Because I subscribe to The Spectator, I read a lot of criticism of the BBC, but it is one of a handful of stations I listen to while in the car (on SiriusXM). And Wednesday evening, driving home from dinner at Greek Islands Taverna, I heard an interview with Paul Theroux about his book Deep South. It is not his most recent book, not even his most recent travel book, yet someone at the BBC thought it would be interesting to have him talk about it now. Not for a few minutes, as might be expected here in the U.S., but for an hour. The host of the show had him read a few excerpts, and asked him questions, and then opened it up to questions from people around the world: New Zealand, Italy, the United States. Most were fans, but one caller suggested that Theroux came across as too negative in his books. “I’m one of the most affable people you’ll ever meet,” Theroux told the man laughing and, having met him, I nodded in agreement. He described himself, in his books, as “unsparing” – which seemed a very accurate description. I reached home before the interview had ended and listened to the last 10 minutes while sitting in our condo parking lot and thinking how I’d never hear such an exchange on NPR.
Every week I look forward to the new episode of Lucky Hank, the new AMC series starring Bob Odenkirk, and based on a novel by Richard Russo, and every week I'm mildly disappointed. Odenkirk plays an English professor at a small Pennsylvania college (I majored in English at a small Pennsylvania college) so the show has obvious interest for me. But as often with such shows - not that there are a lot of them - this one demonstrates a strained relationship with reality, particularly in its portrayal of the English faculty. College professors may be petty, but they're not juvenile - revving their car engines, for instance, under a colleague's office window so she can't have a consultation with a student; barging in on a colleague's class because of a need to talk. When scenes are so far out of the realm of possibility, they put the whole show into question.
I expected to be annoyed by the Oscars last night and instead I was charmed by the genuine emotion of the winners. Though when they mentioned the historic importance of their triumphs I had to remind myself that they were being rewarded for playing fictional characters, not for inventing a life-saving vaccine.
I’ve been a little under the weather this week – tentative cough, occasionally runny nose – but it’s been enough to put me in bed most afternoons, where I’ve been systematically going through the pile of old New Yorkers and watching telecasts of spring training games. By the way, I’m not sure all the new rules to speed up the game are beneficial for people who like to read while watching. The mics on players while they’re in the field are another distraction; I had to look up from a paragraph the other afternoon to hear Aaron Judge speak with affection about his two dachshunds.
Despite all this, I was making progress through the pile – and enjoying a great sense of accomplishment – when yesterday I picked up the anniversary issue (a dog replacing Eustace Tilly on the cover) and found a long piece by Lawrence Wright on his hometown of Austin and an almost equally long piece by David Remnick on Salman Rushdie. I finished them both, making occasional jumps in the latter, and look forward to dispatching the remaining issues this afternoon. I don’t get the MLB Network and there are no games on ESPN.
I stopped watching "Morning Joe" because I got too annoyed at the host, who seemed to much prefer talking to listening to his guests. But tuning in this week to watch the coverage of Biden's trip to Poland I found a new pleasure: scanning, as the garrulous Joe goes on and on, the faces on the split screen - from guests to MSNBC reporters to his co-anchor wife - and noting how the expressions range from boredom to exasperation.
Sunday evening I settled down to watch the Australian Open on ESPN, the first grand slam since the U.S. Open in September. The first match featured Coco Gauff, the next, Rafael Nadal. Because men’s matches at grand slams are best-of-five, I went to bed long before the end of the second match, but waking up the next morning I saw that Nadal had won.
I also saw the Gauff match again, as it was being replayed on the Tennis Channel. Instead of giving us matches that were played while most of us were asleep, someone had the brilliant idea to show us matches we had seen before we hit the sack. It was followed by the Nadal match.
In the afternoon, I turned on ESPN (2 I think) and found that they had retaken coverage of the tournament, in the form of replays of course, since it was the middle of the night in Australia. And there on the court was a familiar face: Coco Gauff. She was followed by Señor Nadal.
Last night, hoping to watch a new day of matches, a new set of players, I couldn’t find any. ESPN was showing the Buccaneers-Cowboys game, even though it was also available on ABC. And, apparently because of the unique rights ESPN has to the Open, the Tennis Channel was not only not showing live matches, it was not televising replays, at least not of the Open. (It showed instead a match from Indian Wells, featuring – perhaps you guessed it – Rafael Nadal.) It seems to me that if one station buys rights to a tournament they should show it – every day of it – and if they decide that something is more important, like an NFL playoff game, they should let another station televise it while their attention is elsewhere. It shows the low priority tennis has in this country.