A League Of Their Own

Freddie Flintoff & Jamie Redknapp interview

Freddie Flintoff and Jamie Redknapp were a bundle of nerves when they first signed up as team leaders on A League Of Their Own, the Sky1 quiz show hosted by James Corden. But as series two kicks off, the sporting stars are old hands.

Flintoff and Redknapp in relegation zone of their own

The ingredients mean A League Of Their Own should be a tasty little sports quiz show. Sadly, though, rather than delivering a feast of fun, it's all a tad stale.

Imagine A Question Of Sport without the sports questions, combined with They Think It's All Over without the comedy and what you get is Sky 1's A League of Their Own.

Apparently the programme is available in high definition, although what it looks like really is the least of its problems. The show desperately struggles to fill its allotted hour, despite the best efforts of chairman James Corden and team captains Jamie Redknapp and Andrew Flintoff. They really do work hard for their money, with Flintoff proving surprisingly witty and charming.

But the format doesn't do anybody any favours, particularly the overworked scriptwriters who are expected to pour comedy into the yawning chasms apparent in the dull, unimaginative and painfully protracted format. Working out which of three sporting lookalikes enjoyed the most success took the teams all of 15 minutes.

There were some very fine gags but nowhere near enough of them. That the whole enterprise was shot through with tedious blokeyness, accompanied by the inevitable whiff of homophobia - the default setting for the terminally unfunny - just made it all the more agonising.

I approached A League of Their Own, a new sports quiz hosted by James Corden, much as Superman would approach a toilet hewn from Kryptonite. I have next to no interest in sport, Corden is an inescapable irritant and the concept of athletes jousting for giggles is dismal enough on A Question of Sport, let alone a wacky Sky 1 panel show. Sure enough, this is an awful, lacklustre, derivative programme full of blokey banter, laboured whimsy, and Corden, with his one joke ("I'm fat!"), acting, as ever, like a noisy class clown desperately straining for attention. Or, if you prefer, an over-excited sea lion clapping for his supper. He won't mind. He knows he's fat and how funny that is.

A Question Of Sport has been going since the dark old days when football was played with the noggin of a beheaded peasant and shuttlecocks were - no, I'll stop there - so it's about time there was a challenger to its position as Britain's No.1 TV sports spot-the-scripted-bits banter show.

So thank Lord's for A League Of Their Own (Sky1), in which James Corden plays Sue Barker reincarnated as a sumo wrestler with a bit of a mouth on her. Team skippers Freddie Flintoff and Jamie Redknapp are just there as window-dressing/butts of jokes, for this is Corden's show and he takes to it like a puck to the ice rink. Barker beware.

A League of Their Own review

A League of Their Own is a horrible and pathetic attempt at trying to copy They Think It's All Over but forgets that it has to be funny.

It was only a matter of time before James Corden got his own celebrity panel show and here it is... basically, A Question Of Sport for idiots. Celeb guests include Freddie Flintoff, Neil Morrissey, David Haye and Jamie Redknapp, who spend the first half bantering loudly with their larger-than-life host about tattoos and booze - it's the televisual equivalent of Nuts magazine.

A new comedy quiz, hosted by James Corden, which draws on sports fans' love of lists. Team captains are England cricket monster Andrew Flintoff and Sky football pundit Jamie Redknapp, here to try to shake off the national embarrassment of those holiday advertisements. Regular panellists are comedian John Bishop and Sky Sports News presenter Georgie Thompson. Show one - an hour-long special with guests David Haye and Neil Morrissey was still in the edit suite as we went to press.

A strange sensation nagged at tvBite as, tears of bitter rage trickling down its cheeks, it sat down to the opening stanzas of the symphony of smug that is Sky's take on They Think It's All Over. Dear old Andrew Flintoff was there, making jokes about his drink issues. Top Top Jamie was there, being chummy. And there was the host, popular Gavin And Stacey actor James Corden. Several minutes passed, with tvBite eyeing the kitchen knives lasciviously and wondering what was amiss.

And then it hit! Fully four minutes had gone by without Corden making an amusing self-deprecating reference to his weight! Alarmed, tvBite began calling the Trading Standards Office, but they were out. Offcom were no more use. Just as tvBite was considering a cab to Isleworth or wherever to plead at the door of the TV studio for one, just one, "I am fat" quip, normal service was resumed. Corden then done five jokes about his own physical appearance in the next seven minutes, and all was right with the world once more. Phew! Banter!