Elisabeth Bergner

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.

An anthology of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known.

Anthology series of half hour plays produced in BBC's Television Centre's studios.

In seventeenth century England Lord Whitman wages unending war on what he sees as the ever-present scourge of witchcraft, and many local villagers have suffered at his hands. But one victim uses her occult powers to curse his family, enlisting unknowing help from one of the household.

The woman who will become Catherine the Great marries into the Russian royal family when she weds Grand Duke Peter, the nephew of Empress Elizabeth. Although the couple has moments of contentment, Peter's cruel and erratic behavior causes a rift between him and Catherine. Mere months after Peter succeeds his aunt as the ruler of Russia, a revolt is brewing, and Catherine is poised to ascend to the throne as the country's new empress.

While staying with her aunt at a fashionable spa, Else receives an unexpected telegram from her mother, begging her to save her father from debtor’s jail. The only way out, it seems, is to approach an elderly acquaintance in order to borrow money from him. Through this telegram, Else is forced into the reality of a world entirely at odds with her romantic imagination – with horrific consequences.