Why does racing make for such terrible television?

The sport of kings is unparalleled for drama but its small-screen history is ignoble at best

Fit young men and women, money, danger, glory, tragedy and plenty of hay to roll in: horse racing is a scriptwriter’s dream. Or, at least, it should be. Despite having all the ingredients you could wish for, television’s efforts in dramatising racing have been less “Grand National winner” and more “pulled-up in the 2.45 at Plumpton”.

Trainer was the BBC’S 1991 attempt to replace Howard’s Way in the key Sunday-night “soap opera for middle-class people who would never admit to watching a soap” slot. On form alone, this should have been a winner:

Howard’s Way supremo Gerard Glaister was charged with swapping yachts for gee-gees and delivering another ratings good thing, and the cast had excellent pedigree. Trainer starred the alarmingly handsome Mark Greenstreet as,

The book’s saucy passages were a coming-of-age ritual in the 1980s but the thrill was lost on TV

wait for it, a trainer. The character had talent, as well as some deeply Nineties hair, but not the horses to match his ambitions. Drama was to ensue. Greenstreet was, at that point, a big TV name who had been in the running to play James Bond before losing out to Timothy Dalton. David Mccallum (The Man

From U.N.C.L.E) co-starred as a big-time gambler, Susannah York was a fruity widow and Nigel Davenport a wealthy owner.

Filmed in Compton, near Newbury, much of the action was set in the local boozer (this bit at least was true to life). The first season was an honest if misguided attempt to tell a tale of racing folk, but vaguely arty long-lens shots of horses on the gallops and generally limp, silly or just boring stories did not deliver on ratings.

As many owners have tried in the past, the BBC thought a change of stable might do the business and shifted it to Wednesday night. The second season saw it dial down the horses and increase the amount of rumpy-pumpy, but there was no hope and the vet had to be called. Greenstreet was hardly seen on TV again, but has become a successful writer and director.

In embarrassing BBC drama flop terms, Trainer was a sort of table-setter for Eldorado, which came along the next year and burned briefly but ludicrously.

Trainer did, however, achieve that rare feat of uniting both people inside racing and the general public: everyone agreed it was an absolute shocker.

Ireland may be dominating jump racing but, lest they get too cocky, it should be noted that they too have brought the sport into disrepute via TV drama. Fifteen years after Trainer, it was thought safe to try another television serial about racing and the result was RTE One’s six-parter co-production with the BBC, Rough Diamond. It was about a person who was a bit of a rough diamond, and that is the level of storytelling sophistication we are talking about here.

The character notes from the show blurb tell you all you need to know: Aidan: An impoverished racehorse trainer.

Charlie: A rich racehorse owner. Yolanda: Glamorous wife of Charlie.

Can you guess what happens? Of course you can. Some of the horses on screen were better at acting than the bipeds, and at least the horses had an excuse for their scenery-chewing. “So bad that many involved in the making of this were literally never seen again on TV,” said one show insider.

Back on home soil, it took a surprisingly long time for television to take a crack at Jilly Cooper’s Rivals. The book, and especially certain saucy passages, was a coming-of-age ritual for teenagers and a delight for readers of all ages in the 1980s, but the thrill was somewhat lost in the translation on to the small screen. Caddish Rupert Campbell-black was deliciously cruel and arrogant on the page, but rather naff in the TV movie. The same could be said of another Cooper adaptation,

Riders, in the early 1990s. There have been some decent racing films, but the 90-minute movie format seems better suited: unlikely hero, obstacles, eventual triumph is a racing certainty in terms of story. Perhaps episodic television is just not a suitable format for horsey dramas.

And while every sporting series suffers from the fact that it is almost impossible to recreate on-field action effectively, racing has additional challenges with its four-legged actors that other sports dramas do not. Even the financial clout of HBO could not deliver a racing TV drama: Luck, starring Dustin Hoffman, was cancelled one year in after horses died.

It might also be that the people involved in racing have not been especially keen to share their secrets with telly types, and it is hard to see how a production could work without a lot of inside track. The gossip you hear on course today about jockeys, owners and trainers should make for a classic, but television keeps falling at the first hurdle.