Episodes cast for
"American Playhouse" (1981) More at IMDbPro »

Season: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | unknown
Year: 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | unknown

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Season 1

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Season 1, Episode 1: The Shady Hill Kidnapping

12 January 1982

Season 1, Episode 2: King of America

19 January 1982
Hot-tempered Greek immigrant Andreas arrives in America in 1915. He finds work on a railroad, but soon gives his corrupt foreman Mekakis a savage beating. Making his way west across the country, Andreas eventually comes upon another railroad looking for workers. It turns out Mekakis has gone westward, too. He offers Andreas the only job suitable for him, a "moutain mover" on the suicide squad: He must grapple down the face of a cliff, position sticks of dynamite and then climb back up again before the lit fuses reach the explosive.

Season 1, Episode 3: Seguin

26 January 1982

Season 1, Episode 4: Who Am I This Time?

2 February 1982
From a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. Christopher Walken is a shy hardware store employee. But whenever he takes a part in a local amateur theater production, he becomes the part completely--while on stage. Susan Sarandon is new in town, a lonely itinerant telephone company employee. On a whim, she auditions for and gets the part of Stella to Walken's Stanley when the theater group does A Streetcar Named Desire. Before anyone realizes the growing affection between Helene and Stanley, she falls deeply in love with the sexy brute, not knowing what the real man is like.

Season 1, Episode 5: Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby Is a Friend of Mine

9 February 1982
The arrival in a small town of a stranger who calls himself 'Charles Dickens' makes a magical and lasting change in the lives of an imaginative 12-year-old boy and a loving young woman.

Season 1, Episode 6: Come Along with Me

16 February 1982

Season 1, Episode 7: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf

23 February 1982
A unique award-winning tale of the African-American woman's journey in America.

Season 1, Episode 8: Carl Sandburg: Echoes and Silences

2 March 1982

Season 1, Episode 9: The Fifth of July

9 March 1982
Ken Talley is 32, strong, goodlooking and a Vietnam vet with both legs shot off seven years earlier. He is somewhat cynical. His lover Jed is bigger and stronger, a gardner, a good listener. On Independence Day 1977 Ken's home in Lebanon Missouri is visted by the others. Much of their past relationships, pre- and post-Vietnam, must be pulled up and examined before any of them can decide their future.

Season 1, Episode 10: The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters

16 March 1982
Matt Dillon plays a young Jean Shepherd (author and narrator of A Christmas Story). Through Matt, Shep tells several humorous stories about his teen years in an Indiana steel town.

Season 1, Episode 11: Pilgrim, Farewell

23 March 1982
A woman suffering from terminal cancer determines to resolve several relationships in her life, especially with her daughter.

Season 1, Episode 12: Northern Lights

30 March 1982

Season 1, Episode 13: Medal of Honor Rag

6 April 1982
A Medal of Honor-winning Vietnam veteran has difficulty readjusting to civilian life, and turns to a psychiatrist for help when he finds himself descending to robbery.

Season 1, Episode 14: Working

13 April 1982
A musical adaptation of Studs Terkel's book celebrating the lives of everyday working-class people.

Season 1, Episode 15: Weekend

20 April 1982

Season 1, Episode 16: Private Contentment

27 April 1982
A young soldier goes home to attend his mother's funeral just before being shipped out to serve in World War II.

Season 1, Episode 17: My Palikari

4 May 1982
A middle-aged Greek immigrant visits his native village, with his American-born son in tow. The older finds that the place he remembered as paradise on earth now seems like a desolate wasteland, while the son, who has mede this journey reluctantly, falls in love with his ancestral homeland.

Season 1, Episode 18: Oppenheimer: Part I

11 May 1982

Season 1, Episode 19: Oppenheimer: Part II

18 May 1982

Season 1, Episode 20: Oppenheimer: Part III

25 May 1982

Season 1, Episode 21: Oppenheimer: Part IV

1 June 1982

Season 1, Episode 22: Oppenheimer: Part V

8 June 1982

Season 1, Episode 23: Oppenheimer: Part VI

15 June 1982

Season 1, Episode 24: Oppenheimer: Part VII

22 June 1982

Season 1, Episode 25: The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez

29 June 1982
The retelling of an incident in Gonzales, Texas in 1901 revolving around a stolen horse, mistaken identity and a killing. An unusual story of the all too usual exploitation of the powerless in Texas History.

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Season 2

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Season 2, Episode 1: The Skin of Our Teeth

18 January 1983
Production of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer-winning play about mankind's triumph over chaos, which wildly altered dramatic conventions in freely shifting between modern-day New Jersey and the ice age - the Antrobus family pets being dinosaurs; and having characters speaking directly to the audience and criticizing the way their own dialogue was written.

Season 2, Episode 2: Miss Lonelyhearts

25 January 1983
A young Depression-era reporter is assigned to write his newspaper's advice column on the insistence of his mocking editor. Unhappy in the demeaning assignment, he begins to take an interest in one of the readers sending letters.

Season 2, Episode 3: Family Business

1 February 1983
Isaiah Stern is a wealthy, but dying, toy manufacturer. Once more Stern has gathered together his grown sons to once more revise his will. Three of the four boys are used to these idiosyncratic changes, and have come to accept them: the fourth son , a married psychologist, is heavily in debt and doesn't like his thin share of the pie, which sparks a confrontation. The remaining sons, are a bachelor who runs the family store, an indecisive sort who still lives at home, and daddy's favorite, a closet homosexual.

Season 2, Episode 4: Keeping On

8 February 1983

Season 2, Episode 5: The Files on Jill Hatch: Part I

15 February 1983

Season 2, Episode 6: The Files on Jill Hatch: Part II

22 February 1983

Season 2, Episode 7: The Files on Jill Hatch: Part III

1 March 1983

Season 2, Episode 8: For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story

22 March 1983

Season 2, Episode 9: Verse Person Singular

29 March 1983

Season 2, Episode 10: Until She Talks

6 April 1981

Season 2, Episode 11: Wings

26 April 1983

Season 2, Episode 12: The Rothko Conspiracy

3 May 1983
A drama based on the fight over the estate of artist Mark Rothko, who killed himself in 1970.

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Season 3

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Season 3, Episode 1: The Ghost Writer

17 January 1984

Season 3, Episode 2: Pudd'nhead Wilson

24 January 1984
A slave switches her light-skinned baby with her master's baby. The child grows up raised by whites.

Season 3, Episode 3: True West

31 January 1984
A videotaped stage performance of Sam Shepard's play

Season 3, Episode 4: Nothing But a Man

7 February 1984

Season 3, Episode 5: Popular Neurotics

14 February 1984

Season 3, Episode 6: The Cafeteria

21 February 1984

Season 3, Episode 7: Refuge

28 February 1984

Season 3, Episode 8: The Gin Game

6 March 1984

Season 3, Episode 9: Haunted

20 March 1984

Season 3, Episode 10: The Killing Floor

10 April 1984
During World War I, a poor black Southerner travels north to Chicago to get work in the city's slaughterhouses, where he becomes embroiled in the organized labor movement. He becomes prominent as a leader of fellow African-Americans in the union, though many, including his best friend, view him as a sell-out.

Season 3, Episode 11: Heartland

17 April 1984

Season 3, Episode 12: City News

9 September 1983

Season 3, Episode 13: Hughie

1 May 1984

Season 3, Episode 14: Concealed Enemies, Part I: Suspicion

7 May 1984
A dramatized account of the actual events that led to the 1950 conviction of former U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss of perjury before a federal grand jury and his resulting imprisonment.

Season 3, Episode 15: Concealed Enemies, Part II: Accusation

7 May 1984

Season 3, Episode 16: Concealed Enemies, Part III: Investigation

8 May 1984

Season 3, Episode 17: Concealed Enemies, Part IV: Verdict

9 May 1984

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Season 4

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Season 4, Episode 1: Testament

26 November 1984

Season 4, Episode 2: A Matter of Principle

3 December 1984
Flag Purdy, a "man of many principles" must learn the hard lesson of compromisation in order to keep his wife and children. The "final straw" comes when Flag's wife and children bring a Christmas tree into his house. Flag's principles will not allow such extravagances, and he destroys the tree. The next morning Flag's wife, Ada, and the children are gone. Flag learns his lesson in time for Christmas, and as Ada says, "A man with as many principles as Flag, some of them are bound to be wrong.".

Season 4, Episode 3: Solomon Northup's Odyssey

10 December 1984
This is based on a true story. Solomon Northrop is a black man in the mid 19th century before slavery was abolished. He's a born freeman who works as a carpenter and is also a part time musician. One day he is approached by some men who want him to play for them. However, that is not their intention; they have kidnapped him and sold him into slavery. Now he has to endure the hardships that he has been spared because of his status as a freeman. And his family who don't know what happened to him is searching for him but where do they go? And Solomon also wishes to let them know where he is so that they could get him but unfortunately no one believes his story or is willing to help him.

Season 4, Episode 4: Tomorrow

17 December 1984

Season 4, Episode 5: Go Tell It on the Mountain

14 January 1985

Season 4, Episode 6: Noon Wine

21 January 1985
On a hot day in Texas in the the 1890s, a stranger shows up at the small dairy farm of Royal and Ellie Thompson. He asks for work and is hired. He's a taciturn, English-speaking Swede from North Dakota; he's competent, strong, and good at farming and dairying. The years pass, the farm flourishes. Then one day a second stranger, also from North Dakota, Homer Hatch, arrives and lives are changed in ways no-one could have imagined.

Season 4, Episode 7: The Joy That Kills

28 January 1985

Season 4, Episode 8: Overdrawn at the Memory Bank

4 February 1985
The mind of a computer programmer is removed by a totalitarian government and accidentally trapped in a virtual reality simulation.

Season 4, Episode 9: The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski

11 February 1985

Season 4, Episode 10: Some Men Need Help

18 February 1985

Season 4, Episode 11: Charlotte Forten's Mission: Experiment in Freedom

25 February 1985
Drama based on the true story of Charlotte Forten, a young black woman who became an integral part of President Lincoln's "great experiment." During the Civil War, Southern troops were forced off the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia, which left 8,000 slaves as free. Miss Forten's mission was to journey south to Sea Island and lead those slaves in the transition from slavery to freedom, where she sought to give newly freed black children a decent education and chance for a better life

Season 4, Episode 12: Breakfast with Les and Bess

11 March 1985

Season 4, Episode 13: Nightsongs

July 1984

Season 4, Episode 14: Under the Biltmore Clock

1984
In 1915 Chicago, 21-year-old Myra Harper sets her sights on the wealthy and reserved Knowleton Whitney to get him to marry her. All goes well, but later when Myra gets to meet his wacky parents, it turns out to be much harder for Myra than simply landing the man of her dreams.

Season 4, Episode 15: Displaced Person

6 May 1985

Season 4, Episode 16: The Europeans

15 May 1985

Season 4, Episode 17: El Norte

20 May 1985

Season 4, Episode 18: Three Sovereigns for Sarah: Part I

27 May 1985

Season 4, Episode 19: Three Sovereigns for Sarah: Part II

3 June 1985

Season 4, Episode 20: Three Sovereigns for Sarah: Part III

10 June 1985

Season 4, Episode 21: Paper Angels

15 June 1985

Season 4, Episode 22: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

24 June 1985

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Season 5

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Season 5, Episode 1: The Rise and Rise of Daniel Rocket

20 January 1986
A young boy is ridiculed by his school mates for his eccentric behavior and assertions that he can fly. Little do they know..... All parts are performed by adults in a stage-play type setting.

Season 5, Episode 2: The Roommate

October 1984
Set in 1952, this tells of two young men who are polar opposites being assigned to the same dorm room at Northwestern University.

Season 5, Episode 3: Valentine's Revenge

3 February 1986

Season 5, Episode 4: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Part I

10 February 1986

Season 5, Episode 5: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Part II

1986

Season 5, Episode 6: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Part III

1986

Season 5, Episode 7: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Part IV

1986

Season 5, Episode 8: Tell Me a Riddle

17 March 1986

Season 5, Episode 9: The Little Sister

7 April 1986
A Boston probation's officer becomes obsessed with a troubled eighteen year old girl. Efforts to reach her are stymied by events in her past and is ultimately revealed to be an incestuous relationship with her father.

Season 5, Episode 10: The House of Ramon Iglesia

14 April 1986
Ramón Iglesias has plans to retire from his janitorial job, sell his house in a Long Island suburb and return to Puerto Rico with his wife and three sons. Unfortunately, he does not hold the deed to his house which was purchased through a verbal agreement, harping back to a different cultural tradition involving codes of honor and community. Javier, his oldest son, a college graduate who refuses to return to Puerto Rico, chastises him for being so foolish in his business dealings. Ramón seems stuck in a homeowner's limbo until Javier, who is constantly clashing with his family, has a change of heart and decides to help.

Season 5, Episode 11: A Flash of Green

15 September 1984
Local reporter gets involved with corrupt county commissioner.

Season 5, Episode 12: Damien

28 April 1986

Season 5, Episode 13: Rocket to the Moon

5 May 1986
In 1938 New York, a dentist finds his business failing and his marriage on the rocks. Turning 40, he is a hen-pecked husband with little drive left for success. That is, until he starts getting involved with his lively assistant, a free spirit with a penchant for tall tales and a hidden loneliness. Receiving encouragement from his own father-in-law, the two find comfort in each other's attention.

Season 5, Episode 14: A Case of Libel

12 May 1986

Season 5, Episode 15: Painting Churches

19 May 1986

Season 5, Episode 16: Roanoak: Part I

26 May 1986

Season 5, Episode 17: Roanoak: Part II

2 June 1986

Season 5, Episode 18: Roanoak: Part III

9 June 1986

Season 5, Episode 19: Sunday in the Park with George

16 June 1986
Video production of the Pulitzer-prize winning musical stage production. In the first act, "George", a fictionalized Georges Seurat paints his lover, Dot, and "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grande Jatte." Characters who become figures and vice versa walk through the story. In Act 2, George's descendant, a sculptor, comes to terms with his grandmother, Life, and Art.

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Season 6

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Season 6, Episode 1: All My Sons

19 January 1987
Two families, related by friendship and love, face up to the consequences of greed and avarice in the post-war years. Love and death play equal roles in determining the outcome of events.

Season 6, Episode 2: The Prodigious Hickey

26 January 1987

Season 6, Episode 3: The Wide Net

2 February 1987

Season 6, Episode 4: A Mistaken Charity

16 February 1987
Two elderly, impoverished women are forced from the family farm by well-meaning neighbors. Ensconced at a "Home for Elderly Ladies", they are miserable and begin their journey back home.

Season 6, Episode 5: Eleanor: In Her Own Words

9 March 1987
A one-woman show with Lee Remick as former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt giving her views on politics, communism, race relations, the McCarthy witch hunts and other issues that were important to her.

Season 6, Episode 6: The Innocents Abroad

23 March 1987

Season 6, Episode 7: Charley's Aunt

11 May 1987

Season 6, Episode 8: The House of Blue Leaves

25 May 1987
Zoo attendant Artie Shaughnessy dreams of being a successful songwriter. What his mistress, Bunny Flingus, who lives downstairs from his Queens apartment won't tell him -- and what his insane wife, Bananas, tries to get through to him -- is that Artie's songs stink. On Oct. 4, 1965, the day Pope Paul visits New York City, Bunny convinces Artie to call his old school buddy Billy Einhorn, a famous film director from Los Angeles, to finagle a job writing music for Billy's movies. (After all, Bunny feels that with the Pope here, there must be "miracles in the air.") But before Artie can reach out to Billy, Artie's son, Ronnie, goes AWOL from Fort Dix, secretly preparing to blow up His Holiness at Yankee Stadium. Instead, when the bomb explodes prematurely, the victims include a deaf film starlet and two Sisters of Charity ... but no Pope.

Season 6, Episode 9: Blue Window

1 June 1987
In an affluent area of downtown New York City, a Sunday evening dinner party is taking place. Hosted by Libby, an insecure thirty-something widow who lost her husband in an unfortunate accident, her guest of honor is downstairs neighbor Alice, a successful novelist, and Alice's lesbian lover, Boo, a family therapist. The other guests are Griever, Libby's best friend from group therapy; Norbert, Libby's gentle skydiving instructor; Tom, an old high-school boyfriend of Libby's now working as a jazz musician and composer, and Emily, Tom's current live-in girlfriend.

Season 6, Episode 10: Dottie

8 June 1987

Season 6, Episode 11: Waiting for the Moon

January 1987
Sundance prizewinner. Fictionalized portrait of one of history's great literary couples: Stein & Toklas. Summer 1930s France, Alice tends to ailing Gertrude; they visit Fernande Olivier, Guillaume Apollinaire, others; and Hemingway pops in.

Season 6, Episode 15: Gal Young 'Un

18 May 1987

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Season 7

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Season 7, Episode 1: Strange Interlude

18 January 1988
In this experimental play, first produced in 1928, Eugene O'Neill bares the inner souls of his characters by having them speak their thoughts as well as their dialog. Nins Leeds, the daughter of an Ivy League professor, is devastated by the loss of her fiance in World War I. Ignoring the unconditional love of the novelist Charlie Marsden, she rebounds by marrying an amiable fool, Sam Evans, in the hope that a child will give meaning to the marriage. Nina is thus devastated when she learns a secret know only to Sam's mother- insanity runs in the family and could be inherited by any child of Sam's. At the mother's behest, Nina decides on a "scientific" solution; she will conceive a child with the physician Ned Darrell and let Sam believe he is the father. The plan backfires when the intimacy between Nina and Darrell results in their falling passionately in love. Twenty years later, only Nina and Darrell know the true parentage of young Gordon Evans, just reaching manhood.

Season 7, Episode 2: Episode #7.2

????

Season 7, Episode 3: Episode #7.3

????

Season 7, Episode 4: The Return of Hickey

3 February 1988

Season 7, Episode 5: Lemon Sky

January 1988

Season 7, Episode 6: The Revolt of Mother

17 February 1988

Season 7, Episode 7: Pigeon Feathers

17 February 1988
A young boy suffers a crisis of faith when he begins to question whether or not the soul exists and if there is life after death. Based upon a John Updike story.

Season 7, Episode 8: Billy Galvin

November 1986
Conflict arises between a steelworker and his son. The father wants the boy to have a chance to make more of himself than he did, but the son wants to follow in his father's footsteps and become a steel-worker himself.

Season 7, Episode 9: Episode #7.9

????

Season 7, Episode 10: Journey Into Genius

6 April 1988

Season 7, Episode 11: Suspicion

20 April 1988
A remake of Hitchcock's 1941 suspenser about a wealthy young woman who comes to suspect that her new husband is plotting to murder her.

Season 7, Episode 12: The Trial of Bernhard Goetz

11 May 1988

Season 7, Episode 13: I Never Sang for My Father

15 June 1988

Season 7, Episode 14: Native Son

29 June 1988

Season 7, Episode 15: The Big Knife

27 July 1988

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Season 8

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Season 8, Episode 1: A Raisin in the Sun

1 February 1989

Season 8, Episode 2: Ask Me Again

8 February 1989

Season 8, Episode 3: Stacking

22 January 1987
A Montana teenager struggles to keep her family's farm together.

Season 8, Episode 4: My American Cousin

????

Season 8, Episode 5: Love and Other Sorrows

1 March 1989

Season 8, Episode 6: Stand and Deliver

????

Season 8, Episode 7: The Silence at Bethany

22 March 1989

Season 8, Episode 8: Life Under Water

12 April 1989
Young man, who can't get along with the rest of the world, especially his mother, decides to try to take his life in his own hands.

Season 8, Episode 9: The Diaries of Adam and Eve

26 April 1989

Season 8, Episode 10: The Meeting

3 May 1989
Fictional meeting between Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in Harlem in the early '60's.

Season 8, Episode 11: Big Time

17 May 1989

Season 8, Episode 12: The Thin Blue Line

????

Season 8, Episode 13: Land of Little Rain

31 May 1989
In 1900, if you wanted to be a writer in California, you had better be a man. Mary Austin sought to prove herself against incredible odds as a poet, novelist, and playwright, teaching feminist ideals and becoming one of the foremost writers to document the complex culture and heritage of the American Southwest.

Season 8, Episode 14: Imagining America

7 June 1989

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Season 9

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Season 9, Episode 1: Sensibility and Sense

24 January 1990
Two women and a man start out their adult life with all good intentions to change the world and keep their love alive and vital, but as time shows them (and us) it's not that easy.

Season 9, Episode 2: Women & Wallace

31 January 1990

Season 9, Episode 3: Zora Is My Name!

14 February 1990

Season 9, Episode 4: Andre's Mother

7 March 1990
Three days in the life of the lover, Mother and Grandmother ofAndre who has just died of AIDS.

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Season 10

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Season 10, Episode 1: Into the Woods

15 March 1991
In this Tony Award-winning musical by Stephen Sondheim, several fairy tale characters learn the hard way that the 'Happily Ever After' they sought isn't necessarily so happy after all.

Season 10, Episode 2: The Grapes of Wrath

22 March 1991

Season 10, Episode 3: Three Hotels

29 March 1991

Season 10, Episode 4: The Hollow Boy

12 June 1991

Season 10, Episode 6: Hot Summer Winds

22 May 1991

Season 10, Episode 7: The Sunset Gang

5 April 1991
Three stories about the Jewish elderly in Florida: in "Yiddish," a man and a woman, both married to others, form a bond through their native language; in "The Detective," a married couple who have grown apart come together again as they pursue a thief in the neighborhood; and in "The Home," a woman struggles against her grown children, who want to place her in a nursing facility.

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Season 11

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Season 11, Episode 1: Fires in the Mirror

28 April 1993

Season 11, Episode 2: La Carpa

16 June 1993

Season 11, Episode 3: Porgy and Bess

6 October 1993
The story of a disabled beggar in Charleston,S.C. who falls in love with a prostitute, this is the first filmed version of Gershwin's opera which uses Gershwin's own orchestrations and practically all of the music, with only one major cut.

Season 11, Episode 4: Tales of the City

15 November 1993

Season 11, Episode 5: Hallelujah

22 December 1993

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Season 12

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Season 12, Episode 1: Tru

23 November 1992

Season 12, Episode 7: In the Wings: Angels in America on Broadway

11 June 1993

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Unknown Season

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Fool's Fire

25 March 1992

Long Shadows

22 August 1994

Smooth Talk

9 February 1987

Story of a Marriage, Part I: Courtship

4 April 1987

Story of a Marriage, Part II: After the Elopement

13 April 1987

Story of a Marriage, Part III: Reconciliation

13 April 1987

The Great Whodunit

1 March 1983
The viewer is led through crime mysteries by the stars and encouraged to outwit them. The viewer decides at home....Whodunit!

The Price of Life

1987

Triple Play

28 March 1990
A trio of short films from Chanticleer Films and Columbia Pictures: Ray's Male Heterosexual Dance Hall (1987), Teach 109 (1990) (TV) and _Homesick(1988)_ .

Triple Play II

21 June 1991
A trio of short films from Chanticleer Films and Columbia Pictures: "Peacemaker", "Astronomy" and "The Price of Life".