Arena — Season 1, Episode 500: Caesar's Writers
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
The legendary Sid Caesar was one of America's favourite TV stars in the fifties. His writing team, which include Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Neil Simon, was probably the first ever to be assembled in one room. The team recently reunited with Caesar before an audience in Los Angeles, and, here, Hollywood star Gene Wilder, who is currently playing Caesar in Laughter on the 23rd Floor in London's West End, introduces the hilarious meeting.
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.