BrokenTV's World Cup: Day Two

England vs Paraguay
10th June 2006

BBC1

That old stalwart of coverage of England in international tournaments - a rousing speech (this time from Henry V, literary fans), set to grainy footage of the team. A cliche, but at least the BBC always do this sort of thing well, while ITV always tend to mess it up ("The Barcelona Code", indeed).
+ 2 points

A round-up of England's poor starts to pretty much every single tournament since 1982, followed by a round-up of England buggering up World Cups since 1970. Preferable to the usual tubthumping "come on England" we've seen so far, we say.
+ 1 point.

A special report by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant on doing the Peter Crouch dance, that was actually pretty excellent (even if you think That Office is one of the most overrated shows of all time, and Extras clearly isn't 'all that', like us), especially considering it was in front of 25 million people on afternoon BBC1. Would have got a bonus of twenty points if Karl Pilkington had been involved, but we're still awarding
+ 3 points.

Bringing the mood right down again with a long interview with Sven, where he says NOTHING OF ANY CONSEQUENCE AT ALL as normal. I suppose he's just smoothing the transition to the sparkling media personality Steve "I'm suspicious of that word 'entertainment'" McLaren.
- 1 point.

Is Flintoff drunk? Yes, he is! Huzzah! More of this, please.
+ 1 point.

Hang on, *how* long has this pre-match coverage going on for? At least show a few seconds of highlights from yesterday's matches. Or some coverage of what Paraguay are like at football or something.
- 1 point.

Chris Birchall's video diary. This is what we want!
+ 2 points.

Total score: +7 points.

BrokenTV

Being out all day at a wedding, only seeing about an hour's aggregate total of today's matches 'live', and having to rely on watching SkyPlussed recordings once it gets home, and utterly forgetting to record the Argentina-Ivory Coast match at all. All just one day after saying it'd look at the coverage of every single match. Expect us to catch up tomorrow. Er, possibly.
- 3 points.

Latest standings.

Oh, just hang on for a bit.