From remote Russia with love
RUSSIA WITH SIMON REEVE RTÉ2, TONIGHT, 8.25PM
IT’S probably fair to say that Russia has emerged with great and rather unexpected credit from this Word Cup.
All the doom-laden prophecies of Russian hooligans behaving like the Cossacks of legend sweeping down from the steppes to wreak havoc on the unwitting and innocent foreign visitors have proved to be inaccurate, thankfully.
In fact, if there’s one thing that many fans from around the world will take away from their Russian sojourn, it is just how bloody big the place really is.
That’s something people were aware of on a conceptual level, of course, and every school kid who paid even a semblance of attention in geography class knows that it is the largest country in the world, but the actual reality of the sheer scale of the place has stunned many fans.
Explorer Simon Reeve always gives good telly, and Russia With Simon Reeve (RTÉ2, tonight, 8.25pm) sees him travel to such remote places as the snow covered volcanoes of Kamchatka, which if memory serves me correctly is probably best known as a place name on the board game Risk.
He spends time with the reindeer herders of Yakutia before heading on to Vladivostok to look at the various foreign and ethnic influences on the old port...
The news that Elvis Costello has been forced to cancel some gigs because of a ‘particularly aggressive’ form of cancer will have come as a blow to fans, but there’s a welcome double bill about the man tonight.
Sky Arts has Discovering: Elvis Costello (tonight, 8pm), which looks at his early life and career, followed by a new episode of Video Killed The Radio Star (tonight, 9pm), which looks back at the stories behind some of the great man’s best videos.
If you’re still in a musical frame of mind, the really badly titled Smashing Hits! The 80s Pop Map of Britain and Ireland (BBC Four, tonight, 10pm) takes in Scotland, Wales and Ireland and looks at everything from the folk influence on Irish punk (really?) and talks to the likes of Bob Geldof and Clare Grogan from Altered Images.
Rather dubiously, it refers to Mike Peters as ‘the singer with legendary Welsh band The Alarm’, which is probably the first time the word ‘legendary’ has even been attached to that motley shower...
They haven’t quite gone home you know.
In fact, they still have one more match to play and the RTÉ team will present the third-place play-off between England and Belgium (RTÉ2, tomorrow, 2.45pm).