NaN/100 votesLoading...#1 - The Saatchi Phenomenon
Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 6/11/2003
Alan Yentob presents a new seven-part series looking at the power and effect of the arts and their main protagonists. The elusive and intriguing Charles Saatchi has been hugely instrumental in shaping contemporary British art. As he launches his new gallery in London's former County Hall, this behind-the-scenes look reveals Saatchi's hands-on involvement in the collection's presentation, helped by partner Nigella Lawson.
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#2 - Barbara Hepworth: Shapes Out of Feelings
Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 6/18/2003
A profile of Barbara Hepworth, the world's first internationally celebrated woman sculptor. Born in Yorkshire in 1903, she had to fight to establish herself in a world dominated by men, and could still wield a chisel in her seventies.
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#3 - The Hip Hop Generation
Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 6/25/2003
More than just a musical genre, hip-hop has become a global youth culture. But why does the voice of young black America resonate equally with British teenagers from city high-rises and suburban semis? Alan Yentob embarks on a journey of discovery, encountering both young UK rappers and big US stars.
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#4 - Stella's Story
Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 7/2/2003
Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Moss and Vogue's Anna Wintour contribute to the tale of Stella McCartney's rise from student at St Martins to her big break into the fashion elite. Footage shot by McCartney and dating back to 1985, alongside interviews and archive material, help paint this portrait of the designer.
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#5 - Carlos Acosta: The Reluctant Ballet Dancer
Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 7/9/2003
Alan Yentob tells the inspirational story of Carlos Acosta, the gifted dancer who made the leap from the backstreets of Havana to become the first black principal dancer at the Royal Ballet. The film follows Acosta over six months as he embarks on the biggest challenge of his life - producing and choreographing his own show based on his upbringing in Cuba.
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#6 - The Potrait of Omai
Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 7/16/2003
Alan Yentob tells the story of Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of Britain’s first non-white celebrity, Omai, which the Tate Gallery is fighting to keep in Britain. One of the artist’s greatest works, and the first ever grand portrait of a non-white subject, the picture captures the image of a man who became an overnight sensation in 18th-century London after being plucked from obscurity in Tahiti.
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#7 - Sir John Mortimer: Owning Up at 80
Season 1 Episode 7 - Aired 7/30/2003
In the year that the barrister turned bestselling author turns 80, Alan Yentob talks to family and friends about the man widely regarded as a passionate political campaigner, wit, bon viveur and legendary lothario.
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#8 - The Voice of Bryn Terfel
Season 2 Episode 1 - Aired 11/12/2003
The internationally acclaimed Welsh bass baritone talks to Alan Yentob as the arts strand returns for a new, six-part run. As well as learning more about the technical aspects of Terfel's voice, Yentob watches him perform at the opera - but is he prepared to duet with the maestro?
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#9 - A Very Funny Business
Season 2 Episode 2 - Aired 11/19/2003
A look at the process of remaking hit British sitcoms into mediocre US sitcoms.
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#10 - Entertaining Mr Soane
Season 2 Episode 3 - Aired 11/26/2003
Born in 1753, Sir John Soane was the first great innovator of British architecture. Though only one of his creations remains intact, his influence resonates to this day. Alan Yentob’s arts strand continues with this drama-documentary - starring Corin Redgrave as Soane and Sam West as his student Wightwick - which tells the remarkable story of Soane's life.
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#11 - The World According to Parr
Season 2 Episode 4 - Aired 12/3/2003
Martin Parr is widely considered to be the most influential photographer of his generation. His work portrays the British way of life in all its idiosyncratic detail - Women’s Institutes, bird-watching, and fish and chips - iconic images that make up a retrospective exhibition currently on a world tour. Alan Yentob takes Parr back to his suburban past to reveal the root of his inspiration.
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#12 - An A-Z of the OED
Season 2 Episode 6 - Aired 12/17/2003
From the height of the British Empire right up to the digital age, Alan Yentob investigates the bizarre history of the Oxford English Dictionary, helped by poet Benjamin Zephaniah and author Julian Barnes.
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#13 - The Mysterious Mr Hopper
Season 3 Episode 1 - Aired 6/2/2004
The mid 20th-century realist Edward Hopper’s enigmatic depictions of everyday Americana are celebrated for their ambivalence, dealing in not only the prosaic but also existentialist themes of loneliness and alienation - yet despite their popularity, surprisingly little is known about the artist's private life. For the first in a new run of the arts documentary strand, Alan Yentob travels to America to meet biographer Gail Levin and explore his love of cinema, the landscape of Cape Cod, and his complex relationship with wife and muse Jo.
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#14 - Sitting for Lucian Freud
Season 3 Episode 2 - Aired 6/9/2004
Now in his 80s, British artist Lucian Freud has always been at pains to preserve his privacy. Reasoning that the next best thing to interviewing the artist would be to talk to those with whom he has isolated himself day and night, director Jake Auerbach spent two years filming the often famous subjects of Freud's portraits - and gained an intimate insight into one of Britain's greatest living painters.
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#15 - Dirty But Clean Pierre
Season 3 Episode 4 - Aired 6/23/2004
With Vernon God Little, his 2003 Booker Prize-winning debut novel, writer and self-confessed conman DBC Pierre, aka Australian-born Peter Finlay, became the most controversial character to win the award. Alan Yentob joins the enigmatic novelist on a road trip across Texas and Mexico, exploring locations central to the book and the house where Pierre grew up, in a bid to find out the truth behind the bizarre stories of serial mendacity and drug addiction.
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#16 - Unsuitable for Children?
Season 3 Episode 5 - Aired 12/15/2004
Is modern children's fiction a dangerously influential portrayal of a degraded culture or an instruction manual for life in the 21st century Along with contributions from authors including Salman Rushdie, Alan Yentob analyses the aptness of material that covers sex, drug taking, racial murder and the death of God.
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#17 - The Smoking Diaries
Season 3 Episode 6 - Aired 12/15/2004
Playwright and author Simon Gray 's recent autobiography offers a turbulent mixture of memoir and anecdote and charts his addictions to smoking and alcohol. To mark its publication and the opening of his latest play The Old Masters, Alan Yentob presents a rare insight into the 50-year career of one of Britain's foremost dramatists.
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#18 - Arthur Miller - Finishing the Picture
Season 4 Episode 1 - Aired 11/24/2004
The American playwright’s Death of a Salesman and The Crucible were hailed as classics. But his arraignment during the 1950s communist witch-hunts and his marriage to Marilyn Monroe also made headline news. The arts series returns with Miller, now 89, talking to Alan Yentob about his life and career, and also about his latest play, which documents the making of Monroe's last film.
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#19 - Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson’s Smile
Season 4 Episode 2 - Aired 12/1/2004
In 1966 Brian Wilson, the creative hub of the Beach Boys, embarked on an ambitious project - an attempt to record the greatest pop album ever. Instead, Wilson descended into a breakdown that lasted for over 30 years. Now, with the record Smile finally on release, the troubled genius talks about the origins of the madness and majesty in his music.
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#20 - Bruce Nauman: the Godfather of Modem Art
Season 4 Episode 3 - Aired 12/8/2004
A profile of the US contemporary artist whose sound installation is currently transforming the vast space of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. The normally publicity-shy Nauman talks in detail about his oeuvre, while fellow artists Damien Hirst, Douglas Gordon and Tony Oursler offer their opinions of his work.
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#21 - Brando
Season 4 Episode 4 - Aired 12/16/2004
The brooding, raw and groundbreaking performances Marlon Brando gave in such films as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront and The Godfather gave the actor an iconic status, despite his lifelong disdain for acting. Alan Yentob talks to Martin Scorsese , Francis Ford Coppola and Bernardo Bertolucci - as well as the Adler family of New York, with whom he was long associated - to piece together a portrait of a highly complex man.
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#22 - Tony Pappano - a Year at the Opera
Season 4 Episode 5 - Aired 12/22/2004
Will the staging of Wagner’s Ring Cycle provide a fitting climax to Antonio Pappano’s critically acclaimed first year as music director of the Royal Opera House? Alan Yentob follows the Italian conductor as he works on the opera and his many other projects, and charts Pappano’s distinguished musical career.
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#23 - A Short History of Tall Buildings - Episode 1
Season 4 Episode 101 - Aired 5/11/2005
It begins with the extraordinary story of the technology that made it all possible: steel cage construction and the lift. Elisha Otis’s demonstration of his safety lift was the star turn at the New York Worlds Fair in 1854, run by the great American showman, PT Barnum. This streak of showmanship and element of popular entertainment runs through the New York skyscraper’s golden age.
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#24 - A Short History of Tall Buildings - Episode 2
Season 4 Episode 102 - Aired 5/18/2005
The skyscraper goes global, as Alan Yentob continues to chart the history of tall buildings, examining the cultural legacy of the tower and the rise of a new super class of sky-high buildings.
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#25 - A Short History of Tall Buildings - Episode 3
Season 4 Episode 103 - Aired 5/25/2005
There are now more tall buildings in the Far East than in North America – the traditional home of the skyscraper – while China, the world’s largest country and fastest-growing economy, is building cities at a rate unprecedented in the history of mankind.
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The Worst Episodes of imagine…
Every episode of imagine… ranked from worst to best. Explore the Worst Episodes of imagine…!
The biggest names from the world of art, film, music, literature and dance. Alan Yentob gets close up with those shaping today's cultural world.
Genres:DocumentaryNews
Network:BBC One
Worst Episodes Summary
"The Saatchi Phenomenon" is the worst rated episode of "imagine…". It scored N/A/10 based on 0 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 6/11/2003. This episode scored NaN points lower than the second lowest rated, "Barbara Hepworth: Shapes Out of Feelings".