If you’re a fan of 1960s music, it can sometimes seem almost as though the BBC archives had a grudge against you personally. If you’d like to see the famous editions of Juke Box Jury in which the panelists were the full line-ups of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, or witness the almost unthinkable spectacle of the original roster of Pink Floyd on Top of the Pops, or just find out how on Earth The Small Faces managed to mime to The Universal, you’re out of luck. And then there’s the small matter of Bob Dylan’s first major television appearance.

Directed by industry legend Phillip Saville, the BBC’s production of Evan Jones’ The Madhouse on Castle Street was broadcast early in 1963, and featured the 21-year-old Dylan – in his first visit to Britain – singing and acting in the role of an idealistic young student sharing a boarding house with a recluse being sought by his family. Although the ambitious and challenging play got mixed press reviews, it seems to have been well received by the more sympathetic sectors of the audience, and is generally regarded as something of a landmark small-screen drama production of its day. And then in 1968 – as the documentary reminded us to the ironic strains of Jimi Hendrix’s cover of Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower – the BBC destroyed the only known copy.

Although such wiping of tapes was routine at the time and there are certainly many more missing treasures, some of them of far greater social importance than The Madhouse on Castle Street, it is nonetheless somewhat odd that it should have been considered surplus to requirements when enough time had elapsed for Saville, Jones, Dylan and co-star David Warner to have become major figures in their respective fields. Even when serious-minded television rock music shows first began to mine the past in the early 1970s it was nowhere to be found, and for years all that was known for certain to remain of it were the script and a couple of on-set and rehearsal photos.

As an accompaniment to Martin Scorsese’s recent two-part BBC2 documentary on Dylan, BBC4 screened Dylan In The Madhouse, another production of the Arena team that chronicled the background to this curious event in his performing history. From the look of the rest of their themed scheduling they would much rather have been able to screen the play itself as well, and to this end the documentary extended its focus to examine the producers’ attempts to recover any footage that might still be in existence somewhere.

As regards the actual production of Castle Street, the programme took an interesting and highly distinctive approach to its subject, blending the recollections of cast and crew with anecdotes about Dylan’s performing engagements and assimilation into the homegrown folk scene during his stay, and general scene-setting of the sociocultural backdrop of the broadcast. This served the purposes of the documentary extremely well; in particular the shifting between black and white photos of Dylan and company being directed around the set and news footage of harsh weather conditions overlaid with erstwhile Light Programme presenter Brian Matthew introducing the hits of the day gave some feel to the visual remnants, and the recollections of those who watched the broadcast as viewers at home – most of whom conveyed the impression that their parents would not necessarily have approved of their viewing such subversive works – built up a strong picture of what the television and pop music industries were actually like at that almost prehistoric point in their development. Of course this could never be any sort of a replacement for the actual play itself, yet it still gave a very definite flavour of what it must have been like.

This was only half of the story, though, and the ongoing saga of the production team’s attempts to trace a copy of the drama was related in fragments throughout the documentary, introducing elements where considered appropriate to the narrative. So what do you do when you want to make a documentary about a television programme, but have little of substance to illustrate it with? The answer, my friend, is rummage in the bins. Or to be more accurate, ask around Dylan fan circles and put out as many widespread appeals as possible. The constant intrusion from a typewritten caption asking “Do You Have It?” at regular intervals may have been overstating the case a little, but even so it is exactly this sort of dogged persistence that led to the production team discovering more significant material from the play than had ever previously been known to exist.

Unsurprisingly the cast and crew members who were interviewed were somewhat bitter about its disappearance, in a couple of cases darkly hinting there may have been some deliberate motive behind its junking. Sadly none of them could shed any light on its whereabouts, although it did emerge that the tape had been transferred to film for editing, which makes it more likely that an unauthorised copy could still be out there somewhere; something that Arena editor Anthony Wall remains optimistic about. Elsewhere, a series of high profile appeals by the programme managed to uncover some amazing material; a lengthy letter from a member of the production team who was able to fill in some of the information gaps regarding the technical detail of the play, and no less than three off-air audio recordings of the play in part or full. One of these was made completely by chance; another by the owner of an alternative bookstore which Dylan had called into shortly before the broadcast, and one by a major Dylan fan who had elected to keep his ownership of the treasured tape quiet until now. It’s a shame that nothing visual was recovered – and from an audience viewpoint it was immensely frustrating to discover that when the documentary somewhat excitingly overran, it was doing so to accommodate the third audio find rather than any footage (although this was more than compensated for by hearing The Ballad of the Gliding Swan in something approaching reasonable sound quality) – but the fact that the discoveries included three otherwise unrecorded songs alongside the earliest known version of Blowin’ in The Wind (included in the play after Saville overheard him singing it) makes them important discoveries in their own right.

Some reviewers commented that Dylan in the Madhouse was somehow unsatisfying due to the lack of any available illustrative footage, but that is missing the point entirely – the documentary only ever existed because this fascinating corner of television history itself didn’t. Its purpose was to provide, in addition to the story behind the play, some semblance of what it was like for the viewer at home, and this it did to tremendous effect. On this evidence, if by some stroke of luck there is a film reel languishing in a vault somewhere, the recovered The Madhouse on Castle Street would be worthy of a BBC4 season in its own right.

Well, a lot of other obvious key players had turned out to say a lot of other obvious things about the veteran BBC arts show, from its most influential editor Alan Yentob – interviewed behind a particularly titanic white desk – to a battery of producers and directors who’ve jostled to have their work bookended with gently lapping water, see-sawing Brian Eno electronica and the ever-bobbing neon-bottle. Unsurprisingly, one of the very first sequences was of current editor Anthony Wall trying to “find” the bottle in his office, only to discover it half-wrecked and covered in dust. This is, of course, a textbook device in any such commemorative endeavour (“You know, I’m sure I’ve got one of the original Blankety Blank ready sticks down here somewhere”) and as such was fun to behold.

Alongside these predictable eccentricities and the familiar rummage through the vaults we were promised fresh insights and revelations. As if on cue, Yentob proceeded to lean forward across his giant bureau and refer to the programme as having passed through a period of “self-indulgence”. Conveniently, perhaps diplomatically, he failed to mention when this was. Nobody else seemed to know either, or most likely didn’t want to know in case it could be demonstrated to having coincided with their watch.

So the safe way out was to coyly admit that since Arena had been conceived as a showcase for indulgence in the first place, you might as well pick any moment from the previous 30 years. BBC4 viewers might as well have picked any moment from the previous three hours, when we had been treated to some full-length episodes from the series’ library. Just what was the point of that bit in “Masters of the Canvas” where wrestling legend Kendo Nagasaki gave an interminable, immobile interview with the soundtrack deliberately removed, his words appearing – for no immediate reason whatsoever – as subtitles? Or the bit in “Chelsea Hotel” where the viewer was sent on a similarly interminable but all-too-mobile Shining-esque journey from room to room from the vantage of a toddler on a rickety tricycle?

Fortunately, nobody popped up to argue that the fact there was no point at all was precisely the point. To its credit, Arena at 30 was mostly free from bad tempered po-faced ex-employees pontificating at length upon why the programme was at its best when it was trying to do its worst, and how it was no good now they were no longer working at the BBC. Sure, we were offered all the show’s greatest hits for our perusal and estimation, but not as flawless objects of art, rather as a series of experiments that happened to come off.

More than one director conceded they’d set out to make a film with no idea how it would end up. Several testified to the benefits of working for a programme that looked generously upon mistakes. Everyone seemed to appreciate how Arena used to be on every week, and how this meant the pressure was off to deliver consistently high-class efforts.

All of this made for a somewhat refreshing ego-free and upbeat ramble through the archives, albeit one where nobody made any mistakes and nobody had a bad word to say about anyone. In a remarkable display of consistency and selflessness that also handily meant avoiding naming names, all the contributors apportioned blame for Arena‘s titillations and foibles upon, what you believe it, Arena itself. So “the show” managed to do this, upset that or piss off the other, never “Alan” or “Anthony”. Names were confined to carefully-worded tributes (“Alan always had great political nous”), whimsical compliments (“He made my life hell … for months!”) and gushing eulogies – literally, in the case of co-editor Nigel Finch who died in 1995, and who everybody dutifully remembered as if not the most professional then certainly the most visionary member of the team.

This being an entirely in-house tribute it was probably disingenuous to expect anything more robust or incisive, but at least it meant we were spared the in-jokes along with the finger-wagging and score-settling. There was also no room for the sight and sound of regular director Nigel Williams launching into any self-penned unaccompanied odes about people he hates, of the kind witnessed in the recent BBC documentary Understanding John Birt, one of the most toe-curling moments in recent television.

What we did see was a clip of Nigel quarrelling with the writer Jean Genet about why he and the rest of the Arena film crew hadn’t “taken over” his interview in the name of proletarian revolution and “pushed” Genet off his chair. Nigel reflected on how this incident had turned Genet into the person he has the “most respect for” in the whole world. An alternative view was to reflect on how this incident turned Genet into a bit of a fraud and Nigel something of a dunce for falling for such a demented pseudo-intellectual trick. You had to wonder what we were supposed to gain from such frippery, other than a petulant prod in the ribs that yes, this was a TV programme we were looking at and not, say, an antique vase. But at least we were allowed to entertain such an alternative, and were offered the footage in its unflattering, undignified entirety so as to make up our own minds.

The whole sequence neatly epitomised one of Arena‘s greatest strengths: the presentation of a scene or situation free from the clutter of a deliberately cumbersome, pre-determined point of view. It meant we could come away from the clip, indeed from the whole tribute show itself, in awe at its display of artistry and showmanship, or in two minds about its display of artlessness and showing off. Or then again, neither.

It might not be on screen every week anymore, but there’s still the prospect of another Arena around the corner to compensate for or surpass whatever we did or didn’t like about this one. It’s only the floating bottle which stays the same – which, when you think about it, is worth doffing a neon-encrusted 30th anniversary-sized hat for alone.

Drug addiction, sexual dysfunction, spiraling violence, the corruption of childhood innocence , suicide, adultery… the very stuff of Millennial angst and the staple diet of sensationalist tabloids, but are these phenomena unique to our own times? This was one of the questions which anyone viewing James Marsh’s extraordinary film for Arena must have asked themselves.

The film strongly suggested that the James Bulgar case, playground drug-peddlers and rising teenage alcoholism are but contemporary versions of our timeless cravings for excitement and the desire to ward off loneliness. In 1890s Wisconsin, dysfunctionalism sometimes took different forms – arson, murder, hysteria, mental illness, suicide – many of them made possible by the easy availability of guns, and perhaps fuelled by something of the isolation and inward lookingness of a 19th century small American town.

“Wisconsin Death Trip” took as its basis the events which befell the townsfolk of Black River Falls between 1890 and 1900 as described in the town’s local newspaper. These events, narrated in dignified, measured tones by Ian Holm (slight echoes of Alistair Cooke here?), were accompanied by mostly monochrome visuals – in turns, stark and limpid – incorporating stills, tableau, and set-piece reconstructions. The film’s style veered between the lyrical and portentous, though always laced with an undercurrent of darkness. There was no dialogue – only occasional sounds such as gunfire and shattered glass, (a recurring motif thanks to the compulsive window-breaking activities of a local schoolteacher) and the repeated whispered fate of yet another inmate bound for the lunatic asylum. The camera dwelt on faces – young and old, unformed and worn, pensive and withdrawn – and on set-piece tableau mildly reminiscent of Terence Davies’s Distant Voices, Still Lives, but here a slow-pan across a shelf of pots and cooking vessels evoked not homely nostalgia but a sense of emptiness and unease. As the catalogue of misery unfolded, we were invited to empathise with these people, separated from us across time and space, surviving only as photographs and as the subjects of newspaper reports, but, in spite of the extremity of their behaviour, linked to us in terms of human desire and failings. That we were able to do so, was perhaps due to the fact that an emotional response was not demanded of us, as it is in so much of news crime reporting. Here, the poetic simplicity of images married to factual reportage, was allowed to work its strange spell and we were left to wonder about what had driven these people to such desperate measures.

The film delivered its narrative across the 1890-1900 period in what would have been a seamless flow but for its division into spring, summer, fall and winter. This construct allowed the seasons and countryside to be seen not as a mere backdrop to events, but as an elemental force shaping the lives and characters of the people. Poignantly placed visuals carefully established the passage of time and seasonal change – drops falling into a bowl of water, a flower dancing in the breeze marking the brief respite of summer. Another effective device was the use of silent-film style captions announcing forthcoming “events”. This gave the impression that the unlucky participants were acting out some kind of melodramatic, turn-of-the-century silent-film drama, yet somehow this witty device succeeded in encouraging our sympathy, where a more heavy-handed approach could easily have tipped the balance into queasy humour.

The film started and ended with the same glowing litany to Black Rock Fells, extolling the virtues of its people and open spaces. Heard for a second time, it sounded more like a hollow mantra repeated to ward off the darkness we had witnessed over the last hour and a quarter. Most disturbing of all, perhaps, were the occasional (colour) images of contemporary America intercut into the otherwise black-and-white archive – drum majorettes, the singing of the national anthem, children playing – what relation did these “outer” images have with the incidents of the 1890s? And what lay behind these display of conventions which now so singularly failed to reassure us?

Some might have found the film overtly ponderous and relentlessly bleak – accusations which could be justly leveled against it. But it’s originality of perspective, clarity of form and visual beauty for me, worked to present a moving portrait of human desperation, which never collapsed into the mawkish or morbid and asked unsettling questions of us all.

Today, tabloids, docusoaps and exposés of various kinds all noisily stake their claim to “reality”. “Wisconsin Death Trip” made no such claims but left me feeling it had touched upon some uncomfortable hidden truths – about the United States, about how we view the past; how we live today; and, most of all, about the destructive potential of our human frailties.

Yes, it’s still going. I rather thought that Arena had ended ages ago, because I haven’t seen any extensive theme nights or overlong documentaries for a while. But no, the familiar “message in a bottle” title sequence introduced the documentary, and this wasn’t the only old-fashioned motif in the programme.

Coming from a small town to live in a large multicultural city, as I do, you can’t help but spend some time thinking about the various faiths you encounter on an average day, but you tend not to perhaps fully understand the different beliefs represented. So this documentary, “The Veil”, interested me, offering as it did the opportunity to find out some more about a familiar sight where I live (Muslim women wearing the veil). But did it really work?

Well, in a way, no. Perhaps the late slot, or the Arena banner, or the size of the subject matter should have alerted me to the fact I was going to leave here even more confused than I was before. The programme was, in some ways, oddly old fashioned – though typical of Arenadocumentaries as a whole. It began with seven screens of white on black captions, in silence, explaining what the programme was about. It was explained that the main subject of the film was played by an actress, but she would be stating opinions compiled from several interviews with veiled women, who, as you may have expected, didn’t want to appear on screen.

This was the only linkage in the film – which consisted of a series of interviews with various people. Annoyingly, nobody received a full credit, leaving it up to us to work out what relevance they had. So we weren’t sure if the white people brought in to comment were just people they grabbed off the street, or, say, politically active. The man interviewed in his kitchen was a case in point – surely he must have had some strong opinions or he wouldn’t have been interviewed? It seemed at times, though, like this wasn’t the case – we kept on coming back to some women in a manicurists, who gave us their opinion, but at the end, one of them said “I dunno why you’re asking us – we don’t know anything about it.” Was that the point the director was trying to make? That people are prepared to talk about it despite not having a clue?

A further complication was the concentration on the edit suite – we constantly saw film being rewound and edited. One speaker – an Asian woman who said (amongst other things) that by wearing the veil they were unable to live a normal life, regularly had her contributions prefaced by shots of her sitting waiting for her cue, which no other speaker had. This made her look slightly foolish, and seemed akin to the director telling us that her views were incorrect, although they seemed no more questionable than anybody else’s.

Despite all this, some information was imparted. Probably the most important item was the idea that wearing the veil doesn’t appear to be compulsory at all, and that a woman can choose to wear it. Some women believe it to have a “liberating” effect, perhaps because it offers a sense of privacy – they are able to go about their business in anonymity. Yet again the programme was irksome for what it didn’t tell us – a veiled woman was interviewed, and asked if she would like to take it off, which she did. Cue everybody watching going “I didn’t know they were able to do that.”

It seems that the concept of the veil is a complicated topic, but this documentary appeared to complicate issues even more, especially for the non-Muslims in the audience. The voiceover claimed that one woman’s mother tried to dissuade her from wearing the veil, to which she replied “It’s only a piece of cloth.” Maybe it’s the simplicity of this that caused this film to be so confusing.