A LIFE ON SCREEN – STEPHEN FRY, BBC2, 9pm
“You can’t live your life without Stephen Fry,” we’re told, but I’d disagree. Nonetheless, those who find Stephen Fry pompous these days might actually like this documentary as it reminds you of the days when he appeared in brilliant comedies like Blackadder and The Young Ones. He wasn’t always a luvvie BAFTA host or a dabbling TV presenter. This tribute takes us back to his great days, but also tells his difficult personal story, which is far more interesting than anything he’s done on screen.
The story starts in Hampstead in 1957, but his family soon moved to Norfolk and he says it was “agony to be so remote” as the cool London kids were going to cinemas and milk bars and he was stuck in flat old Yokeltown.
There followed some youthful brushes with the law but education brought him back into civilisation, and it was at Cambridge in the 1970s where he met his first comedy partner, Hugh Laurie.
There is lots of luvvie emotion and glowing contributions from Laurie, Michael Sheen, Alan Davies and John Lloyd but Fry’s discussions about his battles with bipolar disorder offset all of that frilly nonsense.
DAVID BECKHAM: FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME, BBC1, 9pm
It’s easy to dismiss footballers as loutish, spoiled, stunted boys, but not when it comes to David Beckham. Everyone, even those who curl into the foetal position upon hearing the Match of The Day tune, must admit that David Beckham is a very, very nice man.
“I want to be the first person to play a game of football on every continent,” he says in this TV special, but it’s not some conceited ambition of his; it’s all part of his charitable work for UNICEF. He sets off to play games on street corners and scrubby little pitches where football might be the only leisure activity available to the impoverished local children. All that’s needed is a ball and some pals working as a team, and that’s what Beckham emphasises about the beautiful game: that it has the power to unite people (unless you live in Glasgow).
Travelling to places like Buenos Aires, the Antarctic, Papua New Guinea and Nepal, he’ll be faced with the challenge of playing football in a rainforest one day and then running about in snow boots the next, but always for a good cause.
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