Casa Alom, Claire Balding and Isa Guha are leading the BBC's coverage of Wimbledon this year. Photo: BBC
Ah, the traditional sounds of an English summer: the loud blow of a continental tennis racket on a brave British hopeful, Tim Hemnan, speaking reasonable things reasonable, the audience at home throwing the remote at the TV because of the BBC reports.
Day one started with a BBC double blunder: an iPlayer glitch that caused viewers to miss the first games of rookie Novak Djokovic (spoilers: he beat some unfortunate young skinhead). and then we had to spend our first year without Sue Barker.
Accordingly, Wimbledon has a new host today: Casa Alom. A rising star for the BBC, he has presented several Commonwealth Games but will not be familiar to most sports fans.
The evening's review show abandoned the format of live studio analysis and highlights for a chatty, informal wandering through the day's play. With a rookie host and a lot of technical issues, pre-recorded log links are the equivalent of slapping a service over the network just to get it up and running, minimizing risk. No McEnroe ranting in sight.
The program will be broadcast at 21:00 each evening on BBC2, with late matches completed on iPlayer or, in the first week, on BBC1. If Sir Andy Murray is playing a harrowing five-set thriller at sunset, is there any other match for Andy? – The Beeb says the game will be followed by a highlights show, which should mitigate the midstream channel switching that has been causing blood pressure in recent years. Tennis can't take over both major BBC channels, at least some fools will argue that given that BBC2 was showing a program on Monday night called Your Body Revealed with Kate Garraway, why not?
In any case, Casa had a better evening than Garraway's guest with a dubious gallbladder. He is a handsome and affable type, a good combo, and started out with a fun chatter. It lasted barely a minute before we got a good quarter of an hour from Djokovic and then some more easy wins for a rookie presenter, interviews with BBC colleagues Feliciano Lopez, Andrew Castle and Joanna Conta. Casa also spoke about the actions of the homegrown contestants and wandered around in a gray linen shirt with rolled up sleeves, saying how much he loves Wimbledon because he is busy and fussy. Great as hell.
If there was something like children's television in this, people who complain that there are too many yakkity-yak and not enough action in flashy shows can't complain; footage from the featured matches took up most of the show. I personally could do without my sports anchors addressing the camera and saying 'we're so behind you, we really want you to go far Jody' to a competitor just because he's British but overall a harmless newcomer if not enough flair and analysis.
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