You may, in the last six years, have stumbled across alleged Sky One comedy show A League Of Their Own. If you haven't, it is Question of Sport stripped of nuance and injected with steroids and a stage direction from Barry Hearn and Michael Bay.
It is presented by top lad James Corden, supported by team captains Jamie Redknapp and Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff. Comedian Jack Whitehall is a regular support act.
It is loud, colourful, bombastic, lengthy and tremendously unfunny.
On the face of it, it seems as if it has no idea of how wholesomely dire it is, displaying about as much self-awareness as Nicklas Bendtner.
It was comissioned in 2010, has survived fully ten series and has been doubled in length to an hour.
Given its large budget, it had to be a commercial success, so it could not initially afford to take any Seinfeld-type risks and become a comedy about nothing at all.
No, A League Of Their Own was definitely about something originally. Three things in fact:
- Jamie Redknapp was an injury prone footballer.
- James Corden is fat.
- Freddie Flintoff has previously been photographed drunk.
In the initial series, the half-hour show revolved around the panelists making gags about the above three facts.
Now, it's just about one thing: The 'Jamie Redknapp saw an incredibly promising career ruined through the terrible caprice of injury' gag persists.
In fact, most discussions on the show are merely methods of teeing up a Redknapp gag. In a recent episode, Jack Whitehall managed the impressive feat of squeezing in two gags about Redknapp in the opening four minutes:
The labouring of a single joke over ten series has seen the show become a televisiual equivalent of the people who comment anytime Gary Lineker or Richard Keys send a tweet.
A creative decision wider of the mark than the average Nicklas Bendtner shot.
The show is anchored by top bloke James Corden, who looks like he is having a great time. He has inviegeled his way into this position by laughing heartily at everything his multi-millionaire guests say:
If you pay reasonably close attention to the show, you will notice Corden's sycophantic and incredibly forced laughs are the indicator for the audience to begin mechanically clapping along to what's before them: like the hollow laughter of a clown triggering a deep psychological trauma in a child.
Corden's main duty here is to introduce links and to act as a kind of "Applause" sign for the audience. A nominally central role but unimportant in reality: why, that sounds like Nicklas Bendtner's career at Arsenal.
And so to Redknapp. Watching him laugh along with those poking fun at him is genuinely sad, as it is indicative of a man just happy to be relevant alongside other people on television, as he rarely offers the most cutting of analytical insights:
Redknapp has reduced his playing career to a joke: which is not unlike Nicklas Bendtner in that way, actually.
Anytime Corden and the show attempt to stray into the unchartered waters of anything not related to Jamie Redknapp's lousy muscle tissue it crashes and burns.
In the most recent episode, Sky Sports presenter Kate Abdo was spoken to twice by Corden. One was to cue up a segment called MP Penalties, and the first was this cringe-inducing piece:
Corden was the first to laugh at his joke, which is the equivalent of liking your own Facebook status, an example of, er, Nicklas Bendtner-style self-importance.
Some of the supporting cast can be good. Comedian Romesh Ranganathan was on the latest episode and was entertaining, when given some space to speak. Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff is generally quite a genial television persona, but managed say just two things on the latest episode.
Away from here, Corden was excellent in Gavin and Stacey, is a Tony-award winning actor and is a successful talk-show host in the United States. He is talented, but feels no need to show even a glimpse of it on A League of their Own.
Why should he? The show isn't really about comedy or making people laugh. In truth, the show is aware of how wholesomely dire it is.
The show is about the hosts slipping seamlessly into the same, lazy personas of Blokes Who Slag Off Other Blokes About Their Physical Ailments And Insecurities as a cheap and familiar way of setting up huge, bombastic and expensive stunts to justify the show's existence.
The recent show featured MP Penalties, in which three MPs were brought on with great fanfare to take a penalty against Aaron Ramsey; a giant slam dunk operation involving a panelist in a harness springing towards a basketball hoop 25 feet off the ground; and the heralding of a giant open-top double decker bus to be pulled by one team while the other team parade the FA Cup aboard said bus, simultaneously answering a series of quick-fire questions.
If you're exhausted reading that, imagine watching it? Better to be in the show, it looks great fun.
The whole thing is needlessly flashy, like, oh, say Nicklas Bendtner.
But why would the show bother spending time making people laugh and crafting jokes when it can show off how important it is? Importance here is ranked in terms of the portion of your Sky subscription it takes.
Sky take the same bombastic, 'so-much-fun-you'll-wish-you-were-part-of-it' approach to the broadcasting and sale of the Premier League.
So in this respect, Corden and co. certainly aren't in a league of their own.
It is the state of modern sports media: repeated and derivative jokes about the caricature of a famous footballer along with glitzy multimedia and stunts in a bid to hold your attention.
Even Nicklas Bendtner might lapse from his self-delusion and agree.
