The WORST episodes of Great Performances

#1 - Star-Spangled Spectacular: Bicentennial of Our National Anthem

Season 42 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/13/2014

Musical performances celebrate the 200th anniversary of ''The Star-Spangled Banner'' live from Baltimore's harbor; hosts John Lithgow and Jordin Sparks.

#2 - Great Performances at the Met: The Merry Widow

Season 42 - Episode 17 - Aired 6/19/2015

The lavish new staging of Lehár’s effervescent operetta The Merry Widow is the Met debut of Broadway director and choreographer Susan Stroman. Soprano Renée Fleming adds a new character to her Met repertory as Hanna, the rich widow. Sir Andrew Davis conducts the cast that also includes baritone Nathan Gunn as Danilo; tenor Alek Shrader; baritone Sir Thomas Allen; and Broadway star Kelli O’Hara.

#3 - Great Performances at the Met: Le Nozze di Figaro

Season 42 - Episode 6 - Aired 1/16/2015

The season nine premiere of Great Performances at the Met is Mozart’s elegant masterpiece of marital discord, Le Nozze di Figaro, conducted by Met Music Director James Levine and staged by Richard Eyre. Ildar Abdrazakov sings the title role, Marlis Petersen plays Figaro’s quick-witted bride-to-be, Susanna, and Peter Mattei is Count Almaviva.

#4 - Great Performances: Macbeth

Season 42 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/1/2015

Following a London West End run in December 2007, a sold-out limited engagement at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in March 2008, and an eight-week run on Broadway, director Rupert Goold's stage production of Macbeth was filmed for television at the end of 2009 with Patrick Stewart in his Tony-nominated performance as the ambitious general, and Tony-nominated Kate Fleetwood as his scheming wife.

#5 - From Vienna: The New Year's Celebration 2015

Season 42 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/1/2015

Stage and screen legend Julie Andrews returns for the sixth time to host the festive annual New Year’s celebration with the Vienna Philharmonic, under the direction of Zubin Mehta, from Vienna’s Musikverein. From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2015, featuring the infectious melodies of the Strauss Family and their contemporaries, aired on Great Performances, Thursday, January 1 at 2:30 p.m. ET on PBS with an encore performance that evening at 8 p.m. From Vienna: The New Year's Celebration 2015 with Zubin MehtaThis is the 77-year-old maestro’s fifth appearance on the podium for the New Year’s Concert. Following Willi Boskovsky, Clemens Krauss and Lorin Maazel, Mehta joins the list of these great maestros who have conducted the concert most often. The Vienna State Ballet heads back to school and dances to both the “Students Polka” and the “Wine, Women and Song Waltz” in the palatial main building of Vienna’s 650-year-old University on the city’s grand Ringstrasse. The venerable concert is the largest worldwide event in classical music reaching millions of people annually through radio and television in over 80 countries. The Vienna Philharmonic’s traditional New Year’s program has showcased Viennese musical culture at the highest level, and since the first television broadcast in 1959, sent the world a New Year’s greeting in the spirit of hope, friendship and peace. (The telecast marks the 31st broadcast of the event on PBS.)

#6 - Guys and Dolls: Off the Record

Season 21 - Episode 4 - Aired 12/7/1992

A behind-the-scenes look at the cast-album recording session of the 1992 Tony-winning Broadway revival of the Frank Loesser musical.

#7 - Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night 2014

Season 41 - Episode 15 - Aired 8/22/2014

Conductor Christoph Eschenbach leads the Vienna Philharmonic in its traditional open-air concert at Austria's Schönbrunn Palace Gardens. Pianist Lang Lang is featured on Richard Strauss' "Burleske" and Mozart's "Turkish March."

#8 - Rejoice With Itzhak Perlman and Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot

Season 41 - Episode 14 - Aired 8/28/2014

Legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman and renowned cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot join forces for a musical exploration of liturgical and traditional works in new arrangements for both chamber orchestra and klezmer settings. The program of songs are alternately joyful and intensely moving. Perlman provides elucidating and historical commentary as well as humor.

#9 - Great Performances at the Met: Cosi Fan Tutte

Season 41 - Episode 13 - Aired 8/24/2014

Two men decide to test the faithfulness of the women they are going to marry by plotting to seduce each other's fiancee.

#10 - The Police Certifiable

Season 36 - Episode 28 - Aired 3/1/2009

The Police final tour, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

#11 - Great Performances at the Met: Iolanta; Bluebeard's Castle

Season 42 - Episode 18 - Aired 7/12/2015

Polish film director Mariusz Treli?ski makes his Met debut with the new production, inspired by noir films of the 1940s. Valery Gergiev conducts the two rarely performed one-acts: Tchaikovsky’s lyrical fairy tale Iolanta and Bartók’s harrowing Bluebeard’s Castle. Iolanta stars Anna Netrebko, Piotr Beczala and Aleksei Markov. Bluebeard's Castle stars Nadja Michael and Mikhail Petrenko.

#12 - The Music of Kander and Ebb: Razzle Dazzle

Season 26 - Episode 3 - Aired 12/3/1997

A tribute to songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb; with Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey, Chita Rivera, Lauren Bacall.

#13 - Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek LIVE!

Season 42 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/24/2014

Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek LIVE! – featuring an evening of classic jazz standards in both vocal duets and solo performances. Filmed at the Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, in front of a live audience of invited guests, many of whom were students involved in arts programs in New York City public schools.

#14 - Great Performances at the Met: La Cenerentola

Season 42 - Episode 24 - Aired 9/7/2014

Joyce DiDonato plays the title character in Rossini's ``La Cenerentola.''

#15 - James Stewart: A Wonderful Life

Season 15 - Episode 1 - Aired 3/13/1987

Hosted by Johnny Carson. A retrospective on the life and career of actor James Stewart, with clips from many of his films and interviews with people who have worked with him.

#16 - The Little Mermaid from San Francisco Ballet

Season 39 - Episode 31 - Aired 12/15/2011

Experience Hans Christian Andersen's haunting tale of love in San Francisco Ballet's production of this inventive ballet. Hamburg Ballet's chief choreographer John Neumeier blends dance, dramatic storytelling and spectacle in a darkly emotional interpretation of the classic fable.

#17 - Encores! Great Performances at the Met

Season 42 - Episode 3 - Aired 11/29/2014

#18 - Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert 2016

Season 43 - Episode 16 - Aired 9/30/2016

Led by guest conductor Semyon Bychkov for the very first time, the world-renowned Vienna Philharmonic returns for its 13th open-air concert, with a program of French orchestral classics, in the magnificent gardens of Austria’s Imperial Schönbrunn Palace.

#19 - Great Performances at the Met: Madama Butterfly

Season 43 - Episode 13 - Aired 8/19/2016

Kristine Opolais brings her heartbreaking interpretation of the title role to the series for the first time. Roberto Alagna sings Lieutenant Pinkerton, the callous officer who crushes Butterfly's dreams of love. Debuting conductor Karel Mark Chichon leads a cast that includes Maria Zifchak as Suzuki and Dwayne Croft as Sharpless.

#20 - Mark Morris Dance Group: L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed il Moderato

Season 42 - Episode 12 - Aired 3/27/2015

Choreographer Mark Morris’s signature work comes to television for the first time, hosted by Mikhail Baryshnikov. Morris garnered international fame for this piece, set to George Frideric Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato with libretto based on John Milton's poetry. This performance of the Mark Morris Dance Group with live music was filmed at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Spain.

#21 - Jennie - Lady Randolph Churchill: (5) A Perfect Darling

Season 4 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/5/1975

#22 - Jennie - Lady Randolph Churchill: (6) His Borrowed Plumes

Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/12/1975

#23 - Jennie - Lady Randolph Churchill: (7) A Past and a Future

Season 4 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/19/1975

#24 - The Time of Your Life

Season 4 - Episode 19 - Aired 3/10/1976

William Saroyan's Pulitzer Prize-winning play revolves around the denizens of a San Francisco bar in 1939. Lonely, lovelorn, weary or cynical, the characters drift in and out of the bar and each other's lives, giving voice to Saroyan's philosophies as they randomly comment about the impending world war, the beauty of art, and traditional notions of good and evil. At least one of the relationships stands a chance of enduring: a brawny innocent named Tom is falling in love with a vulnerable young prostitute named Kitty. Saroyan himself is heard reciting the play's prologue.

#25 - Kurosawa

Season 30 - Episode 9 - Aired 3/21/2002