Gielgud continued to try, without much success, to find new plays that suited him as an actor, but his direction of Peter Shaffer's first play, "Five Finger Exercise" (1958), received acclaim. While in the US for the Shaffer play, Gielgud revived "Much Ado About Nothing", this time with Margaret Leighton as his Beatrice. Most of the New York critics praised the production, and they all praised the co-stars. He gave his first performances on television during 1959, in Rattigan's "The Browning Version" for CBS and N C Hunter's "A Day by the Sea" for ITV. He appeared in more than fifty more plays on television over the next four decades.