image

S1.E64 ∙ A Sense of Guilt

E64
No image

S1.E65 ∙ The Four Poster

E65

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

No image

S1.E66 ∙ The House with the Green Shutters

E66
No image

S1.E67 ∙ A Perfect Stranger

E67
No image

S1.E68 ∙ Seagulls Over Sorrento

E68

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