Post 472. ALL'S QUIET

 ON THE WORLD SNOOKER FRONT

A BELGIAN WON.
In what turned out to be the most fascinating World Snooker final I have ever seen, young Belgian Luca Brecel beat Mark Selby 18 - 15 to win half a million quid and the trophy.
Mark, though tactically as brilliant as ever, had to settle for two hundred thousand, a medal, and the admiration we reserve for heroic, sporting, runners-up in this country. Both men were a credit to the game. It was a good competition throughout. The two tables set-up at the Crucible seems to be a bit of a bundle, but it all works out well in the end, and Sheffield is a warm-hearted city deserving of the favourable publicity it gets. We almost became snooker fans.
ALSO ON TELEVISION.

We watched Great Expectations (BBC1) with somewhat less than great expectations, so were not entirely surprised that Steven Knight's mini series took us far from the Charles Dickens original.

It did not help that we still remember the David Lean film, made in 1946 starring John Mills and Finlay Currie: the entire cast, including little boy Pip, played by Anthony Wager, and Miss Havisham, played by Martita Hunt, was a casting director's dream. Sadly, even Olivia Colman couldn't better such a line-up on her own. So the 2023 version got a thumbs down from us. 

Fortunately, the BBC simultaneously repeated a 1999/2000 series of David Copperfield, directed by Simon Curtis.  What a contrast!

Young (pre Harry Potter) Daniel Radcliffe was the boy Pip, Maggie Smith was Aunt Betsey, Bob Hoskins was Wilkins Micawber, and Nicholas Lyndhurst was a hypnotically unctuous Uriah Heep. Oh, there was also Alun Armstrong, Trevor Eve, and Michael Elphick. It was Dickens as written by Dickens, with sound direction and a stellar cast. Thumbs up! Thumbs up!

LOCAL ELECTIONS AND THE CORONATION.
We didn't have a local election that I know of. If you did I hope you were happy with the result.
And that's it for now.
Mo will watch all the excitement tomorrow. 

If I'm not feeling too bolshie I probably will too.
Luck and good cheer to you and yours.