Five decades of BBC prestige: where Dylan meets Bacon and Scorsese calls the shots.
Season 1 • Episode 686
LatestIn this new film from Arena, a cast of musical experts and admirers uncover the truth about the Maria Callas myth and the gift of her extraordinary voice.
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.
Direction
Scorsese, Schlöndorff, and fifty years of visionary filmmakers.
Writing
Interviews that actually let subjects think out loud.
Production
BBC at its most uncompromising and patient.
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Arena predates MTV, CNN, and the commercialization of documentary filmmaking—it invented the prestige TV profile before that was a category.
When Bob Dylan agreed to his 1978 Arena interview, it became one of his most revealing on-camera conversations ever—he reportedly trusted the BBC's reputation over American networks.
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