Arena: the 40-Year Face-off
An examination of the vexed and bizarre relationship between Cuba and the USA during the 40 years since the Cuban
Revolution of New Year's Day 1959. See today's choices.
8.05 Eisenhower, Kennedy and Khrushchev: How It All Began Newsreel footage from 1962, when Fidel Castro 's arrangement with then-Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to install nuclear-weapon sites triggered off the Cuban missile crisis.......
8.15 A Diamond in the Rough Cuba's baseball prowess has been long estabished. Fidel Castro himself was once scouted by a US team, and in 1992 Cuba surpassed even the Americans to win the first Olympic baseball gold medal. With many top Cuban players offered lucrative US contracts, this film shows how the patriotic fervour whipped up by the Cuban national sport has acted as a barometer for the country's political relations with the USA.
Director Mary Dickinson
9.15 LBJ, Nixon and Brezhnev: the Middle Years Cuba's place in world politics, from mid-sixties to mid-eighties.................
9.25 The Simpsons The Trouble with Trillions. Homer swaps jobs with Fidel Castro , who goes to work at the nuclear power plant in Springfield
9.50 Reagan and Gorbachev: Castro, Cuba and the Fall of Communism. The effects of the demise of the dominant political ethos in the east
10.00 Who Owns Che?The Importance of Not Being Emesto. Since his death in 1967, the face of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara has stared down from posters and banners around the world, the most reproduced image since the Mona Lisa.
This programme, written by Reggie Nadelson, explores the industry he unwittingly spawned. Director Leslie Woodhead; Executive producerMickCzaky ...
10.30 The Clinton Years: Cuba
Today and Tomorrow
Cuba's relations with the United States in recent times
Cuba Night: Arena Series editor Anthony Wall
Code 8.05-10.35pm (not PDC) Fires Within is at 1.05am

Havana ball: Fidel Castro (left) and Major Camillo Cienfuegos at a baseball match. See Cuba Night
Cuba Night
8.05pm BBC2 Following a short preface on the 1962 missile crisis, the opening film in an evening marking the 40th anniversary of the Cuban revolution underlines the Caribbean communist state's uneasy, almost nonexistent relationship with the USA. A Diamond in the Rough tells the story of Cuba's national sport and how its stars are continually poached by leading US teams. But Cuba still beat the Americans at their own game by winning the sport's first Olympic gold medal in 1992.
Other programmes include a look at how Che Guevara became a youth icon after his death in 1967.
There is also an episode of The Simpsons, in which Homer swaps jobs with Castro.