Omnibus was an arts-based BBC television

BBC Television

BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...

 documentary

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 series, broadcast on BBC1

BBC One

BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

 in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. It ran from 1967 until 2003, usually being transmitted on Sunday evenings.

Among the series' best remembered documentaries are Cracked Actor

Cracked Actor

Cracked Actor is a 53-minute-long BBC television documentary film about the pop star David Bowie. It was filmed in 1974. At the time he was a cocaine addict and the documentary has become notorious for showing Bowie's fragile mental state during this period...

(1975), a profile of David Bowie

David Bowie

David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

, and Rene Magritte (1979), a graduate film by David Wheatley

David Wheatley (director)

David Wheatley was a British film and television director.His Royal College of Art graduation film was on the Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte, after his tutor Gavin Millar showed him a book on the artist. The film was screened as part of the BBC's arts' programmes Omnibus in 1979...

. For a season in 1982, the series was in a magazine format presented by Barry Norman

Barry Norman

Barry Leslie Norman, CBE is a British novelist, impresario, film critic and media personality. He was the BBC film critic on television from 1972 to 1998.-Early life:...

.

The series was replaced by Imagine

Imagine (TV series)

Imagine is a wide ranging arts series first broadcast on BBC One in 2003, hosted and executive produced by Alan Yentob. Each series usually consists of 4 to 7 episodes, each on a different topic...

hosted by Alan Yentob

Alan Yentob

Alan Yentob is a British television executive and presenter who has worked throughout his career at the BBC.-Early life:...

.