Arena — Season 1, Episode 246: Them and Uz: A film about Tony Harrison
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Tony Harrison is the son of a baker, and his poetry relishes, and mourns for the class he comes from. His subjects are sex, love, politics, class warfare, death, all the rituals and performances of our lives. His work is direct, witty, often angry, expressed in the language and idioms of his northern roots. His recent adaptation of the English Mystery plays with the National Theatre Company has been hailed as 'the most moving, solemn and joyful theatrical event in London'. His latest cycle of poems is on an intensely private theme, meditations on his own family life and relationships. Tonight, Arena investigates a unique voice in contemporary literature.
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.