BBC Arts – Looking Up?

One of the biggest complaints about the BBC has been its declining arts coverage. But the arts fortunes seem to be changing. “Eighteen months of reassessment have resulted in a stream of new programme commissions planned to 2006. Twenty projects are listed in a special BBC booklet, including films on Michelangelo, Christopher Wren and Mary Shelley and landmark series, such as The Origins of Art. BBC1 is finalising plans for a series on British culture. Another strand, Arena, is being salvaged and turned into a biographical series.”