Arena — Season 1, Episode 365: Oblomov
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Oblomov is a slob. Even Gorbachev is said to have denounced him from the podium: 'We must stamp out the Oblomovs from our society.' The lazy aristocrat of Goncharov's 19th-century masterpiece has become a Russian folk-hero. After 100 years asleep, Oblomov is re-awoken in modem-day Russia - this time as a lazy party bureaucrat. Perestroika, quite frankly, bores him. He was more at home in Brezhnev's 'Period of Stagnation'. Oblomov's foul-tempered chauffeur, Zachar, narrates this bizarre tragi-comedy: for the story of Oblomov's vain attempts to raise himself from his bed is the story of Russia. Filmed on location in the Soviet Union.
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.