A ski run in Italy, a supermarket manager in Luton, a sandwich bar in London EC2 - Arena opens the bonnet of the Ford Cortina, Britain's most popular, most stolen, and most misunderstood car. "Dagenham dustbin"? "Poor man's Rolls-Royce"? In the year that may well see the end of a legend, some of the motoring public, including Sir John Betjeman, Tom Robinson, Alexei Sayle, Sir Terence Beckett and Magnus Magnusson take apart the Ford Cortina.

John Updike 's new book, 'Rabbit is Rich', is the third in the Rabbit series from the author of 'Rabbit, Run', 'Couples' and 'The Coup'. At 50, Updike is at the height of his powers and reputation. His novels amount to a chronicle of Middle America in the liberated and disillusioned post-Kennedy years. Art, sex and religion - he has described these as "the Three Great Secret Things," and in this film, the first full-length study of Updike, he looks at his own life and art in the light of his strictly religious Pennsylvania past, and wonders about the drives that make Rabbit run.

Osip Mandelstam, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, died in a prison camp somewhere in Siberia in the 1930s. No one knows precisely how or when. He was imprisoned not for his political activity but for writing a poem. All we know of the life of this remarkable man comes from two classic books by his widow, Nadezhda Mandelstam: 'Hope Against Hope' and 'Hope Abandoned'. In tonight's Arena, poet and novelist D. M. Thomas, author of The White Hotel, traces the the career of this great lyric poet, with the help of Nadezhda Mandelstam and exiled Russian poet Joseph Brodsky.

In a month of continuing controversy about the aims and methods of the 'documentary', Arena presents a classic film by one of the pioneers of the movement: Humphrey Jennings's 'Listen to Britain'. Made in 1941, it will be seen here, complete, for the first time on British television.

Gavin Millar looks at the craft of recent documentary makers, focusing on the techniques of the BBC's current 'Police' series.

Arena celebrates Roy Plomley's Desert Island Discs with the help of many celebrity castaways, including Paul McCartney, Frankie Howerd, Russell Harty, Trevor Brooking, the Lord Mayor of London, Professor J.K. Galbraith and Arthur Askey. The special guest for the 40th anniversary programme was Paul McCartney who was also a fan of the show: "I love its homeliness. It conjures up the best in traditional British pleasure, like the great British breakfast. It's an honour to be asked."

Made in 1935 by Arthur Elton and Edgar Anstey, simply 'reported' from the heart of London's East End slums, giving ordinary people a voice for the first time in cinema history. The 'father' of documentary, John Grierson, hoped it would give people "a living sense of what is going on."

Two-part film profile of Orson Welles, looking at his life and career in theatre, radio and particularly film. Part One with Jeanne Moreau, John Huston, Peter Bogdanovitch, Robert Wise, Charlton Heston, and a detailed interview with Welles himself. This part deals with his work up to 'Touch of Evil'.

Two-part film profile of Orson Welles, looking at his life and career in theatre, radio and particularly film. This is the second of the two-part profile of Orson Welles, looking at films including 'The Trial', 'Chimes at Midnight', 'The Immortal Story' and 'F for Fake', and discussing his many unfinished projects, including 'The Other Side of the Wind' and 'Don Quixote'.

Explores the early career of the English writer and film director Mike Leigh and the actor-centered process of collaborative creation that he has developed in his devised dramas for theatre, television, and the cinema.

In April 1967, at the peak of his career as a dramatist, Joe Orton was murdered by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell. Arena presents a documentary portrait of the author of 'Loot' and 'Entertaining Mr Sloane', whose daring and sense of style added a new word - "Ortonesque" - to the English critical vocabulary. Although he was widely attacked for presenting the world as a bizarre and savage place, this film presents the case that Orton's life was, on occasion, quite as curious and extravagant as his work.

One of the most spectacular and unlikely theatre events of last year took place a long way from the West End of London in the small Dorset town of Bridport. 'The Poor Man's Friend', written by playwright Howard Barker and performed by hundreds of townspeople, was the inspiration of Ann Jellicoe, best known as the author of 'The Knack'. During the past five years her ambition to create true community theatre has produced amazing results.

It is commonly thought that poets are university-trained intellectuals who occasionally produce slim volumes about their personal feelings. This is not so with Michael Smith, an electrifying performer and exponent of 'dub' poetry, which draws on talk culture, reggae music and the rich rhythms of Caribbean native speech. At school in Jamaica Smith was taught the standard works of English Literature, but poems about 'The Daffodils ' and 'Westminster Bridge' had little relevance to his upbringing in the ghettos of Kingston. Tonight's Arena follows Smith on his recent British tour and features the great Marxist historian C. L. R. James, Lynton Kwesi Johnson, the pioneer of dub poetry, and film of the late Boh Marley.

Documentary which looks at the life and premature death of rock'n'roll star Eddie Cochran, with comment from Larry Parnes, Adam Faith, Marty Wilde, Joe Brown, Cochran's mother, and his fiancee Sharon Sheeley.

For nearly 50 years everybody who was anybody in the British theatre passed before the lens of Angus McBean - Gielgud, Olivier, Thorndike, Coward. He was known as the photographer who resolutely flattered his sitters. Tonight, after a ten-year absence, McBean demonstrates his skill with his old friend Sir Ralph Richardson. He discusses for the first time his astonishing surreal pictures of the 30s and 40s, and photographer Jo Spence faces up to herself and looks beyond the smiling pictures in her own family album.

Arena presents the first programme in a Samuel Beckett season, providing a unique opportunity to see famous interpretations of his work. The playwright himself directed this production of his classic play 'Happy Days', and Billie Whitelaw, Beckett's favourite actress, plays Winnie - one of the strangest parts in modern theatre. Winnie, buried to her waist in a sandy mound, struggles to get through her day, searching for distractions that will stave off the panic of having nothing to say, nothing to do, no reason to continue living. Willie, her husband, offers little help. Out of this bizarre and improbable setting Beckett makes a play with many comic and touching moments.

Continues the Samuel Beckett season. A rare opportunity to see an early television premiere. Recorded in 1966, tonight's presentation has only one visible actor, the late Jack MacGowran who, with Patrick Magee, was one of the principal interpreters of Samuel Beckett's work. Unseen is an actress, Sian Phillips. She is the voice of a woman whom Joe once loved. He sits remembering, and his memories recall a life whose hypocrisy and faithlessness have brought tragedy - as much for Joe as for the woman.

Arena continues the Samuel Beckett season with a unique record of his new play 'Rockaby', which has just opened at the National Theatre. Premiered in America, it was filmed in rehearsal and performance by the celebrated film maker D.A. Pennebaker. The programme follows Billie Whitelaw's preparations for her latest Beckett role. Attend the opening night in Buffalo, New York, and see the strange and haunting play, with an old woman rocking herself into death.

Continues the Samuel Beckett Season. In one of the most extraordinary pieces of modern drama, Billie Whitelaw, Beckett's foremost interpreter, performs this astonishing tour de force. 'Not I' - the mouth suspended in space - caused a sensation when it was first performed at the Royal Court in 1973. Beckett himself is a great admirer of this television version.

A play without words. 'Quad' has a musical structure. It is a kind of canon or catch - a mysterious square-dance. Four hooded figures move along the sides of the square. Each has his own particular itinerary. A pattern emerges and collisions are just avoided. From these permutations, Beckett, as writer and director, creates an image of life that is both highly charged and strangely funny.

One of the best-known Beckett monologues, starring its creator, the late Patrick Magee. Krapp, an old man, is alone with his memories and the reels of tape he has recorded during his life. As he reviews the years listening to his diary, he finally makes a conclusion about the most important thing that ever happened to him.

Last year a £13-million painting travelled in top secret from America to Spain. Next day it was headline news that Picasso's masterpiece 'Guernica' had come home at last, after 40 years in exile. This Arena special tells the story of an extraordinary work of art, and talks to survivors of the terrible event that inspired it.