Arena

Episode Synopsis

On 1 April 1984 former Motown star Marvin Gaye provoked his father once too often, and was shot dead in his bedroom. It was the tragic finale to an extraordinary series of events in the life of one of the major talents of pop music in the 70s. From being down and out in London in 1980 he had been restored to tentative health, far away from drug dealers, in the Belgian port of Ostend. Video footage of this calm period forms the basis of this bleak documentary - bleak, because all along we know that his final hit Sexual Healing will draw him back to America and death.