About this season
Kurt Vonnegut, the author of a collection of short stories called "Welcome to the Monkey House", hosts a series that displays dramatizations of several of his short stories. The anthology series aired on Showtime network from 1991 to 1993. The first three stories were produced as a television pilot in British Columbia, Canada, and broadcast together from 9:00–10:30pm on May 12, 1991. The later four were filmed and produced in New Zealand in 1992, as a co-production with South Pacific Pictures.
Episodes (7)
1. Next Door
Aired 12 May 1991 • 30 min
A boy, home alone when his parents are out, sees trouble in a nearby apartment and seeks help from a radio DJ.
2. The Euphio Question
Aired 12 May 1991 • 30 min
A scientist discovers a strange musical transmission from space, which elicits a drug-like euphoric response in all who hear it.
3. All The King's Horses
Aired 12 May 1991 • 30 min
When a US government plane goes down over Cuba, a revolutionary decides to play a game of chess with real human lives on the line.
4. Fortitude
Aired 21 December 1992 • 30 min
5. More Stately Mansions
Aired 3 January 1993 • 30 min
6. Epicac
Aired 21 February 1993 • 30 min
7. The Foster Portfolio
Aired 4 April 1993 • 30 min
Jon Cryer plays "Slippy" Carter, an arrogant investment advisor who is tired of "nickel and dime accounts" and dreams of being on Nelson Rockefeller's payroll. Instead, he has to content himself with the likes of Hebert J. Foster (Nick Blake), a mild-mannered produce clerk living in a modest neighbourhood with his strait-laced wife and a young daughter. Carter and his assistant (Katie Wolfe) are in for a surprise when they discover that, appearances to the contrary, Foster is really a millionaire. The upstanding citizen and model husband and father has been concealing his true circumstances from his wife in order to be able to justify his weekend job - playing jazz piano at the Bluebeat Cellar, a smoke-filled, slightly seedy dive.