UEFA Cup Final, ITV4, Wednesday, 7pm
5:47pm Thursday 28th May 2009 in TV By Andrew Mosley
UEFA Cup Final, ITV4, Wednesday, 7pm I FOCUS on this not because I want to review a football match — there would be no point, it’s either good or bad – but to mention the commentary.Football commentators come in for a lot of criticism, mostly for managing to further ruin already boring games by adding their dull witterings to the generally pointless equation.
Peter Drury, however, surpassed himself with his 1970s-style politically incorrect wit in the Shakhtar Donetsk v Werder Bremen final, the foreign bases of the two competing teams presumably being the reason the game was shunted on to ITV4.
The Ukraines triumphed over the Germans by 2-1 after extra-time and Drury can’t wait to show off the fact he’s done a bit of historical research. The cameraman has already devoted most of his attention to a woman who looks like an Eastern European prostitute, but who Drury describes as “pretty”, and now it’s down to the heavy stuff. “This is not Kiev,” he says, proving he knows another, bigger, place in the Ukraine. “This is for the mining towns. This is for the pit men of Donetsk,” he goes on, forgetting the fact it’s actually for the players themselves, who, having performed to a large-ish TV audience on a Europe-wide stage, will now be keen to leave their mining friends behind and move on to pastures new and richer.
The camera pans on to the defeated Germans and Drury comes over all Stan Boardman when he blurts out: “The dam has well and truly been busted.” A truly Fawlty Towers-esque “don’t mention the war” moment, which must have caused Guardian readers all over the country to choke on their late night cups of Fairtrade coco.
Fortunately though, this was on ITV4 and they were all probably watching a BBC arts channel.
One can’t imagine, however, that if a commentator were to make a joke about a disaster in this country, such as Hillsborough, for instance, or make a crack about the Twin Towers in a game in which the USA was involved, it would be left ignored.
Funnily enough, no bad jokes about Manchester United were made during last night’s Champions League Final against Barcelona.
Midsomer Murders, ITV1, Wednesday, 8pm I MAKE no apology for returning once again to Midsomer, not because I want to bang on about how many murders there are in the picturesque county, but rather to mention how programme makers can never resist resorting to cliché when rock music is involved.
This week’s guest star is rocker Suzi Quatro, who rolls into town to perform in the comeback gig of veteran blues band, the amusingly titled Hired Gun. DCI Barnaby (John Nettles) is a fan and, coincidentally, the group’s appearance at the Midsomer Festival re-opens an old case involving the disappearance of drummer Ginger around 30 years ago.
Unfortunately, the gig is curtailed during the first song when Quatro takes a short walk down the Devilgate Drive and is electrocuted and, as the programme progresses, one by one the band are killed off and sent to that great gig in the sky.
Each time a rocker speaks he swigs from a bottle of vodka, acts obnoxiously and utters inanities such as “cool, man”. There’s a mental illegitimate daughter called Willow and drugs casualties all over the place. Amusingly, the guitarist is called Axe. No clichéd stone is left unturned by the writers.
Whodunnit? No-one knows and Barnaby’s not prepared to believe it could be one of his heroes. Obviously it turns out that it is and, sadly for Barnaby, the arrest of the guitarist and the death of several other band members signals the end for Hired Gun.
Another winning mix of gruesome deaths and slightly camp cheesiness from the Midsomer Murders team.
