NaN/100 votes#1 - Dinner at Eight
Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 10/3/1948
Social-climbing Mrs. Oliver Jordan, whose husband's firm is in financial trouble, feels obligated to reciprocate hospitality for a visiting British aristocratic couple by arranging a small dinner party. The guests are chosen both to impress--a faded stage star, a well-known if over-the-hill alcoholic actor--and to meet certain social obligations. This means the necessary inclusion of a philandering doctor and his wife, and a gauche, nouveau-riche couple who are loathed but powerful.
Director: Fred Coe
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#2 - Rebecca
Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 10/10/1948
Brooding and moody Maxim deWinter returns from an extended trip to the continent with a young bride, less than a year after the tragic death of hi first wife, Rebecca. The staff of Manderley, his country home, including Mrs Danvers the housekeeper who rules over the house, are still devoted to their former mistress, the socialite Rebecca and they find it difficult to accept the new, shy Mrs deWinter who is inexperienced running a large home.
Director: Fred Coe
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#3 - Counsellor-at-Law
Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 10/17/1948
An upscale Manhattan attorney torn between his greedy practices of insider trading and embezzlement and his desire to help the working-class Jews from his old neighborhood.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#4 - Angel in the Wings
Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 10/24/1948
An understudy for a stage show's star takes over when an accident circumvents the stars performance. The understudy takes over and brings down the house.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#5 - Street Scene
Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 10/31/1948
Abraham Kaplan lives with his family in a row house populated by a kaleidoscope of characters looking to break out of poverty. Kaplan's revolutionary, socialist views grate against some of his neighbors.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#6 - This Thing Called Love
Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 11/7/1948
A professional couple marry and the wife insists on celibacy for three months to see if they really are compatible or not. The husband tries to lure her with all kinds of excuses and tricks to the marital bed.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#7 - Camille
Season 1 Episode 7 - Aired 11/14/1948
Camille, a beautiful courtesan and Armand Duval, a young man in the foreign service, are in love. Their relationship jeopardizes his career and prevents the marriage of his sister into a ""respectable"" family, if Duval marries Camille. Camille becomes ill and dies.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#8 - An Inspector Calls
Season 1 Episode 8 - Aired 11/21/1948
When Inspector Goole calls unexpectedly on the prosperous Birling family, his startling revelations not only shatter the very foundations of their lives, but challenge us all to examine our consciences.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#9 - I Like It Here
Season 1 Episode 9 - Aired 11/28/1948
Willie is a refugee who works as a houseman at a professor's home. He's a sweet and lovable man even when he's interfering in other people's lives. The Professor's daughter is in love with Brad, a young lawyer. Of course, Willie sees fit to give Brad all kinds of advice.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#10 - Suspect
Season 1 Episode 10 - Aired 12/5/1948
20 years ago, a Scotswoman was accused of an ax murder and let off with the ignominious Scottish verdict of Not Proven. She changes her name and lives down her past, but when her son becomes engaged, his fiancée's godfather spots the mother and recognizes her. In his efforts to trap her, and hers not to be trapped trouble arises.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#11 - Parlor Story
Season 1 Episode 11 - Aired 12/12/1948
An ambitious professor wants to become President of his university. He is soon caught up in the political opportunism of the State Governor, the wiles of an unscrupulous newspaper publisher and the parlor tricks of his own meddling wife.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 6.8/1014 votes
#12 - A Christmas Carol
Season 1 Episode 12 - Aired 12/19/1948
The skinflint Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve.
Director: Fred Coe
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#13 - The Old Lady Shows Her Medals
Season 1 Episode 13 - Aired 12/26/1948
The basement flat of Mrs Dowey, a Scottish charwoman who lives and works in London, during World War I, and Mrs Dowey and her guests - three other charwomen whom she has invited for tea - are discussing the tactics of trench warfare with the confidence of people who have never been near the Front.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#14 - Ramshackle Inn
Season 1 Episode 14 - Aired 1/2/1949
An old maid librarian has saved her money for twenty years, in order to buy a hotel where she can meet interesting people. She purchases a strange rundown place near the ocean and gets what she bargains for.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#15 - Cyrano de Bergerac
Season 1 Episode 15 - Aired 1/9/1949
The poetry-spouting soldier with the oversized nose, Cyrano uses the handsome but inarticulate Christian as a conduit for his feelings, the ugly but eloquent Cyrano pours his heart out to the lovely Roxanne. And she, wooed by the beauty of the words, falls in love with Christian, not realizing that it is Cyrano whose voice has aroused her passion.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#16 - Papa Is All
Season 1 Episode 16 - Aired 1/16/1949
Papa is an ugly tempered, overly strict, scrupulously religious Pennsylvanian Dutch, his wife and children rebel.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#17 - Pride and Prejudice
Season 1 Episode 17 - Aired 1/23/1949
The trials of a woman trying to find husbands for her five daughters in 18th-century England.
Director: Fred Coe
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#18 - Dark Hammock
Season 1 Episode 18 - Aired 1/30/1949
In a remote part of Florida Coral Platt, a sinister woman has married a man considerably older than she. For reasons sufficient to her, she wants him out of the way and plans an ingenious though slow murder by poison. She has succeeded in making it seem that Marvin is dying through natural causes. However, she is forced unexpectedly to play hostess to two women who have come to Florida. The women stay longer than they planned because they have begun to suspect what Coral is up to. In a series of exciting scenes they discover just what is going on and prevent Marvin's death.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#19 - The Late Christopher Bean
Season 1 Episode 19 - Aired 2/6/1949
Dr. Haggett and his family, who have some of Bean's canvases, suddenly realize their value, and become hard, selfish, and ill-tempered. It is Abby, the family servant, who ultimately holds them all in her power; she has one of the greatest paintings, which she cannot be persuaded into selling or giving away. She is the only one who really understood the artist -- besides, she had been married to him!
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#20 - The Story of Mary Surratt
Season 1 Episode 20 - Aired 2/13/1949
After the death of her husband Mary opened a boardinghouse to pay the debts owed by her husband. .. There she began a respectable boardinghouse business and met the man who would ultimately lead to her inglorious place in history - John Wilkes Booth.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#21 - Twelfth Night
Season 1 Episode 21 - Aired 2/20/1949
Viola, a young woman who disguises herself as a man to work as a page in the court of Count Orsino. Orsino is hopelessly in love with a woman named Olivia, and soon Viola finds herself hopelessly in love with Orsino. But Orsino thinks she's a man, and her predicament worsens when she realizes that Olivia has fallen in love with her.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#22 - St. Helena
Season 1 Episode 22 - Aired 2/27/1949
On St. Helena, the exiled emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is grim when his faithful Corscian attendant Cipriani dies. In his confinement he's suffering from a bad liver and a sulking mistress all this begins to weigh heavy on him as he continues to be haunted by spectres of his mistakes. He cannot forget, he says, that if he had not attacked so soon at Waterloo, he would have had 12,000 more men. The imperial manners gradually give way to those of a lonely and embittered country squire. Feeling death upon him at last, he hears that a comet has appeared in the sky.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#23 - The Druid Circle
Season 1 Episode 23 - Aired 3/6/1949
An embittered professor comes near to wrecking the lives of a young man and young woman whose love for each other has been accidentally revealed to him through a letter written by the boy to the girl. The professor uses this to humiliate the young people, unconsciously venting upon them his own perverse cruelty for the disappointment suffered in his own life.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#24 - Quality Street
Season 1 Episode 24 - Aired 3/13/1949
Because she's nearly 30 and still unwed, Phoebe Throssel is regarded as an over-the-hill spinster. Thus, when offered the opportunity for a reunion with Captain Brown, whom she hasn't seen in years, Phoebe desperately wants to rekindle his affections.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#25 - Dinner at Antoine's
Season 1 Episode 25 - Aired 3/20/1949
The murder of a woman at a dinner party unveils a multitude of twists and turns as the murderer is uncovered.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
The Best Episodes of The Philco Television Playhouse Season 1
Every episode of The Philco Television Playhouse Season 1 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of The Philco Television Playhouse Season 1!
The Philco Television Playhouse is an American anthology series that was broadcast live on NBC from 1948 to 1955. Produced by Fred Coe, the series...
Genre:Drama
Network:NBC
Season 1 Ratings Summary
"Dinner at Eight" is the best rated episode of "The Philco Television Playhouse" season 1. It scored N/A/10 based on 0 votes. Directed by Fred Coe and written by N/A, it aired on 10/3/1948. This episode is rated NaN points higher than the second-best, "Rebecca".