The Indycars on Channel 5 are, in one way, ideal viewing at about half-one in the morning. The commentators are unfailingly dull , and the action (My brother: “So basically all they do is keep turning left?”) gets squished into forty minutes with little regard for bothering to explain when they’ve cut from one bit to another bit that happened half an hour later, which isn’t much help as the editing is of the usual random hacking standard of most of the sports programmes Five imports from the US. Lead changes are about as frequent as they are pointless. Round, round, round they go. And again. And again. Eventually someone wins, but you’ve fallen asleep long before all that.
However, there’s a slight problem, in that you may well not have fallen asleep before the ‘grid sequence’. This isn’t good, because the grid sequence is one of the most indefinably eerie things currently on television. What you get are computer-generated models of the cars rolling out onto a black and green wireframe reconstruction of the track. Then, above each car, the disembodied head and shoulders of its driver, announcing their name and the car number. “Tony Kanaan, Car 33.” Then it moves on to the next one. The whole exercise is conducted with the minimum of atmosphere, these one-second glimpses of complete strangers, no music or anything, just disembodied heads checking off the name and number, almost like they’re heading off to their own cremation. Brr.
Still, at least it doesn’t feature James “Look Mum! I’m Out Of Murray’s Shadow!” Allen, which is a sort of blessing.