The Bad & Good of the BBC

I do enjoy watching tennis, and despite the difficulty of covering it on radio (because it’s too damn fast to describe) I do enjoy listening to it too, but BBC Radio 5Live have turned me off completely with their efforts this year. Their complete obsession, and therefore ill-disguised bias, towards ‘The Big Three’ (their words) of Djokovic, Federer and Nadal has reached embarrassing levels. I was listening to the first Men’s semi-final at work yesterday and there was a 12-minute spell where they didn’t even mention the name of Novak Djokovic’s opponent. TWELVE MINUTES. And that’s not me exaggerating for effect, I actually timed it. When they weren’t talking about whether Novak is the Best Player Ever they were stroking their anticipatory erections by talking about the upcoming match between Roger and Rafa. And it wasn’t just a reaction to yesterday’s circumstances, it’s happened every day of the tournament. They lose themselves into a collective orgasm of superlatives and seem to forget that they’re supposed to be commentating on a match. Yes, I know these guys have raised tennis to another level, and we’re blessed to live in a time when we get to see them all battling each other, but it doesn’t need to be the only topic of conversation every time I turn the pissing radio on. (excuse my language.)

There are a few of us around who are actually finding this continued dominance of the same few guys in their thirties a bit boring now. I’d dance a naked jig around Suffolk if a Grand Slam final ended up as Zverev vs Kyrgios, but I think that if that line-up happened, the entire BBC broadcasting team would collapse into incoherent grief and have NOTHING to talk about.

I’ve always held the BBC up as the peak of television production, but I’d take ITV’s coverage of the French Open last month over the current Wimbledon programmes any day of the week.

On the flip side, I must say that 9 – 10.30pm on BBC2 on Wednesday night was up there with the best 90 minutes of television I have ever seen. If you didn’t see “8 Days – To The Moon & Back” you should go and find it on iPlayer and give it a damn good look. As a scientist colleague of mine tweeted after watching it yesterday – “Wow. Just wow.”

RC 13-7-19