Arena — Season 1, Episode 486: Relics: The Grave Case of Charlie Chaplin
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
In 1978 Charlie Chaplin 's coffin was stolen from his grave in Vevey, Switzerland, and a large ransom was demanded of his widow Oona. This fictional film inspired by those events follows the east European characters responsible. A Screen Two/Arena collaboration, it is written and directed by award-winning documentary film-maker Paul Pawlikowski.
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.