Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season 02 (1956)

As in its first season on CBS, season two of the suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents opens with an episode directed by Hitchcock himself: "Wet Saturday," starring Sir Cedric Hardwicke as an aristocrat who tries to cover up a murder committed by his wastrelly son by framing someone else for the crime. Too busy with his movie career to contribute much more to the series beyond his weekly opening and closing appearances, Hitch directed only one other second-season effort: "One More Mile to Go," a virtually wordless tour de force for star David Wayne as a middle-class murderer who encounters unexpected difficulty trying to hide his wife's corpse from an overly friendly highway patrolman. Also in keeping with a precedent set in season one, most of the best season-two episodes are the handiwork of director Robert Stevens. Case in point: the three-part "I Killed the Count," adapted by Francis Cockrell from a story by Alec Coppel, who would later collaborate on the script for Hitchcock's 1958 movie classic Vertigo. And, likewise as in the previous season, several young, up-and-coming actors were showcased in the second-season endeavors, such as Inger Stevens ("My Brother Richard"), Rip Torn ("Number Twenty-Two"), and Vic Morrow and Barbara Cook ("A Little Sleep"). Leaping to sixth place in the overall TV ratings during its sophomore season, Alfred Hitchcock Presents also earned its first Emmy award, bestowed upon James P. Cavanaugh's script for the episode "Fog Closes In." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi