Matt Smith and co had a solid opening despite a late wobble, while there’s an Ashes bromance in the air for Graeme Swann and Damien Fleming, but the adverts did jar a littleFade in. Interior, an extraordinarily messy room with a massage bed in the middle. Clothing and footwear are strewn across all visible surfaces and large bags are scattered haphazardly across the remaining floor space. Pads and bats are piled up, leaning against benches and walls. Exposed pipes meander around the ceiling, not in a trendy architect‑inspired Pompidou‑Centre way but just in a couldn’t-really-be-bothered-to-hide-them way. In the corner a television is attached tightly to the wall, so that instead of facing into the room it points straight ahead, allowing...
The TNT mainstay has provided fine entertainment over the years but it is becoming increasingly hampered by hot takes and bullying“Inappropriate. Whiny. [LeBron James is] all of the above. The Cleveland Cavaliers, they have given him everything he wanted. They have the highest payroll in NBA history. Does he want all of the good players? He doesn’t want to compete?”Skip Bayless has forged a career as a LeBron James troll. From ESPN to FS1, he fills time through the calendar year ripping the greatest basketball player in the world. As James continues to pile outstanding season on outstanding season, Bayless’ unyielding attacks have grown increasingly pathetic and baseless, whatever credibility he once had as a talking head falling away faster...
The BBC presenter’s suggestion to relaunch the old flagship after 10 years in mothballs and make minority sports its stars makes solid senseStrange things happen at night on Twitter. Sadly for the world, that includes executive announcements by the commander-in-chief of the United States. But there are outcomes which are unexpectedly positive, and one such was Gabby Logan’s call for the return of Grandstand.Logan may have made her suggestion after reading an Observer article on the long-departed Saturday TV staple but put that to one side and there is an interesting proposal worth discussing. Related: In praise of David Coleman, Grandstand and a slower, more peaceful age | Rob Smyth Continue reading...
BT Sport’s former Blackburn Rovers striker is continuing in a rich tradition of television miserablism pioneered by Alan Hansen and Jimmy HillI’ve always liked Will Self, one-time literary enfant terrible, TV talking head and all-round perspicacious hypersesquipedalianist. I know it’s probably not alright to like Will Self any more. He’s almost certainly not cool. It’s likely he’s said things on Twitter I can’t be bothered to Google that have angered people or displayed incorrect ways of thinking, sparking one of those wild sprawling waves of self-nourishing social media rage, the smartphone generation’s equivalent of going to a massive rave in a field.I still like Will Self, though. Not so much the recent Will Self, who has wise, weary opinions about...