Arena — Season 1, Episode 425: Chi-Chi the Panda
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Refused entry to America from China in 1958 because of the embargo on "communist goods", the giant panda Chi-Chi came to London Zoo - a constant object of media attention and public adoration. Eight years later she was sent on a diplomatic mission to Moscow to mate with the Russian panda An-An, though this attempt to start a thaw of the Cold War failed on day one when she hit An-An. Among those recalling this bizarre tale of sex, spies and the media are Desmond Morris, Sir Denis Forman and Edward Heath, who remembers his own brush with pandas when he was prime minister.
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.