At the end of a seventy-year reign, few people have anything but praise for the late Queen. It wasn’t always so. But now is not the time to remember the occasional lapses in concentration that brought criticism. Overall, she played a blinder.
Some would say the accession of the new King has gone without a hitch. But has it?
Compare the Eurovision audience’s delight at the banning of Russia with the behaviour of the two tennis bodies, ATP (men) and WTA (women). Both organisations currently adorn their websites with ribbons in the colours of Ukraine, but they have chosen to take action against Wimbledon for excluding Russian and Belarusian players from this year’s tournament.
I’m a big tennis fan. Back in January, I was glued to coverage of Djokovic’s thrilling on-court tussle with the Australian government. I even downloaded several of the legal documents to get a better understanding of the evolving scoreline. (I do stuff like that.) But what on earth did the Beeb think was the breaking news story yesterday?
When I get nervous watching football on TV, I usually turn to the match statistics in the hope of some succour. Last night I was very nervous. And from very early in the game. At first, the statistics seemed to be a real help until … well, until I realised that the BBC were showing Italy in the “home” team column, despite the match being at Wembley. (The Beeb obviously thought football wasn’t coming home last night.)
As a lifelong supporter of Queens Park Rangers, it is second nature to revel when local rivals, Chelsea, are on the wrong end of a result. So yesterday’s Cup Final result should have been a time of great joy for me. But the decision by VAR (the Video Assistant Referee) to rule out Chelsea’s equaliser as offside was, frankly, absurd.
In Hollywood, there is a story-writing guru, Robert McKee. After listening to one of his talks, many years ago, I gained the abiding impression that the most powerful story endings are those that you didn’t see coming and yet, with hindsight, the narrative had been building to that all along. One of McKee’s favourite examples – and mine – is Casablanca.
BBC’s Line of Duty cried out for an ending of such proportions. After all, this latest series had been deemed important enough to feature in news broadcasts. (And not just the BBC News. If you haven’t seen the final episode yet, stay away from today’s newsstands: several of the papers have a prime plot point plastered all over their front pages.)
But the writer, Jed Mercurio, seemed to have long ago abandoned any attempt at such a climax.
Read moreLovers of Life on Mars may have thought that DCI Gene Hunt was giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee yesterday. In fact, it was a real (ex-)cop, former Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman.
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