Arena — Season 1, Episode 211: George Orwell 1: Such Such Were the Joys
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
George Orwell is one of the greatest writers England has produced. Tonight and for the next four nights Arena presents a unique full-scale portrait of this remarkable man, filmed in the places where he lived and worked and told in his own words and the words of those who knew him. The first programme traces Orwell upbringing in a sedate middle-class home near Henley, his horrific experiences at preparatory school, his years at Eton and as a military policeman in Burma - and closes with his sudden and dramatic emergence as a writer with Down and Out in London and Paris, a book drawn from his experiences among vagrants, tramps and outcasts. Among those appearing are Jacintha Buddicon, Sir John Grotrion, Malcolm Muggeridge, Cyril Connolly and Professor Bernard Crick.
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.