Purple Playhouse is a Canadian

Television in Canada

Television in Canada officially began with the opening of the nation's first television stations in Montreal and Toronto in 1952. As with most media in Canada, the television industry, and the television programming available in that country, are strongly influenced by the American media, perhaps...

 dramatic television series which aired on CBC Television

CBC Television

CBC Television is a Canadian television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster.Although the CBC is supported by public funding, the television network supplements this funding with commercial advertising revenue, in contrast to CBC Radio which are...

 in 1973.

Scheduling

This hour-long series was broadcast most Sunday evenings from 25 February to 6 May 1973, generally at 9:00 p.m. (Eastern) except the final broadcast was aired at 8:00 p.m. Some dramas were based on characters such as Dracula

Dracula

Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...

 and Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as then antagonist of the Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls and he was later introduced as an antihero in the broadway musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and its film adaptation...

 while others were adapted from such works as "The Bells

The Bells

"The Bells" is a heavily onomatopoeic poem by Edgar Allan Poe which was not published until after his death in 1849. It is perhaps best known for the diacopic repetition of the word "bells." The poem has four parts to it; each part becomes darker and darker as the poem progresses from "the jingling...

", Box and Cox

Box and Cox

Box and Cox is a one act farce by John Maddison Morton. It is based on a French one-act vaudeville, Frisette, which had been produced in Paris in 1846....

, The Corsican Brothers

The Corsican Brothers

The Corsican Brothers is a novella by Alexandre Dumas, père first published in 1844. It has been adapted many times on the stage and in film.-Adaptations:*The Corsican Brothers , directed by film pioneer and inventor George Albert Smith...

and The Lyons Mail

The Lyons Mail

The Lyons Mail is a 1931 British mystery film directed by Arthur Maude and starring John Martin Harvey, Norah Baring and Ben Webster. It was based on a play by Charles Reade and was also released under the title Courrier de Lyon...

. Actors seen in this series included Kay Hawtrey

Kay Hawtrey

Kay Hawtrey is a Canadian actress. She was born in Toronto.Full name Katharine Mary Craven Hawtrey, she is part of the Canadian branch of this very old English family, the Anglicized name having been derived from D'awtrey...

, Barry Morse

Barry Morse

Herbert "Barry" Morse was an Anglo-Canadian actor of stage, screen, and radio best known for his roles in the ABC television series The Fugitive and the British sci-fi drama Space: 1999...

 and Chris Wiggins

Chris Wiggins

Chris Wiggins is an English actor.He started out as a banker in his home country before he began his acting career in Canada, where he moved in 1952....

.

Purple Playhouse was named by Fletcher Markle

Fletcher Markle

Fletcher Markle was a Canadian actor, screenwriter, television producer and director.Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Markle began his career in the early 1940s in Vancouver, British Columbia doing radio dramas with a group whose members included John Drainie, Lister Sinclair, Bernie Braden and Alan...

as the phrase represents melodrama from Victorian times.