Jack’s such a good sport
JACK WHITEHALL’S SPORTING NATION
BBC1, 8.30pm “THINK of me as Sir Cliff Richard during a rain delay,” declares Jack Whitehall. “Here to entertain you until the covers come back off.”
During a summer of locked gates and empty sports stadiums, the comedian hosts this celebration of Britain’s finest sporting moments and achievements. In a monologue that is so sincere it is almost unnerving, an earnest Jack says: “We are a nation of sporting fanatics. Sport runs in our blood. It’s our passion and our pastime, our future and our past.
“But sometimes it’s only when something is taken away that we realise how much we miss it.”
And so, as we mourn the loss of sport as we know it, for now, with no European football championships, Olympic Games, Wimbledon, Open golf championship or Ryder Cup this summer, Jack is here with a ton of archive clips.
From the odd events of the 1908 Olympics to Britain’s unforgettable Super Saturday at London 2012 when “the gold flowed like water”, he asks why it is that when the United Kingdom hosts a major sports event, the whole world stops to watch.
In collaboration with some sports writers, Jack takes us on a journey through six themes that unite us. The show will bring together rich cultural nostalgia, social commentary and top-class athleticism to create a feel-good dive into our sporting past that will remind us how much we love it, and how we can’t wait for it to return. Overall, it’s a comedic love letter to British sport, for a nation that can’t get enough.
Jack concludes: “Someday soon the stands will fill and we’ll be home again.”