Original version

BBC Two Northern Ireland

Arena

Documentaries

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

BBC Four

Knowledge, arts, music and culture from the UK and the world.

BBC Four reflects arts, music and culture with an ambitious range of intellectually and culturally enriching programmes, taking an expert and in-depth approach to its subjects.

The gold standard for arts documentaries, from 1975 to the present day.

The gold standard for arts documentaries, from 1975 to the present day. A cultural map of the world’s greatest artists and musicians, as captured by exceptional film-makers.

BBC Two England

England

BBC Two Scotland

BBC Two Northern Ireland (Analogue)

Harold Pinter

Henry Woolf

Michael Billington

Kenneth Cranham

Peter Hall

Nigel Williams

Martin Rosenbaum

Arena: Harold Pinter - Part One: The Room

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Harold Pinter - Part One: The Room

26/10/2002

BBC Four - Arena, Harold Pinter - Part One: The Room

A look at Pinter's key theme, the room, through the rooms in which he wrote his plays.

Film biography looking at the famous playwright. Pinter's key theme, the room, is explored through the rooms in which he wrote his first series of plays.

Nigel Williams's two-part film biography explores Pinter's life, work, and political passions - from his East End childhood to his work as an actor, his experience of both early critical rejection and adulation, his screenwriting, and his love of poetry and passion for cricket.

Part One explores Pinter's key theme - the room - through the very rooms in which he wrote his first great series of plays. Arena reveals the links between the plays and places, and meets the people who live there now. We visit the East London terraced house room where Pinter grew up and first wrote poetry; the theatre dressing room where he began to formulate his ideas about playwriting and language; the sitting room in the London cold-water flat where he wrote his first hit, The Caretaker, and his study in the bow-fronted house in Worthing, where he lived in the sixties with his first wife Vivien Merchant, and wrote The Homecoming.

Harold Pinter has given Arena exclusive access to personal recordings in which he talks frankly to his biographer Michael Billington. Presented for the first time on television, they tell Pinter's story in his own words, as he remembers it.

BBC Two

Knowledge, drama, comedy and the arts for a broad adult audience.

BBC Two is a lively channel of depth and substance, carrying a range of knowledge-building programming complemented by great drama, comedy and arts.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Arena

Harold Pinter - Part One: The Room

Contributors

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC Two Northern Ireland

About BBC Two