The strand showcased feature-length, middlebrow single plays on Saturday evenings for more than 50 years, having been launched in April 1943.
For most of its history, programmes ran for 90 minutes and were largely entertainment-centred, such as thrillers, comedies and mysteries.
Saturday Night Theatre was noted as the major drama of the week on BBC Radio 4, until it was scrapped as a programme strand in 1996.
There have since been campaigns to bring back Saturday Night Theatre,[4] but in the context of BBC budget cuts, that have included the 2010 axing of Radio 4's Friday Play (established in 1998, when Saturday Night Theatre was abolished),[5] any return looks unlikely.
The earliest surviving audio is The Corn is Green, by Emlyn Williams, adapted for radio by T. Rowland Hughes, which was broadcast on 27 January 1945, though re-discovered archive copies are still being found.