This is the first regular television series to be devoted exclusively to the theatre. It will go out every fortnight at this time, alternating with a twin programme which will deal with the visual arts. Each week a different guest will give his own view of what's going on in the theatre.

This week, the director Ronald Eyre looks selectively and critically at what's coming on, or doing well, and recommends his own personal ' best buy.'

Kenneth Tynan talks to Laurence Olivier about Lilian Baylis, the eccentric founder of The Old Vic. Kenneth Tynan says: "The theatre is the cockpit of society: it is here that ideas are argued out, laughed at and worked over. It is our job in Arena: Theatre to make the theatre accessible and comprehensible to the largest possible audience. We hope to celebrate plays, players and playwrights as they are working now and we shall also pass judgement of our own. When a dictatorship takes over, the first cultural institution to be suppressed is the theatre."

There is also a film about David Hockney's sets for The Rake's Progress, now on tour after its success at Glyndebourne.