Thirty Minute Theatre

1 9 6 1 – 1 9 6 3 (UK)
24 x 30 minute episodes

Premiering in October 1961 with ‘A Matter of Principle’ (starring Michael Gough), this anthology series of thirty-minute plays was produced by ITV’s “little network” of regional companies, including Anglia Television, Scottish Television (STV), Southern Television and TWW (Television Wales & West).

Stand-out productions included:

• • ‘Interview for Wives’, which told what happens when an ambitious young wife tries to push her engineer husband into a plum job.
  • ‘Already It’s Tomorrow’, set almost entirely in one room and involving an encounter between a nameless man (Alfred Lynch) and a mysterious woman (Valerie Gearon). It was written by Lynne Reid Banks, author of The L-Shaped Room.
  • ‘The Matchstick Man’, which revolved around William Candle (Hamilton Dyce), a single man who lives in a bedsit overlooking the Regent Canal, happily chatting to his budgie and making models out of used matchsticks. One night, he prevents a stranger (Brian Wilde) from committing suicide, takes him home, feeds him and – in return – is robbed of his savings.
  • ‘The Dice’, in which three political prisoners waited in a miserable cell behind the Iron Curtain to discover if they would be taken out and shot or jailed for life. The three become obsessed with a set of dice, and soon, their existence revolves around the dice – settling their petty quarrels and futile political arguing. Too late they discover that the dice also have the power of life or death.

Other actors who featured in the plays included Robert Shaw, Noel Harrison, Susan Hampshire, Kenneth Griffith, Ernest Clark, Windsor Davies, Patrick Wymark, Meg Wynn Owen, William Mervyn, Talfryn Thomas, Cyril Cusack, Geoffrey Palmer, Moira Redmond, Joan Newell, Finlay Currie, and Geraldine McEwan.

Not to be confused with the BBC series of 285 thirty-minute plays which used the same name and aired between 1965 and 1973.

Episodes

A Matter Of Principle | The Organ Blower || Dare to Be a Daniel | The Little Gold Mine | Interview for Wives | Kind to Everyone | Already It’s Tomorrow | The Desperate Man on Platform 10 | The Bearer of Bad News | The Matchstick Man | The Tower | Green Grows the Grass | Alida | Don Juan in Hell | Double Image | Haven in Sunset | The Apple Cart | The Typewriter || The Simple Truth | The Dig | Death of a Gladiator | The Dice | Truth is a Stranger | A Girl at the Office