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Irish Independent
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Today's top TV and streaming choices: Billy Joel Night, Poltergeist and Tyler Perry's Straw
Women Under Hitler's Flag RTÉ2, 8.15pm First in a two-part documentary examining the part played by women in Nazi Germany, revealing that some were just as brutal, if not more so, than their better-known male counterparts. Billy Joel Night BBC Two, from 8.40pm An evening dedicated to the singer-songwriter begins with archive clips in Billy Joel at the BBC. It's followed by concert footage in The 100th Live at Madison Square Garden, before the night ends with a chance to see Joel in action in the Old Grey Whistle Test, recorded in 1978. The long-running sci-fi series' future is reportedly in doubt, but that isn't going to stop showrunner Russell T Davies celebrating the 20th anniversary of its return to our screens. He discusses the programme alongside cast and crew past and present, including David Tennant and Billie Piper. The Guard RTÉ One, 9.25pm John Michael McDonagh's wonderful comedy-thriller stars Brendan Gleeson (above) as a Garda whose laidback lifestyle is disturbed by the arrival on his patch of an uptight FBI agent (Don Cheadle) who needs his help to bring down an international drugs ring. Poltergeist RTÉ2, 11.25pm Smash-hit evergreen horror focusing on a family whose move to their dream home turns into a nightmare when their young daughter is kidnapped by the property's resident ghosts. JoBeth Williams, Craig T Nelson and Heather O'Rourke head the cast. The Survivors Netflix, streaming now We're mostly used to two types of Australian viewing: soaps and super-dry (to the point of cringe) comedy. This is different. The drama follows Kieran Elliott's life after two people drown in his hometown of Evelyn Bay, Australia. To top it off, a young girl also went missing. Returning with his family 15 years later, the simmering guilt resurfaces, especially when the body of a young woman is found on the beach… K.O. Netflix, streaming now No one does visceral city grit like the French. Bastien has lived as a recluse since accidentally killing his opponent Enzo in an MMA fight three years ago. Now, Enzo's widow tracks him down as, essentially, he owes her one. Her request? Find her missing teenage son. Tyler Perry's Straw Netflix, streaming now Between this and last month's release of She the People, Mr Tyler Perry is getting himself around. This offering, however, is far more stark than May's fare. Here, one mum's day unfurls as it goes from tricky to catastrophic. Pushed to the precipice by a world that seems indifferent to her plight (until they can livestream it), she soon gets attention when she unwittingly holds up a bank.
Telegraph
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
How David Attenborough changed sport forever
The closest most of us associate the name Sir David Attenborough with the history of sport on television is his memorable commentary during an episode of Planet Earth II, broadcast in 2016. That was his breathless voiceover of the annual contest between freshly hatched iguana babies and racer snakes on the Galapagos Islands, a face-off which held the nation transfixed when that extraordinary footage of a life-or-death dash for the shoreline was first aired. But, unlikely as it may seem, the fact is Attenborough is also responsible for some of the few moments of the BBC's once prodigious sporting output that remain standing. Because, in the days before he became renowned for bringing us ever closer to the drama of the natural world, Attenborough was a hugely influential television controller. A wonderful moment on Centre Court as the crowd rises for Sir David Attenborough 💚 #Wimbledon — Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 1, 2024 Never mind the landmark series he commissioned like Civilisation, Monty Python's Flying Circus and the Old Grey Whistle Test, he is also the man who kept Match of the Day on our screens. Plus, he was so persuasive in his role as a telly executive he even managed to get the notoriously conservative Wimbledon authorities to change the colour of the tournament balls to yellow (eventually). Not to forget that, when millions of us hunker down to watch the final moments of the World Snooker Championship this weekend, we have one person to thank for it being on the box: David Attenborough. Back in the 1960s, while still in his early thirties, Attenborough had tired of his early career as a television executive and was studying for a postgraduate degree at the London School of Economics. But the BBC had long noted his innovative approach to programming and, with its new second television station struggling to make its presence known, persuaded him to become the second controller of BBC2, taking over in March 1965. His idea was to create a channel which, he once explained, 'catered to all levels of brow'. There was to be no traditional Reithian snobbery under his watch: all licence-fee payers would be invited to his channel. Not least fans of sport. On taking control, one of his first tasks was to rescue a programme commissioned by his predecessor Michael Peacock. Match of the Day had begun the previous August, its purpose to offer televised snippets of Saturday's football. And it had not gone down well in the corridors of the Football League. Those in charge of the game had always been wary of television, fearing that showing matches beyond the annual FA Cup final and the occasional England game would have a detrimental effect on live attendances. Thus it was decided among the game's hierarchy that the experimental first season of recorded highlights would be the last. But the new BBC2 boss was more than keen to keep the programme going. And in a meeting with the trepidatious blazers, Attenborough managed to assuage their doubts. He did it, he told a documentary to mark Match of the Day 's 50th anniversary, 'on the basis that nobody watched BBC2, which was more or less true. BBC2 was only visible in a small part of the country – London and Birmingham – and it had a tiny number of viewers'. 'Don't worry, no one's watching' is hardly the most compelling sell. But it worked. The Football League signed off on a new season-deal. Soon after which, thanks to Attenborough's shrewd negotiating skills, the show entered sporting folklore. Four years later, in 1969, Attenborough finally convinced the government to allow the BBC to introduce a new technology that had long since taken root in the USA and Japan: colour television. It required, however, expensive kit. And Attenborough needed something that would prove its vast superiority over bog-standard black and white to persuade viewers to fork out. So he called a meeting of senior producers, instructing all of them to come up with ideas. The best was a suggestion to embrace the game in which colour is absolutely central to its processes: snooker. Attenborough seized on the thought, sought the opinion of the established radio commentator Ted Lowe and immediately commissioned Lowe's idea for a show called Pot Black, a weekly competition involving eight players competing in one-frame challenges. Although available in colour for those who had new sets, for the rest of the nation it remained monochrome. Which explains Lowe's infamous attempt to clarify things in those early days: 'For those of you who are watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green.' It was Attenborough, moreover, who, in 1973, in his new capacity of director of programmes for the whole corporation, encouraged Grandstand to screen highlights of the semi-final and final of the World Snooker Championship. In 1978, after the tournament moved to the Crucible, daily coverage was introduced, an innovation that has remained in place ever since. Snooker was not the only sport he brought to the television audience in colour, either. He loved tennis, in particular Wimbledon. 'I mean, it is a wonderful plot: you've got drama, you've got everything,' he once told the Radio Times. 'And it's a national event, it's got everything going for it.' So his new colour BBC2, he decided, would feature not just recorded highlights in the evening as was traditional, but live matches during the day. Thus it was Attenborough who was responsible for half the British workforce feigning illness in order to spend the afternoon behind closed curtains watching the tennis. Even then, he was always seeking improvements. He noticed, while watching his station's output, that it was hard for the home audience to follow white balls moving across green turf. Why not introduce yellow coating for the balls? The International Tennis Federation did a bit of investigation and discovered Attenborough was right: it was not just the green of the All England Club lawns, yellow was a much more visible colour against all the surfaces on which the game was played. In 1972, it decreed yellow was the way forward. Though being Wimbledon, the annual fortnight did not adopt the Attenborough yellow until 1986. By which time the great man himself had long moved on into his career as a nature documentary maker. There can be no doubt he was rather good at that, too. But it is in sport we have a lot to be grateful to him for. Thanks to his hapless successors in charge of sport, the BBC has largely wilted in the face of rights challenges from more commercially muscular operations. The fact is, there is not much more remaining in the corporation's portfolio that does not have, some six decades on, a mark left on it by Attenborough. Even in sport, it seems, he is a national treasure.
