Bluey’s cricket episode is the best sports drama on TV
So here’s a debate to get you fired up during the interminable wait for the Premier League to return after a drab international break: what is the best TV show about sport ever broadcast?
Are you a Ted Lasso superfan? Or is it Welcome to Wrexham that you binge watch? HBO’s brilliant, gone-too-soon LA Lakers docu-drama Winning Time has attained cult status.
But let me add a new contender to the conversation. Because nothing I’ve ever seen captures the essence of sport – why we love it, why we play it, why we get so invested in it – better than the cricket episode of Bluey.
At reading that you probably split roughly into one of two camps: those without children under the age of eight who won’t have a clue what a Bluey is, and the bleary-eyed, perma-harassed legion of parents who know exactly what I’m referring to and are probably nodding along vigorously in agreement.
For the uninitiated: the eponymous Bluey is a brightly coloured six-year-old cartoon puppy from Australia and the show chronicles her family life and boundless imagination, energy and invention.
Kids come to a standstill when it’s on so its popularity with busy parents desperate to find something to distract while they sort out tea was stratospheric from the off. But pretty soon adults started to cotton on to its genius: dad Bandit is the best depiction of modern fatherhood on the box (even if his effervescence and limitless patience with his daughters’ games is a high bar to aspire to), while the short episodes are mini-masterpieces full of pathos, knowing humour, hidden symbolism and high emotion.
But of all of wonderful stories they’ve crammed into 151 episodes it’s the one titled simply “Cricket” that is the zenith of the Bluey universe. Its seven wonderfully crafted minutes are not just a love letter to the sport, they’re a love letter to sport full stop.
It starts off with kids and adults playing a game of backyard cricket in the sun, with a distracted and bored Bluey telling her dad: “Cricket’s just about hitting a ball around the grass.” Bandit’s knowing response is the perfect set-up to the episode: “Cricket’s about more than that, kid.”
So how does the show go about explaining it to its young audience? By taking them on a journey that folds life lessons into a parable about Australia’s national sport.
Bluey’s friend Rusty the Kelpie dog – whose father, it transpires, is deployed overseas in the military – is the hero of this episode, a brilliant young cricketer who is taken lightly at first by the neighbourhood dads queuing up to bowl him out – forlornly, as it turns out.
Their hilarious attempts to keep face are intertwined with segments where we go deep into Rusty’s back story and learn why he’s so good at the game. There’s a great little lesson about confronting your fears when he faces the fast balls of one of his big brother’s friends – the ironically named Tiny – halfway through the episode.
“As you grow up you’ll face harder things than a cricket ball and you’ll have two choices: back away and get out, or step in front and play a pull shot,” his dad writes to him after hearing of his struggles. Needless to say, he summons the courage to face the challenge head on.
No-one can get Rusty out – cue much hilarity from the kids at the efforts of their red-faced parents – but in the end he does it himself, spooning an easy catch to his delighted little sister Dusty to get her involved in the game.
I won’t spoil the final, tear-jerking twist but it’s the perfect ending to a tale of the values of cricket reflecting the values of life. If you manage to get through the whole thing without welling up, you’re clearly made of stone.
It works because you know instinctively the people who wrote it love cricket. It’s no surprise that creator Joe Brumm has since revealed in an interview he modelled Rusty’s nuggety playing style on Steve Smith with a bit of Don Bradman thrown into the mix. He obviously knows his stuff.
Those little touches are what makes it: it doesn’t speak down to the children watching it or patronise them. The overarching message is simple: this is cricket, this is why we love it and when you get to know it you’re going to love it.
Viewers waxed lyrical about it and so did the Aussie cricketing fraternity. Indeed when it first aired in June the episode got more viewers than the final of the World Test Championship between Australia and India.
The episode finally lands on the BBC and iPlayer next month: it really is a must-watch.
