Acting
American Playhouse is an anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.
This story of espionage and counter-espionage is based on the novel by Ian Adams. Suspicious circumstances surrounded the mysterious death of a Canadian diplomat. At the height of The Cold War in October 1964, John Watkins, Canada's former ambassador to Moscow and a close friend of Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, is kidnapped and held in a hotel for questioning by the RCMP at the urging of the CIA. Several days into the interrogation he died. The official obituary claimed that he suffered a heart attack in the company of friends during a farewell supper celebrating his illustrious career.
Catherine, a concert pianist, is surprised one night by the arrival of her best friend from childhood, Marie-Alexandrine (Max), whom she hasn't seen for 25 years. Catherine and Max were Québec's most promising young pianists in the mid-1960's when the adventurous Max gets pregnant. She wants to keep the child, but her mother forces her to give him up for adoption; afterwards, Max leaves Québec and music. Now, years later, she returns, obsessed with finding her son. She locates the adoption records, and social services contacts her son to ask if he wants to see her. He refuses, but she keeps trying. Is a relationship with him possible? And what about her musical talent?
An adult Martin Roy reminisces about his life in the 1966/67 school year. At fifteen years old and in his last year of junior high school, he breathed, ate and slept hockey. He collected hockey cards, played street hockey with his friends, tried skating and ice hockey for the first time in his life, but was most fascinated with his local national league team, the Montréal Canadiens, and its star player, Henri Richard. He dreamed of growing up and working for the Canadiens franchise. But a more immediate goal was to get tickets to one of their games, using M. Richard and his banker father, Hervé, as possible conduits to that goal.
A young artist is desperate for money to save his brother from the mob. Drawn into a criminal world of theft, betrayal and murder, his only way out is to get in even deeper. If he fails, it could cost him his life.
In Montreal, on Rosh Hashanah, 1948, writer Chaim is forced to reflect on his religion when asked to be the tenth in a minyan. As he sits in the park, he suddenly sees an old friend whom he hasn't seen since they quarrelled when they were Yeshiva together. Hersh, a rabbi, survived Auschwitz and his faith was strengthened by his ordeal, while Chaim escaped the Nazis, but had lost his faith long before. The two walk, reminisce, and argue passionately about themselves, their actions, their lives, their religion, their old quarrel, and their friendship.
The mayor of a suburban town must try to deal with cultural clashes with the local hassidic jewish community, while trying to mend his relation to his emotionally-distant son.
A young woman who is obsessed with Buster Keaton stays in the sanatorium where the actor was once a patient.
A story about real life early 20th century British composer and music critic Philip Arnold Heseltine.
