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