The English Game, Netflix
Julian Fellowes has been a busy chap of late. Not only is the Downton prequel, Belgravia, beginning on ITV but he's got another drama launched on Netflix.
The English Game has got a big push with the lead actors touring the TV studios before the lockdown and subsequently this week it was running at number two in the Netflix charts in the UK.
And what a time to launch a new drama, although I suspect that for most of us home working and home schooling means less time for watching television than had been predicted.
The English Game is classic Fellowes - a study of class.
This time he takes us to the late 1800s, roughly equidistant between the pre-Victoria Belgravia and the early 20th century Downton.
It's 1879 and the Old Etonians have been drawn against Darwen, a working class mill team from Lancashire in the quarter-final of the FA Cup.
The tournament is only eight years old at this stage and the game is very different from what we are used to today. It was almost a cross between rugby and association football then. Players would come centrally down the pitch in packs and barge their way towards the goal with the ball.
You would assume the physical nature of the competition would suit the mill workers, but it is the Old Etonians who are the more robust and perhaps a little corrupt, given that most of the FA board are also members of their team.
The first match is drawn and the toffs will not allow extra time, sending Darwen back on the long journey to Lancashire and leaving them with the expense of travelling south again the following weekend.
But it's not just the posh lads who are open to a bit of cheating. Mill owner James Walsh has used his money to enlist the help of Scottish players, Fergus Suter and Jimmy Love. It's essentially the beginning of professionalism in the game.
It's against the rules of the amateur sport but the Old Etonians overlook it, certain that they will beat the mill hands whatever the circumstances.
I'm not sure how the English Game came about. Is it an effort to draw more men into the Fellowes world of period drama? If so, it's a failure.
There's not a lot of subtlety here. The good guys are the underdogs, the working class heroes. The dark side are the moneyed aristocrats, dismissive of ordinary people and using their power to get what they want.
It's a simple and ineffective plot. Take the first match for instance.
The Old Etonians are dominating with their physicality and are five goals to one in the lead at half time. The Darwen villagers gathered together outside the mill, somehow getting message back in Lancashire, are desolate.
At half-time Suter, the Glasgow wizard, takes over as captain and introduces the team to the new style of Scottish football where you spread out. Pass and move is the new mantra.
"You don’t always have to run the ball forwards," he declares, demonstrating the width he requires with a wave of his hands and a shimmy of the hips. The Darwen players immediately understand and instantly transform into the new style of football to draw the game 5-5.
There's a couple of scrawny sub-plots. Love is taken with the widowed lady running their guest house, Suter is making eyes at a street singer and the mill owners, including a reluctant Walsh, have introduced a five per cent pay cut for all their staff.
Watch it if you're desperate for entertainment but there are much better things out there.
