The Art of Losing (2004)

Pornographic films first appeared in late 19th-century France, a mere two years after the invention of cinematography in 1894.

The arresting sight of Sister Wendy Beckett, all teeth and glasses, burst on to our screens in the 1990s. An instant star, she travelled the world in her habit telling us the story of Christian art and painting but revealing little of her own extraordinary story. Arena goes in search of the 'real' Wendy, who, at 82, talks frankly, humorously, and profoundly about her life and spirituality for the first time.

Series in which art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon tells the incredible story of Russian art - its mystery and magnificence - and until now a story untold on British television.

Watercolours have always been the poor relation of oil painting. And yet the immediacy and freedom of painting in watercolours have made them the art of adventure and action - even war. It has been an art form the British have pioneered, at first celebrating the greatest landscapes of Europe and then recording the exotic beauty of the British Empire.

This award-winning series reveals the full and fascinating stories behind famous works of art, not just how they were created, but also how they influenced others and came to have a life of their own in the modern world.

Francis Bacon is the essential British painter of the twentieth century. From the end of the Second World War until his death in 1992, he created an extraordinary body of intense and uncompromising figure paintings and portraits. Drawing on diverse influences including Picasso, Velasquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X, the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge and Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin, Bacon undertook a pitiless analysis in paint of himself and his friends, of the human body, and of our place in a godless universe.

The story begins with the composer's father Leopold with whom Mozart conducted a passionate and tortured correspondence. It is Leopold who knows Mozart's secrets. And there is another voice: that of the music itself. Music is the key to unlocking the emotions of Mozart, starting in this film with the great piano works.

The pub has been the mainstay of British society since medieval times, a cornerstone of any community playing a unique role in national life. But in the past 50 years the pub has undergone massive change. This programme examines the core values of this definitively British institution and questions its survival. With contributions from Jeremy Hardy, Rowan Pelling and Pete Brown. Narrated by Arthur Smith.

Learn the true story behind one of the most storied battles in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps.
- Filmed on location in Morocco and aboard the USS Constitution.
- Interviews with leading scholars illuminate every aspect of the daring plan.
- The true story of the first battle fought on foreign soil by the U.S. Marines.

Series in which art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon tells the incredible story of Russian art - its mystery and magnificence - and until now a story untold on British television.