Masterpiece Theatre is a long-running television series produced by WGBH which premiered on PBS on January 10, 1971. The show has presented to American audiences a large number of award-winning British productions, particularly BBC television dramas.

The show was hosted by Alistair Cooke until 1992; Russell Baker hosted from 1992 to 2004. Since 2004 it has been without a host.

Oeuvre

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Masterpiece Theatre is best known for presenting adaptations of famous novels and biographies into episodic TV miniseries, but it also shows original television dramas. Programs presented on the show include Elizabeth R, House of Cards, The Citadel, I, Claudius, Jeeves and Wooster, The Jewel in the Crown, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Traffik, Upstairs, Downstairs, and many others, including adaptations of Anna Karenina, Cakes and Ale, Cold Comfort Farm, Jude the Obscure, Madame Bovary, Moll Flanders, and Northanger Abbey.

The theme music to the show, played during the opening credits, is from "Symphonies and Fanfares for the King's Supper" by French composer Jean-Joseph Mouret.

In 1979, Masterpiece Theatre gained a sister series, Mystery!, an umbrella series for (again) mostly British detective and crime series; much later it gained another sister series, Masterpiece Theatre: the American Collection, a series of programs based on American literary works, such as Our Town.

Changes for 2004

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The show was financed by Mobil and then Exxon Mobil until 2004, and was for many years known as Mobil Masterpiece Theatre or ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre. After their sponsorship ended, the show underwent a major restructuring:

• The host was eliminated;
• Mystery! and Masterpiece Theatre began sharing the Sunday time slot with Masterpiece Theatre airing in the fall and winter and Mystery! in the spring and summer.
• American-made productions were occasionally included.

Parodies

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• A series of movie, theatre, and television show parodies were shown on Sesame Street as Monsterpiece Theatre, hosted by Cookie Monster in the guise of "Alistair Cookie".
• On Saturday Night Live, Dan Aykroyd, playing the high-bred but low-brow Leonard Pinth-Garnell, hosted "Bad Theatre," in which horrible, pseudo-intellectual skits were presented.
• Pirate TV did a parody called "Rastapiece Theater".
• MADtv did a parody called "Master P's Theater".
• Disney Channel had a show titled "Mouseterpiece Theatre" hosted by George Plimpton featuring classic Disney cartoons.
• Yakko Warner played a Cooke-esque host in "Disasterpiece Theater", a cold opening leading into an Animaniacs episode, in which a wrecking ball obliterates a library set.
• The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Storyteller" opened with the character of Andrew Wells introducing the episode in the style of Masterpiece Theater.
• Pee-wee's Playhouse had a segment of oldie cartoons from the early talkie era hosted by a character called The King of Cartoons who would announce in an elevated diction, "Let the cartoons begin!"

See also

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• PBS Masterpiece Theater

References

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• Masterpiece Theatre: A Celebration of 25 Years of Outstanding Television by Terrence O'Flaherty (1996), ISBN 091233374X
• Masterpiece Theatre and the Politics of Quality by Laurence Jarvik (1999) ISBN 0810832046

External links

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• Official web site

• List of all programs

  • ExxonMobil will stop underwriting Masterpiece Theatre, adapted from a 2002 article in Current

1970s TV shows in the United States | 1980s TV shows in the United States | 1990s TV shows in the United States | 2000s TV shows in the United States | Drama television series | PBS network shows