Arena Season 43 Episodes

Episode 1

Alone with Chrissie Hynde

60 mins

Music documentary. Arena spends the summer with super cool self-confessed rock chick, Chrissie Hynde - shopping for clothes in Paris, hanging out with Sandra Bernhard in New York, life in London and a special trip back to her home town of Akron, Ohio. The intimate portrait also features a glorious live performance at one of London's newest venues, Omeara.

Episode 2

American Epic - Part 1: The Big Bang

Series telling the stories of the pioneers of American roots music. The 1920s saw record companies travel rural America to record the music of ordinary people.

Episode 3

American Epic - Part 2: Blood and Soil

Series telling the stories of the pioneers of American roots music. The second episode explores gospel, the songs of the coal mines and the Mississippi Delta blues.

Episode 4

Kirsty Young: 75 Years of Desert Island Discs

A short introduction to the 1982 Bafta-winning Arena classic from Kirsty Young. This programme does not include the documentary itself.

Episode 5

American Epic - Part 3: Out of the Many, the One

The story of the pioneers of American roots music explores Hawaiian music, Cajun music and Mississippi John Hurt's blues.

Episode 6

American Epic - Part 4: The Sessions

Tue, Jun 6, 2017117 mins

In the multi-award-winning follow up film to the American Epic series, Jack White and T Bone Burnett invite today's greatest artists to test their skills against the long-lost machine that recorded their musical idols and forebears, 90 years after it was invented. The producers spent nearly a decade rebuilding an original 1920s recording system - now the only one left in the world - timed by a weight-driven system of clockwork gears. Stripped of the comforts and security of modern technology, Nas, Elton John, the Alabama Shakes, Steve Martin, Taj Mahal, Ana Gabriel, Ashley Monroe, Willie Nelson, and Merle Haggard are among the artists who have three minutes, and one chance, to get their music etched into a revolving wax disc before the weight hits the floor. Conceived as a sonic experiment to attempt to recreate the conditions of the early record company field teams, the result is a series of career-topping performances by familiar artists pushed to meet the standards of their heroes. Going back to basics and capturing the energy of a unique live performance in the grooves of a rotating wax disc, these recordings are played exactly as they were made-"lightning in a bottle".