1937 in British television

This is a list of events related to British television in 1937.

Events

• 6 February – The BBC Television Service drops the Baird system in favour of the Marconi-EMI 405 lines system.
• 12 May – The BBC use their outside broadcast unit for the first time, to televise the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. A fragment of this broadcast is one of the earliest surviving examples of British television – filmed off-screen at home by an engineer with an 8 mm cine camera. A short section of this footage was used in a programme during the week of the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and this latter programme survives in the BBC's archives.
• 14 May – The BBC Television Service broadcasts a thirty-minute excerpt of Twelfth Night, the first known instance of a Shakespeare play on television. Among the cast is Greer Garson. Peggy Ashcroft appeared in a 1939 telecast of the entire play.
• 18 June – Broadcast of the Agatha Christie play Wasp's Nest, the only instance of Christie adapting one of her works for television, a medium she later came to dislike.
• 21 June – Wimbledon Championships (tennis) first shown on the BBC Television Service.
• 11 November – The BBC Television Service broadcasts an adaptation of the World War I-set play Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff, starring Reginald Tate as Stanhope. Shown in commemoration of Armistice Day, it is the first time that a whole evening's programming has been given over to a single play.
• 31 December – 2,121 television sets have been sold in England.

Debuts

• 17 April – The Disorderly Room (1937–1939)
• 24 April – For the Children (1937–1939, 1946–1950)

Television shows

1930s

• Picture Page (1936–1939, 1946–1952).

Births

• 1 January – Anne Aubrey, actor
• 30 January – Vanessa Redgrave, actress
• 25 February – Tom Courtenay, actor
• 11 April – Jill Gascoigne, actress and novelist
• 12 May – Susan Hampshire, actress
• 19 May – Pat Roach, actor and wrestler (died 2004)
• 5 August – Carla Lane, television comedy writer
• 6 August – Barbara Windsor, actress
• 18 August – Willie Rushton, comedian, actor and writer (died 1996)
• 2 September – Derek Fowlds, actor
• 14 November – Alan J. W. Bell, director and producer
• 17 November – Peter Cook, comedian and writer (died 1995)
• 29 November – Ingrid Pitt, actress (died 2010)
• 20 December – Charles Denton, director
• 29 December – Barbara Steele, actress