Theatre Parade was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 programme, one of the world's very first regular shows, running on the BBC Television Service

BBC One

BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

 from its inception in 1936 until 1938. The programme presented excerpts from popular London theatre productions of the time performed by the theatre cast from the BBC's studios at Alexandra Palace

Alexandra Palace

Alexandra Palace is a building in North London, England. It stands in Alexandra Park, in an area between Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green...

.

Among the notable productions included in the strand were the first ever television presentations of Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

's famous works Alice Through the Looking-Glass

Through the Looking-Glass

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is a work of literature by Lewis Carroll . It is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...

(a twenty-five minute excerpt, transmitted on 22 January 1937) and Alice in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...

(April 29, May 1 and 26 December 1937). The very first television adaptation of an Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...

 story was a production in this strand with two transmissions of Wasp's Nest

Wasp's Nest (Christie TV play)

Wasp's Nest was a television play broadcast on the BBC Television Service on 18 June 1937. It was adapted from the short story of the same name by crime writer Agatha Christie which had first appeared in the Daily Mail on 20 November 1928 and first appeared in book form in the US collection Double...

on 18 June 1937. As with all television programmes of the time, the shows were performed live

Live television

Live television refers to a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. From the early days of television until about 1958, live television was used heavily, except for filmed shows such as I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Video tape did not exist until 1957...

, and no visual record other than still photographs exists today.