Documentary about the Chelsea Hotel in New York, a legendary haven for the some of the greatest artistic talent of the 20th century, from Mark Twain to Dylan Thomas. Andy Warhol and William Burroughs have dinner in the room where Arthur C Clarke wrote '2001', and Quentin Crisp, who lived in the hotel for more than 35 years, recalls moving in.

Arena eavesdrops on the writing of a new adventure for James Hazell, popular cockney private eye. He is the creation of Terry Venables, manager of Queen's Park Rangers, and Gordon Williams, author of 'Straw Dogs'. Now the TV series has ended, who, after Nicholas Ball, could possibly take over the part? Both authors have definite ideas about how their hero should be portrayed. In tonight's film John Bindon and Michael Elphick try out the role... and indulge in a little eavesdropping of their own.

Uncle Sidney is the kindly old soul in charge of an institute for the disabled: he tucks them up at night and keeps them supplied with back numbers of the 'Reader's Digest'. But his crippled charges have had enough of him, and 'Side-show', the Graeae Theatre Company's highly successful play, tells the story of their escape. Arena marks the International Year of the Disabled with a profile of this extraordinary company of disabled actors.

Arena investigates the grassroots of rock today with John Peel and John Walters. John Peel's radio show provides a unique platform for the thousands of groups who have been making music entirely outside the big business of the record industry. Tonight's programme does not begin in a 36-track recording studio in Los Angeles but in a bedroom in Carshalton Beeches, a tasteful suburb just outside Croydon. Featuring The Nightingales from Birmingham; The Liggers from Manchester; The Skids from Dunfermline; and introducing, from Carshalton Beeches, Move to India.

Arena marks a major retrospective exhibition at London's Hayward Gallery with a film about the great American realist painter Edward Hopper. His subject is the face of America - haunting, unforgettable images of late-night bars, lonely hotel rooms, sunlit buildings and isolated figures. Through them we glimpse an aspect of America, austere and un-idealised, which we now recognise as familiar. But Hopper was not a recorder of externals.

For the past ten years Peter Brook and his unique company of actors have travelled the world with a series of extraordinary theatrical ventures. The last stage of their journey was Australia. Here, in a disused quarry in the hills above Adelaide they perform some of their most popular plays, and a remarkable meeting takes place with tribal Aboriginal performers who have travelled 1,000 miles to see a production of 'The Ik'. This story, of the breakdown of a traditional tribal community, provides a moving parallel to the problems faced by the Aborigines themselves.

Tonight, from a converted cowshed in the wilds of Scotland, Arena presents The Smallest Theatre in Great Britain. Immortalised in the Guinness Book of Records, Barrie and Marianne Hesketh have for the past 17 years been the sole designers, directors and cast for every production, including their famous two-man version of 'The Tempest'.

There were these five guys round the table: the Lightweight Boxing Champion of California; an expert on Pre-Columbian art; an honorary lieutenant in the Mexican army; an architect admired by Frank Lloyd Wright ; and a man of whom Marilyn Monroe said, 'No woman can be around him for long without falling in love'. What had they in common? They were all John Huston , who also happened to direct 'The Maltese Falcon', 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre', 'The African Queen', 'The Misfits' and 25 others. At the age of 74 he started work last week on the $30-million screen version of 'Annie'. Gavin Millar visited him at his Mexican hideaway to mark the publication of his autobiography 'An Open Book'.

Documentary profile of leading Israeli writer, Amos Oz in which he talks about t he thirty year history of the Israeli state whilst touring his home city of Jerusalem.

William Gerhardie, who died at the age of 82 in 1977, was a legend in the world of letters. Born of English parents in Imperial Russia, he was reluctantly 'discovered' with his hugely acclaimed first novel 'Futility', written at the age of 26. He was destined, however, to remain a prodigy. Despite the great success of his next novel, 'The Polyglots', he lived out the rest of his life in a small London flat and busy obscurity. The remarkable book he was working on much of this time - 'God's Fifth Column' - was published this month.

Five years ago Gary Glitter announced his retirement - unfortunately the world took him at his word. Once he lived the life of a millionaire in a Sussex mansion, now he lives in Earls Court, hopelessly in debt. But the man who seemed to be just another in a long line of rock casualties has returned in triumph, welcomed back from the scrapheap by the punk generation for whom he's an idol and a legend.

Lupino Lane, the man who made the 'Lambeth Walk' famous, was a comic who once rivalled Chaplin and Keaton. With the advent of the talkies, his small studio folded and all the negatives of over 40 films were destroyed. After years of painstaking research film historian Philip Jenkinson has managed to track down and restore 14 of the original films. Tonight's programme picks out some of the best moments from the lost legacy of Lupino Lane.

This week Arena patrols the skies above Metropolis in search of the legend that is Superman. Meet Kirk Alyn, the first celluloid-Superman, and Christopher Reeve the latest; Dr Fredric Wertham, Superman's greatest living adversary; Joanne, the model for Lois Lane; Dave 'Darth Vader' Prowse, who turned a 13-stone weakling into The Man of Steel; and, for the first time on British television, Superman's creators, the legendary Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

"Rene Clair is the French cinema," one critic wrote in the 40s, and few people would have disagreed. It seems a surprising judgment now since Clair's reputation suffered a steep decline while other veteran filmmakers, such as Renoir and Came, grew in esteem and the New Wave stole the limelight. Clair died earlier this year at the age of 82, still the only man of the cinema to have been elected to the Académie Frangaise. Gavin Millar introduces two of his most famous films and offers a reminder of just why he was, for a whole generation, the epitome of Gallic wit, elegance and charm.

As a child, trapped in a crazy Jewish household in a poor Chicago tenement, the American artist Robert Natkin had to find a way to change his life. His imagination was engulfed by movies from Fred Astaire to 'The Wizard of Oz', and by the vast collection of modern European paintings at the Chicago Institute. In 'Life' magazine he read an article on Jackson Pollock and realised "even a schmuck like me can become an artist". This film is about some of the paradoxes of his success, about how and why he paints the way he does, and why the English critic Peter Fuller - author of a recent provocative book on art and psychoanalysis - thinks these particular abstract paintings matter.

Britain's musical reputation is second to none, and depends ultimately on an exceptional tradition of youth orchestras. The educational ideals which underlie this tradition are exemplified in Leicestershire. Here, for the past 30 years, music and art have been central to school curricula; consequently, children of all backgrounds have had the opportunity to pursue a musical career. The present cuts threaten this unique tradition.

Derek Jacobi, Helen Mirren, Martin Jarvis, playwrights Peter Terson and Barrie Keefe - all products of the National Youth Theatre, a unique organisation, which every summer brings 600 Young amateurs to London to work on new productions and present them to West End audiences. Over the years it has introduced actors like David Hemmings and Simon Ward, encouraged young playwrights, and won praise around the world. In two days' time, the NYT opens its 25th anniversary season. But last December it seemed that this, the biggest season ever, might be the last - the Arts Council canceled the Youth Theatre's grant. Tonight's programme examines the issues behind the cut, charts the company's struggle to survive, and outlines its history.

For 25 years the Polish film director Andrzej Wajda has been making some of the most exciting and boldly critical films in Eastern Europe. He was filmed in Warsaw and Cracow shortly after he had returned from the Cannes Film Festival, where he won the Palm d'Or. How has he managed, in a long career in film and theatre, not to be silenced by censorship? How does he view his films, and his obsession with Polish history, in the urgent mood of today?

From Brooklyn to Beverly Hills, the life and times of a great comic film director. Tonight on BBC2 Mel Brooks, creator of 'Blazing Saddles', 'Young Frankenstein', and 'The Producers', reveals practically everything. Filmed on location in Hollywood with Gene Wilder, Dom DeLuise, Sid Caesar. and Mr Brooks 's lawyer.

She is two-and-a-half feet tall and nearly 500 years old. She hangs in The Louvre behind plate-glass - an unsigned, undated portrait of a smiling woman, the most idolised and abused woman in the history of art. She can be found in The Louvre, on the pavement in Buckingham Palace Road, on 'Doctor Who', and on biscuit tins. There's only one Mona Lisa, but she's everywhere. Tonight Arena looks behind the Gioconda smile.

When Joint Stock began their latest project four months ago, they had a writer but no script, actors but no roles. 'Borderline', by award-winning young playwright Hanif Kureishi, finally emerged out of the remarkable working process unique to the Joint Stock Company. Kureishi wanted to write a play about the problems faced by the Asian community in Britain, and his final script was the result of research, workshops and improvisation involving the whole company - writer, director and actors.

Only a short while ago Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were forgotten names in cinema history. Now, some of the greatest filmmakers in the world are their ardent fans. Arena tells the story of two men who confronted the complacency and parochialism of the British cinema with a series of brilliant, subversive and often mystifying films.

A contrast in visual style: the art of Radio Times and the jaundiced eye of Private Eye. Arena raids the Radio Times archives and talks to long-term contributor Eric Fraser, and watches the latest edition of Private Eye, with its maverick visual style, take shape.

Arena profiles one of the most dazzling literary talents of recent years - Saiman Rushdie, a storyteller extraordinaire and winner of this year's Booker Prize. 'Midnight's Children', his fantastic epic novel about life in 20th-century India, has established him as the new star of English fiction. From the quiet of Kentish Town, Salman Rushdie looks at the turbulent history of India through the eyes of his hero, Saleem Sinai.

Documentary in which Jamaican-born poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, now resident in Brixton, visits Carifesta, a festival of West Indian culture held in Barbados, and surveys a small part of the very diverse cultural activity of the Islands. Performers include: South Stars - Trinidad; Network - Trinidad; Shake Keane - St Vincent; Bahamas National Dance Company; The Soulful Groovers - the Bahamas; Rebirth; the Renegades - Trinidad; Drama Group - Montserrat; the Mighty Arrow - Montserrat; Chronicle Atlantic Symphony Steel Orchestra; Michael Smith - Jamaica; the Dicey Doh Singers - Bahamas; the Mighty Sparrow - Trinidad; Irakere - Cuba.