Peggy Ashcroft

The best in the performing arts from across America and around the world including a diverse programming portfolio of classical music, opera, popular song, musical theater, dance, drama, and performance documentaries.

A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.

A one-hour anthology television series of one-off contemporary and classic dramas produced by the BBC.

Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line format, which only BBC2 used at the time.

In India, during the final years of British rule in World War II, an unjust arrest for rape sets off questions of identity and personal responsibility being explored against a background of war and personal intrigue.

John Barton holds a master class in how to play Shakespeare, using members of the RSC doing scenes, sonnets, and commentary as prime examples.

While still the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII meets the married American socialite, Wallis Simpson. Their relationship causes furor in the palace and in parliament, especially when King George V dies, Mrs. Simpson gets divorced, and King Edward announces his intention to marry her.

Richard Hanney has a rude awakening when a glamorous female spy falls into his bed - with a knife in her back. Having a bit of trouble explaining it all to Scotland Yard, he heads for the hills of Scotland to try to clear his name by locating the spy ring known as The 39 Steps.

Sir John Gielgud is joined by an outstanding repertory of actors in this pioneering, imaginative series demonstrating the immense variety and emotional impact of English-language poetry, from the fourteenth century to the contemporary era.

After leaving a wealthy Belgian family to become a nun, Sister Luke struggles with her devotion to her vows during crisis, disappointment, and World War II.

An epic chronicle of the dysfunctional Plantagenet family from the accession of the young Henry to the death of Richard, last of the Plantagenets. The vacillations of the priestly Henry lead to ungentlemanly behaviour, civil war, treason, murder, regicide, fratricide, and the relentless pursuit of power so characteristic of the Renaissance.

The life of British MI6 spy Magnus Pym, from his school days to his mysterious disappearance.

Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.

With the help of government-issued pamphlets, an elderly British couple build a shelter and prepare for an impending nuclear attack, unaware that times and the nature of war have changed from their romantic memories of World War II.

In London, eccentric piano instructor Madame Sousatzka takes on a new prize protégé, Manek, a teenage Bengali immigrant who displays incredible talent. Manek forms a close bond with his teacher, but soon discovers that she expects her pupils to become disciplined in all areas of life, and not just behind the piano. As he struggles to meet the challenges, Manek must also deal with his mother, who vies with his teacher for his attention.

Recently divorced career woman Alex Greville begins a romantic relationship with glamorous mod artist Bob Elkin, fully aware that he's also intimately involved with middle-aged doctor Daniel Hirsh. For both Alex and Daniel, the younger man represents a break with their repressive pasts, and though both know that Bob is seeing both of them, neither is willing to let go of the youth and vitality he brings to their otherwise stable lives.

Lady Booby alias 'Belle', the lively wife of the fat landed squire Sir Thomas Booby, has a lusty eye on the attractive, intelligent villager Joseph Andrews, a Latin pupil and protégé of parson Adams, and makes him their footman. Joseph's heart belongs to a country girl, foundling Fanny Goodwill, but his masters take him on a fashionable trip to Bath, where the spoiled society comes mainly to see and be seen, but drowns in the famous Roman baths. When the all but grieving lady finds Joseph's Christian virtue and true love resist her lusting passes just as well as the many ladies who fancy her footman, she fires the boy. He's found and nursed by an innkeeper's maid, which stirs lusts there, again besides his honorable conduct, but is found by the good parson.

A 1965 BBC adaptation of William Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy (1 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI and Richard III), which deals with the conflict between the House of Lancaster and the House of York over the throne of England, a conflict known as the Wars of the Roses. It was based on the 1963 theatre adaptation by John Barton, and directed by Peter Hall for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

A penniless woman meets a strange girl who insists she is her long-lost mother and becomes enmeshed in a web of deception, and perhaps madness.

Madame Ranevsky and her daughter Anya return home from Paris to find that their beloved family estate and cherry orchard are to be auctioned off to pay debts. Lopahin, a former serf on the estate who is now a wealthy landowner, proposes razing the home and cherry orchard and dividing the estate into plots that could be leased at great profit. The family, however, continues to hold out hope that their beloved home can somehow be saved from destruction.