#Mousterpiece theatre series

Producers Found the Iconic “Masterpiece” Theme Song at a Club Med in Sicily Credit: carr rock 97/ YouTube

#Mousterpiece theatre series

Here are 10 surprising facts about the long-running series that may help shed some light on the ever-enduring appeal of Masterpiece. Did you know, for instance, that it's produced by Boston’s local public TV station WGBH and features content purchased from the UK’s BBC, ITV, and Channel 4? (Most viewers stateside primarily associate Masterpiece with PBS, which actually just distributes the content.) Masterpiece was also arguably the launching pad for now-household names including Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, and Helen Mirren. Some of its most popular dramas, like the award-winning Downton Abbey and fan-favorite Sherlock, have become so successful in their own right that viewers often forget they're products of the same singular anthology series.Īs well-established as Masterpiece is, however, there’s a lot about its history and its form that remains a mystery to even its most ardent fans.

Incredibly, although the series has undergone numerous changes over the past five decades, it still offers basically the same winning formula that it has offered for generations: curated programming that largely consists of adaptations of classic novels by (mostly British) authors including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Agatha Christie, and Jane Austen, among others. But such is the case for Masterpiece, formerly known as Masterpiece Theatre (more on that later), which is still going strong five decades after its January 1971 debut. In today’s world of social media, streaming entertainment on demand, and short attention spans, the idea of a television series celebrating its 50th anniversary feels like - and is - an anomaly.