levis ion
()Id sport p nave chosen a better time to start ifterml° about television than in the Nlemath of Bank Holiday weekend which Predictably puddingy fare: the last thing protein I had the chance to ,,Was John Morgan's documentary (a :vord for a richly baroque produc'Or Thames, Munich, the Road to ore Which was ages, or days anyway, istW, hat I and almost everyone I know in calling Whit weekend. ete were plenty of treats for ,h s"iStS■ of course, notably the Engynei?tland game on Saturday (it helps i.: understand, to make the transition Sporting Life to the Arts pages hist a word or two about sport he ill-omened brutishness of which t blealltifully balanced by the café-auote:ndoess of the BBC commentary. Isrt,"er changes of style occur in other iitirldilents, in sport the BBC still lives in 4) it Of middle-class drawing-room. One rili,W,ould be infinitely refreshing if it lwailoned some rabid but articulate 0oRi; Or Rangers fan to talk or shout a game. A bit, or a lot, of honest 4"°Uld reflect the passions and s ss. Of a game which, for the BBC, '0 linger around 1937 when what cailled centre-halves parted their hP'astered-down hair in the middle took hands with their opponents rie ty: final Whistle blew. h7 there is a change coming, 215 with the industriously heralded at. tie'ngrarnble, Sport Two, due on your to Pm this Friday evening. This be a bit fancier than the usual verage and will have Ray Gosling s • 6„ ociologically at soccer and the by Colin Welland and Ian sr,ocige. Highbrow, if you like to call it thin rts reporting and comment is t.IS • g hardly known here, though in it see Ls, a deal more common. Well, we tss wnat we shall see, though I must to a premonitory shiver at the of°,.,1 a 'beautiful' film in slow C4`-'1Ympic athletes training. I still WC' Millwall fan should be around ete. I 0 4 dicta the last of Callan for a while, Overs:uicts at any rate, although they itZ1313sed Lonely somewhat in this tarit—ead of using him sparingly like Sea with which he has so much too, that the end should come th"ef series of Beyond a Joke (3411 perhaps not everyone will Sketches, with Eleanor Bron, John Bird and Barrie Ingham, were a little uneven in quality and fairly often the Michael Frayn scripts didn't achieve a sharp enough pay-off to match the often very funny situations he had contrived. When they did, though, as in the one about the ga-ga lady in the wild, widebrimmed hat who phones her sleeping lover in the middle of the night, pleading with him to drive instantly to Manchester so that she can see him when her north bound train passes through. The train doesn't stop or even slow, of course. It hurtles through in a blur and that may sound predictable enough in cold print but in fact the timing made it otherwise. So otherwise, indeed, that it made me choke on, and almost spill, my glass of Remy Martin Grande Champagne Age Inconnue brought back with loving care from the duty-free shop at Orly airport. And there can be no greater tribute than that.
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