Monday 8 September 2008

A Brit in the Final of the US Open!

This is such a rare event that it demands to be blogged -- a Brit has made it to the final of a Grand Slam!

Murray Stuns Nadal to Reach Final

I didn't remember there having been a Brit in the final of any Grand Slam tournament for an age, so I looked it up AFP tells us:

Murray became only the third British man to reach a Slam final in the 40-year Open era, after Greg Rusedski in the 1997 US Open and John Lloyd at the 1977 Australian Open, and would be the first to win a title by beating Federer.
All I can say is "Come on, Andy!"

Oddly, it is not at all easy to find out the when and where of the US TV coverage on this one. None of the online TV Guides have been updated to reflect the fact that the US Open has gone on to an extra day. I had to go to the BBC Five Live website to find out when it was on, though it then occurred to me that there is probably an official site with details, and I am right -- US Open 2008, which confirms that it is on CBS, like the rest of the US Open, and it begins at 5pm ET (10pm BST).  It is remarkably low profile, though, for CBS and the American TV schedules -- CBS have not even updated their website with news of the rescheduled final. Mind you, if you are in the UK, it's not on network TV, I am sorry to see, but on Sky Sports 1, and at least we can view it on network TV here.

Wednesday 3 September 2008

Gavin and Stacey on BBC America

Much of the time, BBC America is a very annoying channel for British expats. Endless repeats of the same handful of programmes that we did not want to watch the first time round and badly edited versions of the ones we did. But sometimes a gem comes along. When we were back in England in April, we caught a couple of episodes of Gavin and Stacey, then towards the end of its second series, and we quite liked it. Now the first series has arrived on BBC America and we are getting the chance to catch it from the beginning. Two episodes in and we are loving it -- I had no idea it was so funny. The two biggest belly laughs so far are Alison Steadman as Gavin's mum going on the Adkin's diet and serving herself three steaks instead of steak and chips and peas, and Rob Brydon as Uncle Brian explaining the joys of route planner to Gavin:



Comedy gold.