Show cover for Performance

The Best Episodes of Performance

Every episode of Performance ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of Performance!

An anthology series of various plays and dramatic performances.
Genre:Drama
Network:BBC Four

Best Episodes Summary

"Old Times" is the best rated episode of "Performance". It scored 8/10 based on 44 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 10/26/1991. This episode scored 0.0 points higher than the second highest rated, "The Trials of Oz".

  • Old Times
    8.0/1044 votes
    Loading...

    #1 - Old Times

    Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 10/26/1991

    A married couple are visited by a friend from their past, who causes them unease and even embarrassment.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • The Trials of Oz
    8.0/1056 votes
    Loading...

    #2 - The Trials of Oz

    Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 11/9/1991

    Dramatization of the famous 1971 trial in which the editors of the British underground magazine "Oz" were charged with obscenity.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Shadow of a Gunman
    8.0/1033 votes
    Loading...

    #3 - Shadow of a Gunman

    Season 5 Episode 1 - Aired 10/7/1995

    The first part of Sean O'Casey's Dublin Trilogy. Set in 1920, as the Irish War of Independence rages, "Shadow of a Gunman" is the story of two young men, Donald Davoren and Seamus Shields, who share a flat in Dublin.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Nona
    7.9/1027 votes
    Loading...

    #4 - Nona

    Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 10/19/1991

    An adaptation of Roberto Cossa's Argentinian drama, the play focuses on a family desperately struggling against inflation and unemployment while trying to assuage the insatiable appetite of their 100-year old grandmother.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Richard II
    7.9/10107 votes
    Loading...

    #5 - Richard II

    Season 6 Episode 3 - Aired 3/22/1997

    The incompetent Richard II is deposed by Henry Bolingbroke and undergoes a crisis of identity once he is no longer king.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Tales From Hollywood
    7.8/1050 votes
    Loading...

    #6 - Tales From Hollywood

    Season 2 Episode 1 - Aired 11/14/1992

    A slightly ironical description of the colony of German artists in Los Angeles, who had to leave their country during the Nazi-regime. A young playwriter (von Horvath) joins them and finds out, that there are gaps between the artistical attitudes and the real live behavior of authors like Thomas or Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger or Bertold Brecht.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Message For Posterity
    7.8/1034 votes
    Loading...

    #7 - Message For Posterity

    Season 4 Episode 1 - Aired 10/29/1994

    A Parliamentary committee decides to commission a portrait as a memorial to an ageing Conservative, wartime ex-Prime Minister, Sir David Browning. Bizarrely, they choose anarchic, anti-establishment and equally ageing artist James Player, who appears to stand for the very opposite values and positions to his prospective sitter. During sittings the two men find many opportunities to score political and social points off each. Screened with an with an introduction by Brian Walden, a contemporary of writer Dennis Potter at Oxford and an old Oxford political sparring partner.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • The Mother
    7.7/1042 votes
    Loading...

    #8 - The Mother

    Season 4 Episode 5 - Aired 11/26/1994

    Paddy Chayefsky's 1954 play set in the Bronx tells the story of a recently widowed 66-year-old seeks a job after 40 years if being a homemaker.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Company
    7.7/10103 votes
    Loading...

    #9 - Company

    Season 6 Episode 1 - Aired 3/1/1997

    At his 35th birthday party Bobby's friends are all wondering: Why isn't he married? Why can't he find the right woman and settle down?

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Absolute Hell
    7.5/10106 votes
    Loading...

    #10 - Absolute Hell

    Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 10/5/1991

    Black comedy set in Soho, London, right after WW2. Half of the fun is seeing a slew of very familiar faces kick up their heels as gay men, lesbians, party-girls, drunks, and drag queens.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • King Lear
    7.5/10285 votes
    Loading...

    #11 - King Lear

    Season 7 Episode 1 - Aired 3/21/1998

    King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Measure for Measure
    7.4/1035 votes
    Loading...

    #12 - Measure for Measure

    Season 4 Episode 2 - Aired 11/5/1994

    Modern dress version of Shakespeare's "problem comedy" emphasizing the darker elements of the play and eliminating most of the humor, as Claudio is dragged to the police station on charges of fornication, and given a rectal exam in front of a window.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Summer Day's Dream
    7.4/1033 votes
    Loading...

    #13 - Summer Day's Dream

    Season 4 Episode 4 - Aired 11/19/1994

    In 1975, after a nuclear war, the nations have combined to set up a World Government. An old man who lives quietly in the country finds his peace threatened by a visit from three World Government figures.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • The Maitlands
    7.3/1045 votes
    Loading...

    #14 - The Maitlands

    Season 3 Episode 2 - Aired 11/13/1993

    In the secluded coastal resort of Betworthy, the Maitland family has fallen on hard times and the eldest son Roger, a schoolmaster, is forced to give a young boy after-school tuition in order to pay for his jet-setting wife Dorothy's trip to the French Riviera. His mother, Mrs. Maitland, puts her hope in a legacy from her brother while their live-in cousin Phyllis plans to escape poverty and the tedium of Betworthy by accepting a marriage proposal from Major Luddington. Everything changes, however, as the younger Maitland brother, Jack, returns home for a visit and Phyllis falls in love with him. Jack, who left the family years ago to seek his fortune in London, is now a rich and successful actor, a career choice of which his family never approved, which, in his opinion, gives him the perfect excuse to treat them just as badly as he wishes. Further trouble comes along as Joan, an old friend of Phyllis's, suddenly pays a visit to the house and falls in love with Roger.

    Director: Lindsay Posner

    Writer: N/A

  • Broken Glass
    7.3/1071 votes
    Loading...

    #15 - Broken Glass

    Season 6 Episode 4 - Aired 3/29/1997

    A Jewish housewife in 1938 Brooklyn loses the use of her legs after reading about Kristallnacht.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Macbeth on the Estate
    7.3/10106 votes
    Loading...

    #16 - Macbeth on the Estate

    Season 6 Episode 5 - Aired 4/5/1997

    Shakespeare's play is updated to the present day starring James Frain and Susan Vidler. On a council estate where people survive by dealing drugs and shoplifting, Duncan is the Godfather. Urged by Mrs Macbeth, Macbeth kills Duncan.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Uncle Vanya
    7.2/10183 votes
    Loading...

    #17 - Uncle Vanya

    Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 2/22/1991

    When Vanya's brother-in-law declares his intention to sell the family's house, polite facades begin to crumble and long repressed feelings start to emerge with devastating consequences.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Top Girls
    7.0/1019 votes
    Loading...

    #18 - Top Girls

    Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 11/2/1991

    Marlene celebrates her new position as MD of Top Girls Appointment Agency by giving a dinner party for five oddly assorted women from centuries past.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • The Entertainer
    7.0/1010 votes
    Loading...

    #19 - The Entertainer

    Season 3 Episode 4 - Aired 12/4/1993

    The play uses the metaphor of the dying music hall tradition, specifically fictional music hall star Archie Rice, to comment on the moribund state of the British Empire in the 1950s.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • The Deep Blue Sea
    6.8/10118 votes
    Loading...

    #20 - The Deep Blue Sea

    Season 4 Episode 3 - Aired 11/12/1994

    A woman unhappy in her passionless marriage leaves her husband for a younger and more ardent lover.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd
    6.8/1099 votes
    Loading...

    #21 - The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd

    Season 5 Episode 2 - Aired 10/14/1995

    Mrs. Holroyd is married to a loutish miner. When a gentlemanly neighbour makes romantic advances to her, she wishes her husband dead. Sooner than she hoped, her wish comes true.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • My Night with Reg
    6.5/10178 votes
    Loading...

    #22 - My Night with Reg

    Season 6 Episode 2 - Aired 3/14/1997

    A group of English gay men get together to reminisce. They are all coming from a wake for one of their circle who's died of AIDS. It's that terrifying time between the outbreak of AIDS and the development of an AIDS test and as the conversation unfolds it becomes apparent that each man there has had unprotected sex with the deceased.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Roots
    NaN/100 votes
    Loading...

    #23 - Roots

    Season 2 Episode 3 - Aired 11/28/1992

    Beatie returns to her family home in Norfolk, having been "educated" in cultural and political matters by Ronnie, the boyfriend she lived with in London. Through trying to pass on the things she's learnt to her uninterested family, she discovers her own voice and views—which are no longer just an echo of Ronnie's.

    Director: Simon Curtis

    Writer: N/A

  • Suddenly Last Summer
    NaN/100 votes
    Loading...

    #24 - Suddenly Last Summer

    Season 3 Episode 1 - Aired 11/6/1993

    No description available

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A

  • Landscape
    NaN/100 votes
    Loading...

    #25 - Landscape

    Season 5 Episode 3 - Aired 10/21/1995

    Beth sits in an armchair to the left of the table, and Duff in a chair at the opposite end. Duff refers normally to Beth but does not appear to hear her voice and Beth never looks at Duff and does not appear to hear his voice.

    Director: N/A

    Writer: N/A