Arena — Season 1, Episode 475: In Search of Oz
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
An exploration of the phenomenal popularity of L Frank Baum 's famous children's story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written in 1900. About 20 film versions of the story have been made (including a 1925 one with Oliver Hardy), and the programme includes clips from a selection of these, plus the first TV showing of Baum's own 1908 film and missing footage from the Judy Garland movie.
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.