‘Suspense Hour’ — Zee TV

‘Suspense Hour’
Year: 2000
Total Episodes: 20
Runtime: Around 45–50 minutes.

Shweta Shinde and Shakti Singh. Episode 19, ‘Tic Tic Tac’.
© Zee Entertainment

When Saturday Suspense’s day of telecast was changed from Saturday to another day of the week, it was renamed to Suspense Hour. Both shows were essentially the same. In records, Suspense Hour’s numbering is started afresh to avoid confusion.

The first episode of the series was inspired from Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Strangers On A Train.

The show’s theme music was an instrumental piece with no lyrics. I don’t remember Saturday Suspense’s theme music but it’s probable that both themes were the same.

Suspense Hour
No.	Episode Name	Cast
1	The Game	Akshay Anand, Zakir Hussain, Murali Sharma
2	National Highway 17	Mohan Kapur, Sumeet Raghavan, Ashish Roy
3	Pehchaan	Deepak Tijori, Shruti Ulfat, Murali Sharma, Kishwar Merchant, Rajesh Kumar
4	(Chehraa)	Sudhanshu Pandey, Grusha Kapoor, Abhimanyu Singh
5	Midnight	Bakul Thakkar
6
7	3-Star Laundry	Sonali Kapoor, Vicky Ahuja, Suneel Sinha, Vrajesh Hirjee
8	Killing Dose	Prashant Narayanan, Salim Shah, Vinod Sherawat
9	Giraft	Raza Murad, (unknown face)
10	Parchhayan	Shakti Singh, Rajpal Yadav, Raviraj, Kay Kay Menon, Murali Sharma
11	Checkmate	Raj Zutshi, (the girl from Mano Ya Na Mano ‘Vampire’ episode), Kishwar Merchant, (another 90s face), Murali Sharma, Nandita Puri, Saurabh Dubey, Vaani Tripathi
12	The Sketch Artist	Akshay Anand, Rajpal Yadav, Nivedita Bhattacharya, Raviraj
13	Anubhav	Shonali Malhotra, Kay Kay Menon, Rajesh Khera, Deepak Qazir Written by: Ashwini Malik, Cyrus Khambata Producer & Director: Ashwini Malik
14	Woh Kaun Tha	Tanaz Currim, Anupam Bhattacharya, Homi Wadia, Vaquar Shaikh, Raviraj, Rajendra Sethi, Resham Tipnis, Jiten Lalwani
15	Kashish	Supriya Pathak
16	The Daylight	Ashish Vidhyarthi, Nawab Shah
17	Shodh	Sachin Khedekar, Achint Kaur, Bakul Thakkar, Prashant Narayanan, Vineet Kumar
18	Dial M For Mother	Kartika Rane, Sudhanshu Pandey, Vrajesh Hirjee
19	Tic Tic Tac	Shakti Singh, Shweta Shinde, Seema Pandey, Beena Roy, Mansi Das, Vinit, Arun Khanna, R.S. Sethi, Chang Chaang Ho, Sanjay Bhatia, Kamal Jain
20	Ek Raat	Nishikant Kamat, Kishori Shahane

‘Saturday Suspense’ — Zee TV

‘Saturday Suspense’

Year: 1998 to 2000.

Total Episodes: 109.

Runtime: Around 45–50 minutes (60 minutes with ads).

Abhimanyu Singh and Chitrapama Banarjee from Episode 50.
© Zee Entertainment.

Saturday Suspense was a collection of suspense, thriller and crime stories telecast every Saturday on Zee TV. Each episode was a new story (except for “Dhund” that was shown in two episodes 107 and 108). Episode 86, “Daav” was adapted from James Hadley Chase’s novel There’s Always A Price Tag; an improvised version of the story was also adapted into a movie Maharathi in 2008 (Paresh Rawal, Neha Dhupia, Boman Irani). Episode 20, “Zakham” was later adapted into a full feature film Right Ya Wrong (2010) with Sunny Deol and Irrfan Khan in lead roles. 

Before they were famous, they were also here: Irrfan Khan, K. K. Menon, Abhimanyu Singh, Atul Kulkarni, Boman Irani etc. were amongst actors who were a part of this show. Although most episodes were mediocre, they were well-acted and encompassed several television actors of the 1990s; there were, however, some good episodes as well.

The background score was inferior—loud, dissonant and unrelated to the show. The show’s opening theme music was quite good but it’s not available anywhere on the internet, nor is the logo.

Following is the list of episodes and cast. Anything written in brackets is for reference whenever the actual name is not available. If anybody knows the missing titles or cast, please feel free to mention in the comments section. Special thanks to Swapnil Raj for his contribution to the list.