Aidan Smith: The English Game is a poor substitute for the real thing

How was your Saturday? Just like last Saturday, only worse, though probably not as bad as this Saturday’s going to be? Thought so. I feel your pain.
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 18: Julian Fellowes of "Belgravia" speaks on stage during the EPIX segment of the 2020 Winter TCA Tour at The Langham Huntington, Pasadena on January 18, 2020 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)PASADENA, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 18: Julian Fellowes of "Belgravia" speaks on stage during the EPIX segment of the 2020 Winter TCA Tour at The Langham Huntington, Pasadena on January 18, 2020 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 18: Julian Fellowes of "Belgravia" speaks on stage during the EPIX segment of the 2020 Winter TCA Tour at The Langham Huntington, Pasadena on January 18, 2020 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)

Did you yearn in a way you never have before for Andy Considine to be climbing over the back of your team’s shot-shy striker and “escorting” him from the penalty-box with the kindly care of a nightclub’s bull-necked bouncer?

Did you pine for a hail-fellow-well-met greeting from Steven Naismith, another example of Scottish football’s social undistancing? The chance to thrill again to Connor Goldson’s manly prance, socks rolled over his knees? Or Stevie Mallan attempting to tackle? Or Scott Brown with that look of the undead? Or Allan McGregor spontaneously combusting? Or any of the other guys-you-love-to-bait embellishing our game with their signature moves?

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Would you, to see 90 minutes again, have eaten a date-expired pie, sat in the rain-battered front row, surrounded by imbeciles whose “analysis” irritates you from the first whistle, and submitted to a five-nil tanking from your deadliest rivals?

Even allowing for its Victorian setting, The English Game falls into the usual drama trap of unrealistic action on the football fieldEven allowing for its Victorian setting, The English Game falls into the usual drama trap of unrealistic action on the football field
Even allowing for its Victorian setting, The English Game falls into the usual drama trap of unrealistic action on the football field

OK, but answer me this: would you watch a drama about football if the real thing was stuck in pandemic lockdown? Would you watch if the drama was the creation of Julian Fellowes? Then you’re a braver man than me, or a more desperate one.

Fellowes, if you don’t know – and lucky you – was responsible for Downton Abbey, a show which ran for 742 series and fulfilled his slavering obsession with class: upstairs and downstairs, masters and servants, dukes and cooks, toffs and toerags. A key Fellowes scene is a butler taking a tape measure to the dining table to make sure the cutlery is the correct width apart because such matters are important and won us two world wars and made Britain great. Maybe so, but watching this interminable panoply play out so dully and with hardly any decent jokes just made me want to gouge out my eyes, not much caring whether I used the spoon for the quince jam or the soup ladle.

Well, I did watch The English Game, the first episode on Netflix at any rate. The story – a true one – intrigued: how in 1879 a Glasgow stonemason demonstrated to the poshos of Eton the art of passing the ball, completely revolutionising the game. Even Fellowes couldn’t muck this up, could he?

Let’s start with the actual football, for it’s the hardest thing for TV, or the movies, to depict authentically. In a hundred and one previous dramatisations, it seemed that the good guys were losing until the closing minutes. From nowhere they grabbed an equaliser, invariably scored by the second lead, the one given what funny lines there were in the leaden script. Then, with mere seconds left, the hero set off on a mazy run beating one, two, five, nine, 17 in the bad guys’ team before teeing himself up for an overhead kick which whizzed into the top corner of the net. On cue the crowd clapped, the soundtrack amplified the cheering, the victors hugged, the beaten goalie lay disconsolately in the mud, the love interest’s smile at the hero said “You’re on tonight” and the gnarled old-school manager remained impassive until, walking off alone, he permitted himself a little jig of joy.

Cliched. Ludicrous. Improbable (certainly when you watch my team). The portrayal of the beautiful game would have been even more risible if Sylvester Stallone had been allowed to pull rank in Escape to Victory. As the big Hollywood star he insisted he got to strike the winning goal. It was pointed out to him: “But Sly, you’re the keeper.” And another thing: why are actors so bad at football? I appreciate that to film the game you need to break down play, plot moves, direct personnel hither and yon and that all of this ruins its essence – but thesps will invariably prod the ball gingerly as if it’s a strange object washed up on the beach or a hedgehog acting dead.

For The English Game, Fellowes appeared to have an advantage over Escape to Victory director John Huston in that one of his teams were required to play as if they’d almost never seen a football before or it was of little relevance. The Old Etonians had become FA Cup masters by pushing and shoving and charging and barging. Defending their trophy, they faced Darwen, a mill team from Lancashire in the quarter-finals. A doddle, yes?

Well, the cotton-weavers had recruited a couple of Scots including Fergus “Fergie” Suter who played the game differently. Darwen were smaller and scrawnier on account of being poorer than their opponents so there would have been little point in them engaging in a physical contest with Lord Snooty and his chums, well-nourished on account of inherited wealth. Fergie, more scrawny still, had developed an ingenious tactic: “We pass. We move. We pass again.”

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Still, though, the match sequences in the opening instalment were lousy. The clodhopping of the Old Etonians was adequately conveyed but from Fergie and his team I never felt I was watching football’s equivalent of the atom being cracked. The ball shuttled around in what we were led to believe was a radical manner but the epochal cup-tie still ended up looking like a kids’ kickabout, which is the fate of all games staged for the screen, big or small. Could The English Game have avoided trying to mimic match action? That would have been radical. The drama could have concentrated on the pint-sized Scot and the strapping Englishman with the luxuriant hair and revolved around their battle of wills, ideologies and, yes, class. But neither of them – Fergie is played by Kevin Guthrie – is given any good lines. Fellowes must have been glad to return to the safer ground, post-match, of the Eton dining table groaning with fine food. Meanwhile the Scots repaired to the alehouses hoping for a bag-off.

So a failure, and not even a notable one. The first football drama I can remember was United! in the mid-60s which used clips from Stoke City games. The Manageress and Footballer’s Wives stayed pretty much off-field. I suppose this points up football’s greater glories: nothing can beat the real thing. Which is why we’re missing it like mad.

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