--- description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. title: Playhouse 90 image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd2cf3e18489ab27f/69869f2d35ba6ff860c03611/t100_tv_playhouse-901.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Aug 12, 2014 # _Playhouse 90_ by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close  Everett While _Playhouse 90_ was unquestionably a great show, it wasn’t really a great \*TV\* show; it was a theater repertory producing stage plays that happened to have cameras pointed at them. But TV is a distribution tool as well as an art form, and _Playhouse 90_ produced some of the finest writing and acting that TV’s electrons have managed to carry. Its original productions—often performed live—included _Requiem for a Heavyweight_ and _The Miracle Worker_, while its adaptations brought writers like George Bernard Shaw and William Faulkner some of the biggest audiences they would ever have. Later TV dramas took advantage of the wider possibilities that videotaping offered, but this anthology gave them a high target to aim for. Playhouse 90 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/all-time-100-tv-shows/3103699/playhouse-90/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/all-time-100-tv-shows/3103699/playhouse-90/"},"headline":"Playhouse 90","datePublished":"2014-08-12T15:02:14.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-02T23:01:36.511Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/all-time-100-tv-shows/3103699/playhouse-90/","keywords":["drama"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd2cf3e18489ab27f/69869f2d35ba6ff860c03611/t100_tv_playhouse-901.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"creator":"TIME Staff","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd2cf3e18489ab27f/69869f2d35ba6ff860c03611/t100_tv_playhouse-901.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/all-time-100-tv-shows/3103699/playhouse-90/","name":"Playhouse 90"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Playhouse 90","description":"Later TV dramas took advantage of the wider possibilities that videotaping offered, but this anthology gave them a high target to aim for.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/gKA25DiC/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2007-09-05T14:49:44.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/gKA25DiC.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collections/all-time-100-tv-shows/3103699/playhouse-90/","duration":"PT30S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collections/all-time-100-tv-shows/3103699/playhouse-90/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```