TV ShowReturning Series

Saturday Playhouse

1958
1 season
68 episodes

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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Cast

Seasons

  • Ep 1

    1.S1.E1 ∙ The Man Upstairs

    04-01-1958

    An anthology series of dramatisations of plays.

  • Ep 2

    2.S1.E2 ∙ The Distaff Side

    11-01-1958

    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...

  • Ep 3

    3.S1.E3 ∙ Heroes Don't Care

    18-01-1958
  • Ep 4

    4.S1.E4 ∙ Britannia of Billingsgate

    25-01-1958
  • Ep 5

    5.S1.E5 ∙ The Corn Is Green

    01-02-1958

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

  • Ep 6

    6.S1.E6 ∙ Design for Murder

    08-02-1958
  • Ep 7

    7.S1.E7 ∙ My Flesh, My Blood

    15-02-1958
  • Ep 8

    8.S1.E8 ∙ Ladies in Retirement

    22-02-1958

    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 incar...

  • Ep 9

    9.S1.E9 ∙ A Likely Tale

    01-03-1958

    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.

  • Ep 10

    10.S1.E10 ∙ And No Birds Sing

    08-03-1958
  • Ep 11

    11.S1.E11 ∙ Carry On, Admiral

    15-03-1958

    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.

  • Ep 12

    12.S1.E12 ∙ French Without Tears

    22-03-1958

    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 brot...

  • Ep 13

    13.S1.E13 ∙ High Heaven

    29-03-1958
  • Ep 14

    14.S1.E14 ∙ The Ware Case

    05-04-1958

    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 inclina...

  • Ep 15

    15.S1.E15 ∙ The Fourth Wall

    12-04-1958

    The host of a dinner party is murdered.

  • Ep 16

    16.S1.E16 ∙ Dr. Angelus

    19-04-1958
  • Ep 17

    17.S1.E17 ∙ A Young Affair

    26-04-1958
  • Ep 18

    18.S1.E18 ∙ The Dover Road

    13-09-1958

    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...

  • Ep 19

    19.S1.E19 ∙ Day of Retirement

    20-09-1958
  • Ep 20

    20.S1.E20 ∙ A Private Eye for Pennsylvania

    27-09-1958
  • Ep 21

    21.S1.E21 ∙ Four for Solitaire

    25-10-1958
  • Ep 22

    22.S1.E22 ∙ Trespass

    22-11-1958
  • Ep 23

    23.S1.E23 ∙ The Duke in Darkness

    06-12-1958

    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.

  • Ep 24

    24.S1.E24 ∙ The Magistrate

    20-12-1958

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

  • Ep 25

    25.S1.E25 ∙ So Many Children

    27-12-1958
  • Ep 26

    26.S1.E26 ∙ Trilby

    17-01-1959

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

  • Ep 27

    27.S1.E27 ∙ Murder on the Agenda

    14-02-1959

    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 h...

  • Ep 28

    28.S1.E28 ∙ Golden Rain

    28-02-1959
  • Ep 29

    29.S1.E29 ∙ While the Sun Shines

    28-03-1959
  • Ep 30

    30.S1.E30 ∙ The Cat and the Canary

    09-05-1959

    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.

  • Ep 31

    31.S1.E31 ∙ The Larford Lad

    20-06-1959

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

  • Ep 32

    32.S1.E32 ∙ Black Chiffon

    04-07-1959

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

  • Ep 33

    33.S1.E33 ∙ My Young Brother

    18-07-1959
  • Ep 34

    34.S1.E34 ∙ Love and Miss Figgis

    01-08-1959
  • Ep 35

    35.S1.E35 ∙ Unfinished Journey

    08-08-1959
  • Ep 36

    36.S1.E36 ∙ The Cathedral

    15-08-1959
  • Ep 37

    37.S1.E37 ∙ Last Day in Dreamland

    29-08-1959
  • Ep 38

    38.S1.E38 ∙ It Isn't Enough

    26-09-1959
  • Ep 39

    39.S1.E39 ∙ Haul for the Shore

    24-10-1959
  • Ep 40

    40.S1.E40 ∙ Bed and Breakfast

    21-11-1959
  • Ep 41

    41.S1.E41 ∙ The Farmer's Wife

    05-12-1959

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

  • Ep 42

    42.S1.E42 ∙ Through a Glass Darkly

    19-12-1959
  • Ep 43

    43.S1.E43 ∙ Conflict at Kalanadi

    16-01-1960
  • Ep 44

    44.S1.E44 ∙ The Difficult Age

    30-01-1960
  • Ep 45

    45.S1.E45 ∙ Going Like a Fox

    13-02-1960
  • Ep 46

    46.S1.E46 ∙ The Return of Peggy Atherton

    27-02-1960
  • Ep 47

    47.S1.E47 ∙ Home and the Heart

    12-03-1960
  • Ep 48

    48.S1.E48 ∙ A Matter of Age

    26-03-1960
  • Ep 49

    49.S1.E49 ∙ Devonshire Cream

    09-04-1960
  • Ep 50

    50.S1.E50 ∙ The Country Boy

    23-04-1960
  • Ep 51

    51.S1.E51 ∙ The Man Who Came to Dinner

    07-05-1960

    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 an...

  • Ep 52

    52.S1.E52 ∙ Marriage Settlement

    21-05-1960
  • Ep 53

    53.S1.E53 ∙ The Guinea Pig

    04-06-1960

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

  • Ep 54

    54.S1.E54 ∙ The Breadwinner

    18-06-1960
  • Ep 55

    55.S1.E55 ∙ On the Edge

    16-07-1960
  • Ep 56

    56.S1.E56 ∙ Dream Girl

    13-08-1960

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

  • Ep 57

    57.S1.E57 ∙ The Shop at Sly Corner

    27-08-1960

    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 motherl...

  • Ep 58

    58.S1.E58 ∙ Family Occasion

    08-10-1960

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

  • Ep 59

    59.S1.E59 ∙ The Bachelor Brothers

    22-10-1960
  • Ep 60

    60.S1.E60 ∙ Your Obedient Servant

    19-11-1960
  • Ep 61

    61.S1.E61 ∙ The Druid Circle

    03-12-1960

    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...

  • Ep 62

    62.S1.E62 ∙ The Colonel

    17-12-1960
  • Ep 63

    63.S1.E63 ∙ A Run for the Money

    31-12-1960
  • Ep 64

    64.S1.E64 ∙ A Sense of Guilt

    14-01-1961
  • Ep 65

    65.S1.E65 ∙ The Four Poster

    28-01-1961

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

  • Ep 66

    66.S1.E66 ∙ The House with the Green Shutters

    11-02-1961
  • Ep 67

    67.S1.E67 ∙ A Perfect Stranger

    25-02-1961
  • Ep 68

    68.S1.E68 ∙ Seagulls Over Sorrento

    04-03-1961

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

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