Arena — Season 1, Episode 422: The Incredible Case of Comrade
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Rockstar Dean Read was the biggest rock star the communist world had ever seen. Virtually unknown in his native America, the "Red Sinatra" was the first pop musician Mikhail Gorbachev ever heard. He sang My Yiddishe Momma to Yasser Arafat in Palestine, performed for Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and was awarded the Lenin Prize in recognition of the millions of records he had sold. In June 1986, he was found dead in a lake in East Berlin, the mysterious circumstances sparking rumours of a KGB plot, a CIA assassination, jealous husbands, or fascist revenge against his communist career. Reggie Nadelson, journalist and author, searches for the truth.
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.