Football has come home
SO all of a sudden we’ve got football coming out of our ears. (Yes, a strange way of phrasing it, I know, but I rather like the image.) I’m talking specifically, of course, about live Premier League football on free-to-air television.
Which, for the BBC, is a particularly big deal.
After decades when it literally didn’t have any — and, yes, I literally do mean literally, as in 28 years without so much as a nanosecond of it — the BBC now has its second such fixture in, what, four days.
Exciting? You bet it is! Right now, they don’t get much bigger than... let me see now, which one is it again? Ah, yes, here we are .... Norwich City versus Everton (MATCH OFTHE DAY LIVE, BBC2, 5.30pm, continuing on BBC1 from 7pm).
Can Norwich pull off a shock result, or at least a bit of a surprising one, and keep alive their chances of Premier League survival? Can Everton...erm...er... oh, God knows... can Everton win the match instead?
All right, it’s maybe not the ultimate nail-biter for the neutral supporter. But it’ll do. It’ll more than do.
Football has been back for a whole week now, and I’m sure the novelty will eventually wear off, but it hasn’t worn off just yet. Or at least it hasn’t for me.
I’ve even found myself plumping for the option with the weird fake crowd noise, where a free kick on the half-way line can be greeted with mild euphoria. Funny old game. Oh, and just so we’re covering all our bases, there’s also free-to-air coverage of Manchester United v Sheffield United tonight on Sky’s Pick channel, on Freeview 11.
Of course, the return of televised football pales into insignificance when you remember the other big treat lined up for us tonight.
Namely, the final of THE GREAT BRITISH SEWING BEE (BBC1, 9pm).
It’s been a significant series in a lot of ways, this one.The first to go out on BBC1 and the first to run to 10 episodes.
And the first where, as far as my weekly reviews are concerned, the fact that the word “sewers”, as in people who sew, is spelt the same as “sewers”, as in drains, hasn’t been the source of boundless juvenile hilarity on my part.
But which of three contestants who’ve made it to the end — that’s Matt, Nicole and Clare, as if you need me to remind you — will be taking home the disappointingly underwhelming trophy?
And when the other two see it, will they be all that bothered that they’ve lost?
Elsewhere tonight, in GEORGE CLARKE’S AMAZING SPACES
George meets a woman who plans to make a family home from a run-down shed.