Second only to Shakespeare, Chekhov is the most performed playwright in the world; but he was more a man of letters than a man of the theatre. How should his work be played? Oleg Efremov , the director of the Moscow Arts Theatre where Chekhov's plays were originally performed under the direction of the legendary Stanislavski, was in Oxford this summer with three of his actors to make masterclasses for the British American Drama Academy. Apart from the students, actors and directors from the RSC at Stratford came to see them, to listen, to learn and to watch them perform. Observing the text of Uncle Vanya emerge from the page into performance in its original language, theatre and film director, David Jones , identifies how much we can still learn from the theatre at which, 80 years ago, Chekhov's own wife created some of his most famous roles.
P.G. Wodehouse, perhaps best known and best loved of English comic novelists, is still something of a mystery. Affable and accessible to journalists, he was cripplingly shy and remained inscrutable about his private life. Bookmark traces his career, from an Edwardian middle class family to his experiences in a German internment camp, with the help of Tom Sharpe, Barrie Pitt, Lady Frances Donaldson, Sir Edward Cazalet and Lt Col Norman Murphy, a Wodehouse scholar who claims to have discovered the origins of Blandings Castle.
Nearly 130 years after Fyodor Dostoevsky left St Petersburg on his first journey to western Europe, his great-grandson, Dmitri, a tram driver from Leningrad (once again called St Petersburg), embarked on a similar trip - to acquire a second-hand Mercedes diesel. Director/Producer Paul Pawlikowski Editor Nigel Williams
Dennis Nilsen 's grisly murders were an unlikely subject for Brian Masters , a biographer of 18th-century gentlefolk. This film details how their relationship resulted in his prize-winning Killing for Company and examines, with Patrick McGrath and Beryl Bainbridge , whether evil and the disturbed personality are legitimate subjects for the serious writer.
Miss Pym's Day Out is a prime-time drama from Britain that ran on nationwide television in the UK for one season in 1991. The documentary-drama centers on English novelist, Barbara Pym (Patricia Routledge), who looks for inspiration as she battles a case of writer's block. She meets the love of her life, Henry Harvey (Himself), and she deals with her nagging sister, Hilary Walton (Herself), throughout the series. Both Harvey and Walton are the real-life sister and husband of the late Pym, joining an ensemble cast that mixes actors with real people.
Paul Pawlikowski's award-winning documentary on life behind Serbian lines in Bosnia. The film observes the roots of the extreme nationalism which has torn apart a country and provides a chilling examination of the dangerous power of ancient nationalist myths.
The first in a two-part biography of Philip Larkin traces his early life in Coventry, his Oxford days and his first postings as a librarian. Friends, fellow poets and biographer Andrew Motion help to provide an insight into the man.
Second part of Philip Larkin documentary.
A look at the background and work of Anne Rice, author of Interview with the Vampire
In the last programme of the series, biographer Olivier Todd , Camus's son and daughter, and many of his lovers, friends and associates collaborate forthe first time to tell the story of the elusive writer. The series returns next spring.
Documentary about the late poet Stevie Smith, author of the famous poem Not Waving But Drowning. Friends, neighbours and writers, combined with archive footage, form a picture of how London secretary Smith took the male-dominated literary world by storm.
