W. Somerset Maugham

A British medical doctor fights a cholera outbreak in a small Chinese village, while also being trapped at home in a loveless marriage to an unfaithful wife.

An adventurous young man goes off to find himself and loses his socialite fiancée in the process. But when he returns 10 years later, she will stop at nothing to get him back, even though she is already married.

An American WWI veteran undertakes a spiritual quest that takes him from Paris to Nepal to the Himalayas and back to his hometown. Upon his return, he discovers he is not the only one who has changed.

Julia Lambert is a true diva: beautiful, talented, weathly and famous. She has it all - including a devoted husband who has mastermined her brilliant career - but after years of shining in the spotlight she begins to suffer from a severe case of boredom and longs for something new and exciting to put the twinkle back in her eye. Julia finds exactly what she's looking for in a handsome young American fan, but it isn't long before the novelty fling adds a few more sparks than she was hoping for. Fortuately for her, this surprise twist in the plot will thrust her back into the greatest role of her life.

After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.

A young man finds himself attracted to a cold and unfeeling waitress who may ultimately destroy them both.

During World War I, a novelist declared dead is recruited by British intelligence and sent to Switzerland under a new identity to assassinate a German spy. Teamed with a fellow agent posing as his wife and an eccentric assassin known as “the General,” the trio close in on their target — until two of them grow ambivalent when their duty to the mission clashes with their consciences.

Superficial people are revealed and drastically changed by circumstance or luck in this a tale of death, seduction, blackmail and theft among British and Americans in Florence in the turbulent days just before World War II.

In post-WWII Hong Kong, unhappily married Carol has an affair with a married man. Her husband discovers it and presents her with a choice: travel with him to a remote mainland village or face the scandal of a very public divorce.

Sadie Thompson winds up stranded on an island and while her boat is being quarantined, she manages to stir up the blood of every marine on the base.

The wife of a doctor in China falls in love with a diplomat.

An atmospheric British omnibus film presenting three tales of murder and the supernatural. In “In the Picture,” a museum attendant is drawn into the eerie world within a painting. In “You Killed Elizabeth,” two lifelong friends become suspects when the woman they both love is murdered. In “Lord Mountdrago,” a disgraced politician seeks revenge on a powerful statesman by exploiting his dreams. Linked by a recurring figure, the film blends psychological horror, mystery, and fantasy across its three interconnected stories.

Loosely inspired from Gauguin's life, the story of Charles Strickland, a middle-aged stockbrocker who abandons his middle-classed life, his family, his duties to start painting, what he has always wanted to do. He is from now on a awful human being, wholly devoted to his ideal: beauty.

Due to a possible cholera epidemic onboard, passengers on a ship are forced to disembark at Pago Pago, a small village on a Pacific island where it incessantly rains. Among the stranded passengers are Sadie Thompson, a prostitute, and Alfred Davidson, a fanatic missionary who will try to redeem her.

W. Somerset Maugham introduces three more of his stories about human foibles.

This musical reworking of Too Many Husbands (1940), features Grable as a top singer and dancer who's been widowed by WW II. She marries her late husband's songwriting partner, Gower Champion, but the new marriage is thrown for a loop when Lemmon, her first husband, turns up very much alive and eager to see Grable.

A young femme fatale realizes that the man she married is an incorrigible wastrel.

The great actress Julia Lambert suddenly realizes that she is, alas, getting old. What can help a woman who has absolutely everything? Only new love. And Julia falls in love with the first person she meets: an ambitious young man who has not a penny behind his soul. So begins a new life - a new romance and new tears. How else could it be?

Ginger Ted, AKA Edward Claude Wilson, a drunkard and womanizer, and Miss Jones, a missionary, live in the Alas Islands. During a cholera epidemic, Ginger Ted and Miss Jones are sent to an outlying part of the islands to run a hospital; on their return, their motorboat breaks down, and they are marooned overnight on a small island.

A beautiful Austrian refugee in England--who is also a Nazi agent--marries a scholarly English pacifist. He lives near a secret military base she needs to get information about so she can help in Hitler's planned invasion of England.

An island pearl merchant and his new wife make room for a mysterious shipwrecked man.

Soon after being wed, American heiress Lady Pearl Grayston realizes her husband has married her for her money and is keeping a mistress. The two maintain a loveless marriage, a trade-off Pearl accepts in order to gain admittance to her husband's aristocratic social circle. While Pearl pursues her own affair with gigolo Pepi D'Costa, her visiting sister, Bessie, arrives and is appalled when Pearl's arrangement is revealed.

A staid, dull Englishman abruptly deserts his wife and children to become a painter in the South Seas.

A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.

ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.

A British television anthology of stories, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, and a twist at the end. With early episodes written and presented by Roald Dahl, the series featured a plethora of big name guest stars.

Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries is a British television anthology series produced by Anglia Television for the ITV network and broadcast between 1973 and 1974. The series presents standalone adaptations of classic mystery, crime, and supernatural stories drawn from literary sources including Dickens, Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, Balzac, Maugham, O. Henry, and others. Each episode is framed by original introductory and closing sequences performed by Orson Welles, who serves as the series’ host and sole recurring on-screen presence. These segments, written and directed by Welles (uncredited), function as stylized narrative framing devices rather than dramatic participation in the stories themselves. The dramatic content of each episode is performed by separate casts and directors, with no continuing characters or serialized narrative, establishing the series as a unified television anthology rather than a collection of standalone films.

Anthology series of love stories.

Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968.

Set in early 20th-century England, a celebrated middle-aged actress, Julia Lambert, begins an affair with a young clerk named Tom Fennell. After realising he is merely a social climber using her for status, Julia tries to break free from the infatuation.