Ordinary Gweilo

Giles over at Misohoni mentions the coverage on ATV World of the Arsenal vs Celta Vigo game in the Champions League.

It was a great win for Arsenal but what spoiled the match for me were the local Gweillio commentators who seemed to be a “poor man’s” Andy Gray and Alan Parry.

I didn’t watch that game, but I caught a few minutes of the PSV v Feyenoord game on TVB Pearl last night. Their commentating team is Andrew Sams and Mark Grainger: Andrew Sams is an Australian who has no interest in football but does commentary on every sport imaginable for Pearl, and Mark is a Brit who knows his football (he used to play for the Hong Kong national team – but we won’t hold that against him) and he fills the “Andy Gray” role tolerably well. Andrew Sams tries hard, but is a very poor imitation of Martin Tyler and does little more than read out the names of the players.

It is somewhat strange to see an hour and a half of primetime on a Sunday night given over to a game from what must be the 4th or 5th most interesting league in Europe, but the cynic in me assumes that it is very cheap TV and possibly attracts a larger Chinese audience than ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ and whatever else they would otherwise be showing.

Welcome to the crazy world of English language TV in Hong Kong!