Well Read or Well Watched — our strand which looks at football in literature or cinema and finds those books and films which tell us more about the game, ourselves or, ideally, both.
Gerry Donaldson, Anna Walsh and Steve Graves join Neil Atkinson on the latest ‘Well Watched’ to talk about ‘The Damned United’, ‘Kes’ and ‘Zidane – A 21st Century Portrait’.
No audio here lads
Not playing for me, either.
Should be fine now? JG
Re ‘The Damned United’: great book, dull film. The prodcution was beset by problems. Stephen Frears was inked in to direct a film much more aligned to the book. It didn’t pan out because (if memory serves) a) he was offered a bigger job and b) the legal cases (Johnny Giles, brilliantly characterized as ‘the Irish shithouse’ in original drafts, and the family) brought against Peace and Faber.
Spot on about Red Riding, Neil. I’m a big Peace fan, indeed I’m writing about him as we speak, but I think the Ch4 films are even better than the novels: real works of art.