About this season
Sunday Night Theatre was a long-running series of televised live television plays screened by BBC Television from early 1950 until 1959. The productions for the first five years or so of the run were re-staged live the following Thursday, partly because of technical limitations in this era, and the theatrical basis of early television drama. Some of the earliest collaborations between Rudolph Cartier and Nigel Neale were produced for this series, including Arrow to the Heart and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Sunday night drama slot was subsequently renamed The Sunday-Night Play which ran for four seasons between 1960 and 1963. ITV transmitted its own unrelated run of Sunday Night Theatre between 1971 and 1974.
Episodes (20)
1. Hindle Wakes
Aired 1 January 1950
2. Rope
Aired 8 January 1950
Two young men strangle their "inferior" classmate, hide his body in their apartment, and invite his friends and family to a dinner party as a means to challenge the "perfection" of their crime.
3. Twelfth Night
Aired 15 January 1950
Viola and Sebastian are lookalike twins, separated by a shipwreck. Viola lands in Illyria, where she disguises herself like her brother and goes into the service of the Duke Orsino. Orsino sends her to help him woo the Lady Olivia, who doesn't want the Duke, but finds that she likes the new messenger the Duke's sending. Then, of course, Viola's brother shows up, and merry hell breaks loose. Meanwhile, Olivia's uncle and his cohorts are trying to find some way to get back at Olivia's officious majordomo, Malvolio.
4. Cheapside
Aired 22 January 1950
5. Trespass
Aired 29 January 1950
6. The Scarlet Pimpernel
Aired 5 February 1950
A noblewoman discovers her husband is The Scarlet Pimpernel, a vigilante who rescues aristocrats from the blade of the guillotine.
7. The Indifferent Shepherd
Aired 12 February 1950
10. The Seagull
Aired 5 March 1950
This quintessential Chekhov drama--his first success--is both comic and tragic. A group of friends and relations gather at a country estate to see the first performance of an experimental play written and staged by the young man of the house, Konstantin, an aspiring writer who dreams of bringing new forms to the theatre.
11. The Lady's Not for Burning
Aired 12 March 1950
16. Promise of Tomorrow
Aired 16 April 1950
Marius Goring stars as Tommy Savidge, a crippled poet who longs to compose verse dramas but is forced to write trashy plays for dingy provincial repertory companies to make a living.
17. Othello
Aired 23 April 1950
21. The Title
Aired 21 May 1950
24. The Admirable Crichton
Aired 11 June 1950
A group of people are shipwrecked when their yacht runs around on a South Pacific island. The usable hierarchy in a upper-class British family breaks down quickly when it becomes apparent that only the servant Crichton is capable of surviving on his own and he becomes the communities leader.
30. Dark Tribute
31. Adventure Story
Aired 30 July 1950
The story of Alexander the Great, a compulsive conqueror.
33. The History of Mr. Polly
Aired 13 August 1950
36. Vanity Fair
Aired 3 September 1950
40. Party Manners
Aired 1 October 1950
48. The Secret Sharer
Aired 26 November 1950
A ship's captain must conceal a stowaway from his crew.
49. An Enemy of the People
Aired 3 December 1950
A scientist stands against an entire town when he discovers their medicinal spa is polluted.