Arena (British TV series)

History

The arts strand Arena was initially created in 1975 by the BBC Head of Music & Arts at that time, Humphrey Burton, when he founded a magazine named Arena exploring art, design, filmmaking, and theatre. In 1977, under producer and director Leslie Megahey, the strand divided into Arena Theatre and Arena Art and Design, and Arena became less of a magazine and more a home for short, distinctive and stylish films about mainly British theatre and visual arts. In 1978, Megahey became editor of Omnibus and Alan Yentob, who had been supervising Arena Theatre, took over and the two themes were merged. The series, relaunched in January 1979 and renamed simply Arena, began to adopt a format of single subject essays. It earned great critical acclaim for its enthusiasm for the popular as well as the high arts. During Yentob's time as editor, Arena had six BAFTA nominations and three BAFTA awards.

A group of radical directors, notably Nigel Finch and Anthony Wall, gathered around Yentob and Arena, including Nigel Williams and Mary Dickinson. Hits from 1979 included Who Is Poly Styrene?, La Dame Aux Gladiolas, a portrait of Edna Everage, and most notably the groundbreaking My Way, an examination of the appeal of the song, by Finch and Wall. It was the first of their collaborations, which developed a new kind of arts film, taking an unlikely subject and building a poetic meditation on its various aspects - further examples include The Chelsea Hotel (1981), The Private Life of the Ford Cortina (1982), Desert Island Discs (1982). Other successes included Megahey's portrait of Orson Welles (1982), Williams's study of George Orwell (1982), Yentob's portrait of Mel Brooks (1981) and Wall's four-part documentary on Slim Gaillard (1989).

On Yentob's move to become Head of Music & Arts in 1985, Finch and Wall took over as joint editors of Arena until Finch's death in 1995. Following a period of uncertainty concerning the future of the arts strand, series editor Wall protected the series in a reshuffle of the BBC. Since then Arena has been transmitted outside the conventional weekly broadcast strand on BBC Two and latterly on BBC Four.

Under Wall and Finch, Arena developed the idea of the themed evening, beginning with Blues Night (1985), followed by Caribbean Nights (1986), Animal Night (1989), Food Night (1990), Texas Saturday Night (1991), Radio Night simulcast with BBC Radio 4 (1993) and Stories My Country Told Me (1995), a three-and-a-half-hour presentation on Nations and Nationalism. Since then Arena has won numerous awards with regular screenings at the BFI Southbank and has continued to cover the arts and culture at the highest level, with films on Bob Dylan, Harold Pinter, The National Theatre and Spitting Image.

Arena developed a substantial online presence featuring the Arena Hotel, a site that turns the 600-film Arena archive into a resource to build an online hotel for the stars. The Arena Hotel was nominated for a Focal International Award in 2013. Werner Herzog has praised the series as "the oasis in the sea of insanity that is television".

Wall retired in 2018, and the strand is now overseen by commissioning editor Mark Bell.

Branding

The programme's theme music is taken from the title track of the 1975 album Another Green World by Brian Eno, himself the subject of a 2010 Arena film subtitled Another Green World.

The Arena opening titles were voted among the "Top 5 Most Influential Opening Titles in the History of Television" by Broadcast magazine in 2004.

Awards and nominations

Arena has won a Primetime and International Emmys, a Grammy, nine BAFTAs, six Royal Television Society Awards, a Peabody and the Prix Italia. Arena also won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Paris Is Burning (1990), the Best Performance Award for Lili Taylor's role in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) at the Sundance Film Festival, and the SFFIF's Mel Novikoff Award.

Selected filmography

Sources

• Vahimagi, Tise. British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press / British Film Institute, 1994. .

References

References

1. Tise Vahimagi. (2003-12) [http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/1185792/ "Burton, Humphrey (1931-)"]. ''BFI Screen Online''. Retrieved 27 June 2013.
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26. Nigel Smith. (22 February 2010). "Brian Eno and the Arena Bottle". BBC.
27. International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (2013). [http://www.iemmys.tv/awards_previous.aspx "International Emmy Awards – Previous Winners 'Arts Programme{{'"] {{Webarchive. link. (5 December 2007 . ''The International Emmy Awards''. Retrieved 19 June 2013.)
28. The Recording Academy (2013). [http://www.grammy.com/nominees/search?artist=&field_nominee_work_value=%22no+direction+home%22&year=2005&genre=18&=Search "GRAMMY.COM Past Winners Search – 'No Direction Home{{'"}}]. ''GRAMMY.COM''. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
29. British Academy of Film and Television Arts (2013). [http://awards.bafta.org/keyword-search?keywords=arena "BAFTA Awards Search – 'Arena{{'"}}]. ''BAFTA''. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
30. (2019-03-20). "SFFILM to Honor BBC Portrait Television Series Arena with Mel Novikoff Award at 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival".
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