Arena — Season 1, Episode 122: Tell Us the Truth
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Rock band Sham 69 have a large and loyal following of working-class kids, who call themselves 'The Sham Army'. They have a reputation for causing trouble and Sham concerts have often been disrupted and brought to an end by fighting. Jimmy Pursey, the lead singer, has struggled to prevent these outbreaks but the violent and conflicting passions aroused at Sham concerts have placed him in an increasingly difficult position. sham's latest album That's Life portrays the pressures that face the kids who follow the band. Arena this week re-creates scenes from that album and follows the story of one Sham concert which threatened to explode.
About Arena
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.