Peggy Ashcroft

Great Performances

Self

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.

BBC Play of the Month

The Rat Wife

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.

Playhouse

Frau Messner

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

Theatre 625

Rebekka West

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.

The Wednesday Play

The Mother

An anthology series of television plays which aired on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured.

The Jewel in the Crown

Barbie Batchelor

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.

Edward and Mrs Simpson

Queen Mary

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.

Playing Shakespeare

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

The Nun's Story

Mother Mathilde

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.

The 39 Steps

The Crofter's Wife Margaret

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.

The Wars of the Roses

Queen Margaret

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.

Six Centuries of Verse

Self - Reader

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.

A Perfect Spy

Miss Dubber

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

When the Wind Blows

Hilda Bloggs (voice)

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.

A Passage to India

Mrs. Moore

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.

Joseph Andrews

Lady Tattle

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.

Secret Ceremony

Hannah

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.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Mrs. Greville

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.

Little Eyolf

The Rat Wife

Alfred Allmers has spent his whole life writing a book on "responsibility," a luxury he can afford as a result of his marriage to the wealthy and beautiful Rita. However, much to Rita's annoyance, his attention isn't always undivided toward her, as Alfred shifts his focus between his book, their son Eyolf, and his half-sister Asta. As Allmers slowly feels trapped in an unfulfilling marriage, emotions and a painful past threaten to boil over into a terrible finale.

Tell Me Lies

Adapted and directed by Peter Brook from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘production-in-progress US’, this long-unseen agitprop drama-doc – shot in London in 1967 and released only briefly in the UK and New York at the height of the Vietnam War – remains both thought-provoking and disturbing. A theatrical and cinematic social comment on US intervention in Vietnam, Brook’s film also reveals a 1960s London where art, theatre and political protest actively collude and where a young Glenda Jackson and RSC icons such as Peggy Ashcroft and Paul Scofield feature prominently on the front line. Multi-layered scenarios staged by Brook combine with newsreel footage, demonstrations, satirical songs and skits to illustrate the intensity of anti-war opinion within London’s artistic and intellectual community.