Masterpiece Theatre

Masterpiece Theatre is a long-running anthology 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, primarily BBC television dramas, but also programs shown on the commercial ITV network and Channel 4.

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

Overview

Masterpiece Theatre is best known for presenting adaptations of famous novels and biographies into episodic TV miniseries, but it also shows original television dramas. The first series to air was The First Churchills and Susan Hampshire received an Emmy (the first of many that various series and performers broadcast under this banner would garner) for her performance as Sarah Churchill. Other 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 the Rondeau 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 a short lived sister series, Masterpiece Theatre: the American Collection, a series of programs based on American literary works, such as Our Town.

Changes for 2004

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 dropped;
• 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.

The Best of Masterpiece Theatre

In March 2007, PBS aired “The Best of Masterpiece Theatre” hosted by Derek Jacobi. Based on 20,000 votes solicited on the Masterpiece Theatre web site and PBS affiliate web sites, the top 12 series were:

• Upstairs, Downstairs
• The Forsyte Saga
• I, Claudius
• Bleak House
• Prime Suspect
• The Jewel in the Crown
• Poldark
• House of Cards
• Reckless
• The Fortunes & Misfortunes of Moll Flanders
• Wives & Daughters
• Jeeves & Wooster

Parodies

• 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.
• On In Living Color during Season 5 a sketch called "Parody of Masterpiece Theatre" aired in which Jamie Foxx and

David Alan Grier recited the lyrics of popular gangster rap songs of the early 1990's by artist such as Dr. Dre and Ice Cube. Cast member Marc Wilmore was the host imitating James Earl Jones

• 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 Theatre.
• In the film Heartburn (1986), Rachel (played by Meryl Streep), at two points in the story, is watching a Masterpiece Theatre style program, wherein she imagines that the Alastair Cooke-esque host (played by John Wood) is narrating the story of her own life.
• Tracey Ullman's early television special "Tracey Ullman: A Class Act" (1992) starts out with the famous opening fanfare from the series and a set made up to look like Masterpiece Theatre's with Tracey Ullman "standing in for Alaistar Cooke" .
• The popular sitcom My Name Is Earl had an alternative reality themed episode called bad karma in which Jason Lee (Earl) introduces the episode in a set made to look like the Masterpiece Theatre. While there Lee shows the viewers that he really is on a set and not in a real room.

References

• Masterpiece Theatre: A Celebration of 25 Years of Outstanding Television by Terrence O'Flaherty (1996), ISBN 0-912333-74-X
• Masterpiece Theatre and the Politics of Quality by Laurence Jarvik (1999) ISBN 0-8108-3204-6

Wikipedia information about Masterpiece Theatre This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Masterpiece Theatre". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.