Saturday Playhouse was a 60-minuteUK anthology television series produced by and airing on theBritish Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from 4 January 1958 until 1 April 1961.[1] There were sixty-eight episodes, among them adaptations of the playsThe Man Who Came to Dinner andThe Cat and the Canary.[1] One of the episodes,Alex Atkinson’s classic thrillerDesign for Murder, was featured twice on the BBC: first onSaturday Playhouse (Saturday, 15 March 1958; S1/Ep.6) and again from the BBC's own theatre in Bristol (Thursday, 6 July 1961).[2]
Many actors performed forSaturday Playhouse, including:Maxine Audley,John Barrie,Michael Bates,Brian Blessed,Jeremy Brett,Michael Crawford,Anton Diffring,Paul Eddington,Denholm Elliott,Thora Hird,Desmond Llewelyn,Margaret Lockwood,Leo McKern,Bob Monkhouse,Leslie Phillips,Prunella Scales andElizabeth Shepherd, among others.[3] Screenplays were written by a range of established and new writers, includingPatrick Hamilton,Lynn Foster,Alun Richards andMary Melwood.
Only a single episode is believed to have survived.[4]