A new film about mercurial snooker star Alex Higgins aired on the BBC last night - but only online through its iPlayer service.
The Rack Pack dramatises snooker’s boom years in the late 1970s and 80s, a time when 18 million people watched Dennis Taylor's world championship victory over Steve Davis and Snooker Loopy was a top 10 hit.
Award-winning English actor Luke Treadaway was given the difficult task of capturing the volatile Higgins.
Davis, his arch-rival in the sport, is played by Will Merrick, while Jimmy White features through James Bailey and Caolan Byrne takes on the role of Taylor.
The comedy drama spans from 1972, when Higgins won his first world championship, through to his second and last title in 1982 and his retirement in 1990.
The Belfast man endured a life-long battle with alcohol and died in 2010 after years of ill health.
The iPlayer's first feature-length drama – directed by Brian Welsh (Black Mirror) – was made available online last night to coincide with the UK Masters snooker final, a tournament won by Higgins in 1978 and 1981.
The 2010 documentary Alex Higgins: The People’s Champion, narrated by James Nesbitt, was also screened on BBC Four last night.
The Rack Pack depicts players including Thorburn, Knowles, Griffiths, Stevens, Reardon and Werbeniuk, but centres on the rivalry between Higgins and Davis – who went on to win six world titles – and most of the comic lines come from Higgins and Davis’s manager Barry Hearn (played by Kevin Bishop).
On first meeting the pale-faced Davis, Hearn says: “I bet he gets sunburnt when he opens the fridge.”
The film recreates the emotional scenes in 1982 when a teary Higgins invited his wife Lynn (played by Nichola Burley), carrying their daughter Lauren, to take part in the world championship trophy presentation.
Higgins refers to Davis as a “robot” for his methodical style of play and says “at least I miss with style”.
Yet as Davis goes to on to make huge money via product endorsements, an autobiography and a TV show, the often obnoxious Higgins hits the bottle, squanders his money and sees his marriage fall apart.
Higgins contends that “`I’m exactly what the sport needs” but perhaps the most prescient quote in the film is: “I’m a snooker player. In the end, you’re always on your own.”
The Rack Pack is available to watch on the BBC iPlayer.
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REVIEW
IT’S a good title for a good film. The Rack Pack is a play on Sinatra’s `Rat Pack’ and at one point Alex Higgins quotes Ol’ Blue Eyes by saying “I did it my way”.
There’s no doubting that Higgins was one of a kind. And while The Rack Pack is in many ways a tragic story as the Belfast man goes from riches to rags and loses his life-long fight with alcohol, it also entertains as he entertained adoring snooker fans for years.
Any portrayal of Higgins nowadays has to live up to Richard Dormer’s pitch-perfect turn in his one-man stage show Hurricane, and Luke Treadaway never reaches those heights.
One massive drawback is that his accent is more Geordie than nordie; and in the film he looks more like Nick Cave than Higgins.
Will Merrick plays a somewhat one-dimensional Steve Davis – “I’m so boring my nickname is Steve Davis” - who drinks milk while Higgins downs pints and smokes during matches.
The film is a fantastic slice of 80s nostalgia, however, with a great soundtrack.
Higgins says to his manager, “Why can’t you get me on Blankety Blank” and, before a match against Davis, tells him, “Here we are, Cagney and f***ing Lacey”.
Oliver Reed pops up at one point, while Nichola Burley is excellent as Lynn Higgins and James Bailey (mullet and all) is great as Jimmy White.
The last thing to appear on the screen, fittingly, is Steve Davis’s tribute to Higgins: “The one true genius that snooker has produced.”
