James reviews 'Match of the day, Denmark vs England' on BBC1 and 'Mrs Dalloway' on BBC4

Hello, I’m James Brook, and welcome to the twenty third episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’ 

This is where I review suggested upcoming Freeview programs, or something I’ve picked myself. Go to IReviewFreeview.com to search, or listen, or indeed read and/or comment on all my reviews. And if you want to see what I’ll be reviewing next time, visit the page ‘What’s up next.’ That’s IReviewFreeview - all one word - dot com.

In this episode, I will review: 

Match of the Day (UEFA Euro 2024, Group C: Denmark v England) on BBC1 and

Mrs. Dalloway (1997) on BBC4

That’s a football game I’ll be watching anyway and a film so totally non-football it could be a monk contemplating his navel. I did this contrast thing last time with the Simpsons and a martial arts film: who knows, maybe it’ll become a habit for a while. Let me know if you want it to.

And let me make it clear: I won’t be reviewing or analysing the football game per sec. I might not even mention the result. Nope: I’ll be writing about the TV stuff: the production and the commentators - all that sort of thing. As for ‘Mrs Dalloway’ well, I tried reading the book and gave up after about ten densely written, almost impenetrable pages. I’m hoping it’ll translate into a reasonably good film. Some books, which I find almost impossible to read, can be entertaining if accessed by other means. Take Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children for example. Great big thick wodges of text in paragraph after monumental paragraph. Reading it was like trying to swim through thick porridge.

And yet - as a radio play - excellent: clear cut, light, swift and quite moving.

Let us hope Mrs Dalloway metamorphoses equally well.

By the way, the image for this episode was generated by a free AI image generator with the prompt:

A 1920s elderly society lady, wearing a flowery hat, kicking a football digital art

Ummm … I suppose we could say the result isn’t too bad. So 7 out of ten. However I’ve found it seldom matters what type of style you specify: makes about as much difference as a teardrop in a downpour. I suspect, as in many things, if I used the paid for version, AI, being mercenary, would pay more attention. God, it seems even our future robot overlords could be venal. 

Remember that in 20 years or less. I’ll be long gone, but you might bribe yourself out of servitude, only what you might use to entice an AI bot is anyone’s guess: plugging directly into a high voltage car charging port perhaps? (pooof!) Who knows?

Anyway, here we go:

Match of the Day (UEFA Euro 2024, Group C: Denmark v England) on BBC1, Thursday June 20, 4:00pm 

One of my few claims to no fame is I saw the first ever BBC ‘Grandstand.’ And that was Saturday afternoons taken care of for much of my childhood. 

I even watched the racing, wondering why the horse ‘Bar’ was always in the odds, but never seemed to run, let alone win.

But the undoubted highlight of ‘Grandstand’ was the teleprinter giving the football scores. 

They pointed a camera at an automatic electric typewriter, which spewed out the results one letter at a time onto a roll of paper. Clickety-clack, bang bang bang, ding ding ding! And if there was a lag, it hummed away, occasionally doing excited little jumps of anticipation. This was extremely advanced technology!

Not that I actively supported a team, as the chances of actually going to a match were pretty much nil. No, it was the names that got me: all those exotic sounding places: ‘Bolton!’ ‘Tottenham Hotspur!’ ‘Liverpool!’ ‘Sheffield Wednesday!’ ‘West Ham!’ Amazingly, London never appeared. Didn’t they have a football team?

(sigh) Ah well, days long past.

So, in the here and now: Match of the day, Denmark vs England!

Well, in terms of minutes, the game lasted about a 100 and the program 210. So we spent more time not watching live football than watching live football. 

It opened with 4 footballists (for want of a better word) sitting in a rough semi-circle at a table. Gary Lineker, Rio Ferdinand and Micah Richards, with Thomas Frank as the mandatory Dane.

Weirdly, they all held big yellow microphones. From a distance they must have looked like hefty kids after buying a job lot of disgustingly coloured ice-lollies. I dunno: I thought Germany was technically sophisticated? But maybe they haven’t got little mikes that clipped discreetly onto lapels or ties or whatever.

Big yellow lollipops or not, they set about their business: talking football. For an hour, interspersed with a few token women talking football, clips of England players talking football, clips of Danish players talking football, assessments of previous meetings between the sides and - of course - a long and extremely soft interview with Gareth Southgate, the England manager, who basically said the same thing in 50 different ways: we’re taking it one game at a time.

Southgate is not a man to set the pulses racing. And I chose my words carefully in that last sentence.

It was all very jolly, easy on both ear and eye and expertly organised by Lineker, the relaxed head boy of the school for advanced football talkers.

And then it was time for the match. The players trooped out of the tunnel, the national anthems were played - some sang, some did not - most mumbled - a coin tossed, ends chosen and - at long last - the kick-off.

Peep!

And for pitch side commentary, over to Guy Mowbray and Alan Shearer!

I’ve always thought it must be so much easier being a radio sports commentator than a TV one. On the radio you need to fill the air with words, so - more or less - as long as you keep talking and don’t miss the really important bits, you’re winning. After all, the audience can’t see what’s going on, so they can’t really contradict you.

Whereas on the TV, with the punters watching in real time, it’s far more difficult, for football is - or should be - more on that later - a fast moving game. By the time you say ‘Smith has the ball’ Smith has already fed it to Jones, who’s sent it back to Smith, who this time passes to an opponent. So unless you’re really snappy with the names: ‘Smith! Jones! Smith again! Urrg!’ You’re so far behind what the punters can see you might as well stop and talk about what you had for lunch. Or - even better - say nothing.

It’s difficult. To get over this problem, Guy Mowbray arms himself with small nuggets of uninteresting factoids about each player, while Alan Shearer gives added analysis and depth. Shearer? Didn’t he used to be up there with Gary Lineker? Maybe he’s been downgraded. 

On the field, the England players are kicking the ball about as if waiting for the last bus home, so not much is going on.

But Guy Mowbray is a pro: he gives out his carefully nurtured titbits like a parsimonious seagull feeding its young with purloined ice-cream, while Alan Shearer.. well, he does like galloping off into the verbal sunset with all the macho aplomb of a man who absolutely knows he’s stonkingly right. 

It reminded me of why, when watching TV football, I usually turn off the sound and possibly put on a bit of Mozart. There is something oddly seductive at seeing players mis-placing passes and squabbling silently over free kicks while some of the most sublime music ever written trickles into your ear drums. 

But then again, I do like the crowd noises. So if there is a way of getting rid of the commentary but keeping the Oooos and Ahhhs of the massed spectators, do let me know.

At half time we had 15 minutes of analysis, spiced up with trailers and puffs for other BBC programs.

Now I don’t know how many of these commentators and analysts have ever managed a national football team, but I strongly suspect it can be counted on the fingers of no hands. So, after an obligatory ‘of course, it’s easy for us to sit here talking, we’re not in charge but …… ‘ they really got stuck in. Video clips were legion, with edited players being moved around the pitch like so many 2D dolls. Arrows appeared, carving through the opposition as if it were a battlefield.

Which, of course, it is.

Oh God, it all looked so simple and easy, to fill in the gaps, go up the field, to pass it to a player who’s in tons of space. Just like a video game. Draw the arrow. The troops will follow. The opposition will stay in one place.

(grunt of amusement) As if!

The second half started. England - despite being one up - were now playing like a collection of rhythmless bongo drummers, walking around and haplessly making sure the Danes got plenty of the ball.

And the longer it went on, the more elongated Alan Shearer’s sentences became. No, that’s not strictly true: his sentences got shorter, but he rattled off more of them, as if he wanted to stop, but found he couldn’t. A constant stutter of thoughts, popping unhindered into his mouth.

In the end, I gave up, and resorted once more to Mozart.

Denmark scored: of course they did. Having been given the ball so many times by England, they had to do something with it.

At the end of the match, the air was saturated with analysis. Arrows everywhere! Even the sainted Lineker was dragged in. Usually he manages to stay aloof, but when asked directly what he thought of Kane (the England captain, talismanic goal machine and expert walker) well, our Gary became as uncomfortable as a man wearing Y-fronts of dried seaweed. Red faced, he tooted: ‘he’s got to do better.’ And everyone nodded.

Yep: Kane has to do better. Everyone has to do better.

Thinking about it now, a day later, I am struck by the underlying seriousness of the whole three and a half hours of the program. In essence, it was an act of reverence. Of worship. To football.

Yeah, I know: the analogy between football and religion has been drawn so frequently it might sound somewhat trite. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. There is a certain delight in knowingly submersing yourself into something utterly without meaning. Because if it is without meaning, outcomes are irrelevant. 

So - to tidy this debate up into a neat parcel: sport is so trivial you can afford to take it seriously. Which is what I’ve been saying for years. But it’s nice to write it down!

But time doesn’t stand as still as the England players. We need to move on.

Mrs. Dalloway (1997) on BBC4, Thursday June 20, 10:30pm 

I really do not understand exactly why this film was ever made. OK, so it has good acting, an open topped double-decker red bus and attention to detail: even the extras had period shoes, but even so, what was the point?

It’s set in the 1920s. Vanessa Redgrave, as Mrs Dalloway - all wide smiles and a droopy hat, wanders around London, remembering back some 50 odd years to when she was wooed by two men. One is introduced as Peter, the other as ‘Mr Dalloway,’ so no surprises as to which one she ends up with. 

A parallel, and much more interesting story emerges of a young man, an ex soldier haunted by memories of the trenches; he has hallucinations of his best friend being killed. 

He’s alternately broody, stressed and apparently normal. His faithful wife is afraid to leave him alone for more than a few minutes. 

Mrs Dalloway meets a self-important government official of some kind before going into a flower shop to order flowers. Briefly, the two plot lines merge when she glimpses the traumatised ex-soldier staring through the window.

Then she wanders back to her house and selects a party frock for the bash she’s holding that evening.

She’s visited by Peter (remember him: rejected lover from the past) now much older - of course - and newly back from India, who tells her of his messy love life.

Meantime her husband has lunch with a bossy old upper-class female relic of a previous age who’s had an idea about something.

I’m afraid, by this point, details were beginning to escape me. But we plough on.

Mrs Dalloway’s daughter upsets a middle aged woman by choosing to go to her Mum’s party rather than do good works at a mission. She gets on the red double decker bus and looks around as she’s driven through London.

The traumatised ex soldier is taken by his wife to see a specialist, who diagnoses Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and tells them he must go to a rest home, on his own. Understandably, separating him from his wife makes him fearful. She is reluctantly resigned. They will come for him, the specialist says, in the evening. 

Umm … it sounds threatening. The words ‘loony’ and ‘bin’ hang in the air.

Meantime, in the past, there’s an intense kiss between the future Mrs Dalloway and her best friend, who I think is rejected lover Peter’s sister. I should be paying more attention, but there y’go: except for time, I’m not paying for this experience, so I have little skin in the game. I was probably thinking about putting the kettle on when it happened.

Onwards..

And at some stage all the young things go boating on a lake.

Anyway, back in the 1920s, the party is under way, and they all appear to be having a jolly good time. It looks extremely dull to me, full of elegantly dressed ladies sitting on sofas and starch-shirted, bow tied men standing around trying to look elegant. One of the guests is the specialist doctor we met earlier, another is the elderly Peter, brooding away in the library. It’s that sort of house. He wants to have another word with Mrs Dalloway.

When they come for the ex soldier, he throws himself from a window and is fatally impaled on the railings below. When the doctor hears of this at the party, that’s a bit of a bummer, but I think they carry on nevertheless.

I can’t recall if Peter and Mrs Dalloway ever meet in the library.

Roll credits, that’s a wrap.

I’ve set out the bones of the plot in the vague hope it might enlighten me. Are there some hidden depths? Can inferences be drawn? Does it say anything relevant to anyone? To anything? At anytime? Anywhere?

God knows. It’s all so …. I’m struggling for the right word here …. amiable probably does it. They all - with the exception of the ex soldier and his wife - and possibly the mission woman scorned by the daughter  - they’re all just nice people wandering about, doing uninteresting stuff and talking about sepia coloured nothings.

 So: apart from the resoundingly unsurprising assertion that people are people, the answer to ‘are there hidden depths?’ must be no. 

True, it was all very pretty, production values were high, and it was competently directed. But with a plot this feeble, some other dimension is required. Even the suicide takes place more or less off-stage and has little impact. Maybe that was the point: gilded people living gilded lives can ignore ugly reality.

But I kept thinking, (chuckle) it needs a murder. After all, when everything’s beige, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.

And that misquote from Raymond Chandler concludes the reviews for this episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’

Don’t forget, contact me via email to contact@ireviewfreeview.com or through the website Ireviewfreeview.com where you can also click on the page ‘What’s up next.’ to see what programs I’ll be reviewing next time.

Thank you for listening, and goodbye for now.