It’s easy to forget the Hollywood star is also an Oscar-nominated writer and highly subtle actor. He’s perfect in this gentle, humane tale of a washed-up sportsman trying to regain his mojo as a mentor
Golf is – apologies to fans, the ground is gonna get a little rough – inert material for TV and film. It’s not explosively combative like say football, either American or actual. In golf, players interact with the environment, not each other. There is no time pressure. Physical adjustments are minute, the airborne ball impossible to see. For casual spectators, the experience mostly amounts to watching a middle-aged man shuffle above a tiny ball, like an emperor penguin sitting on an egg. The sound of even a world-beating putt is a soft plop.
However, a lack of basic knowledge brought me late to Friday Night Lights, a show that became one of my favourites. I’d like to avoid making that mistake with Stick (Apple TV+, from Wednesday 4 June), so let’s see. Wisely, the show isn’t aiming at FNL’s grit and spunk, blue-collar catharsis. Stick is funny, in a gentle, humane way. Clearly, Apple+ is attempting to hit its own marker again, the one with “Ted Lasso” written on it in gold.
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