An Olympic medal to the people who made 'Dive'
Sport and drama have never struck me as the most obvious bedfellows. For every success like "Chariots of Fire" there are multiple failures with dippy storylines and implausible action sequences - and most of the time live sport is drama enough in itself. The fictionalised version is second best.
There's also curiously little drama where sport is a key part of the story, despite its importance to so many people's lives, and I suspect that's partly because too much of the sport and arts worlds don't understand each other. There are exceptions, but one of the challenges around 2012 as a year is that mixing culture and sport can be an oil-and-water job.
So an Olympic medal to the people who made "Dive", which is showing on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two this Thursday and Friday and then available on the iPlayer. You can read more about it here and read Aisling Loftus's blog on lead role in Dive here - but it's a simple story.
A teenage girl called Lindsey is training with the hope of being part of the GB diving team for . But she gets pregnant, and the film is about the way she and her boyfriend try to sort out their lives.
I've just been watching a preview, and it's terrific: powerfully acted and great to look at, as you'd expect from someone with the track record of .
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Aisling Loftus stars as Lindsey in Dive
It is, of course, about far more than sport. Apart from the big themes around sex and pregnancy and coping with that when you're young, there's a vivid sense of what it's like growing up in a small town with the pull of an outside world - though Lindsey's boyfriend isn't exactly encouraging when he finds out she's aiming for the London Games. I'll delete the expletives, but he tells her that must be why she's so miserable and asks of the Olympics "how s*** is that?" (Warning: your granny may not like the grittier sequences.)
And yet there's a definite sense here of how sport makes a difference, and I was interested to read the director's take:
"Early mornings and the individuality of diving, it's the most obvious and perfect individual sport. The time it takes, and dedication to get one dive right and yet the margin of error is so slight. It's also the idea that the dive is like life, taking a leap of faith. The courage involved. Showing the difference between those that will take a chance in life, and those that won't. The perfect dive, is like getting life perfect; really hard, almost impossible. It can also resemble falling. That's easier to do!"
Which is all true, and from where I sit watching the preparations for 2012 it genuinely adds to the way we think about our competitors with their multiplicity of backgrounds and hundreds of different stories. This is, if you like, a fictional counterpart to the series that's following the real life stories - and it's surprisingly easy to imagine Lindsey in either programme.
Now, I should add a couple of notes. First that I'm not an expert in diving - so I'll leave it to those who are to judge the authenticity of what they see in "Dive" around training and technique. And second - this is not a brazen bit of promoting the wares of the London 2012 project team. We work mainly on the core sport, news and culture initiatives for 2012 - and two years out these films are business-as-usual commissions for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two and ´óÏó´«Ã½ Drama with production by ITV Studios.
But what they do show is the way that London 2012 can be a theme for drama and the arts in general - in a way that doesn't force the audience into categories of "sports lover" or "sport-avoiding drama fan". This is simply a human story which reflects the biggest event this country will stage, and it gives hope that sport and drama might produce some attractive offspring after all.
Dive starts on Thursday 8 July at 2100 BST, concludes the following day at the same time and is available afterwards on iPlayer.
Comment number 1.
At 7th Jul 2010, Gavelaa wrote:Hopefully there are a few sex scenes in it. Apart from that I don't think too many folks are going to be interested in the sport.
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Comment number 2.
At 7th Jul 2010, Roger Mosey - ´óÏó´«Ã½ Director, London 2012 wrote:Gavelaa - there are, but actually I think the real issue is whether it works as a drama. And in my view it does.
Interested in other views after transmission on Thursday/Friday.
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Comment number 3.
At 7th Jul 2010, weterpalters wrote:Well Roger, hood to see that Gavlaa is taking such a verdant interest in current affairs and ´óÏó´«Ã½ proramming. Who says that British society is capitulating into a sex and drug obsessed microcosm of American society?! After your excellent review and opinions, I for one will watch it regardless of the 'Percy filth' content. Many thanks.
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Comment number 4.
At 9th Jul 2010, Roger Mosey - ´óÏó´«Ã½ Director, London 2012 wrote:Some of the press reviews of part 1.
Daily Telegraph:
The Guardian:
And The Independent:
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Comment number 5.
At 10th Jul 2010, Brekkie wrote:Was a pretty poor drama IMO which just went absolutely nowhere - girl dives, has sex, has inevitable baby all teenagers who have sex on TV must have, goes diving again.
It was very uninspiring and the script unrelentingly dull IMO, whilst it's never going to win any awards for acting either. Fear too for Jack O'Connell - absolutely outstanding in Skins, but is Cook the only character he can play?
Sport isn't often dealt with in drama and this show certainly didn't get it right. Curtis in Misfits is a much better example of a character who risks missing out on their Olympic dreams due to making a mistake.
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Comment number 6.
At 11th Jul 2010, Tiger Rose wrote:Watched this on I-Player earlier. I enjoyed the first episode but thought the 2nd unsatisfactory - there seemed no agonising about keeping the baby; no 'I'm pregnant' conversations with her mum or the coach were shown. Just seemed to go nowhere really. The music got on my nerves as well.
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Comment number 7.
At 11th Jul 2010, Roger Mosey - ´óÏó´«Ã½ Director, London 2012 wrote:Fair enough, Tiger Rose and Brekkie. AA Gill in The Sunday Times - who I normally agree with quite a lot - didn't like it either, but you'll have to pay your quid to read him online and I can't post the link...
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Comment number 8.
At 10th Aug 2010, matty3891 wrote:I know I'm about a month late on this debate as have only just watched dive but I thought it was really rather good. I can see that it wasn't everyone's cup of tea as it was rather ponderous and slightly lacking on the script front. However to say the acting wasn't up to much is nonsense. Aisling Loftus was incredible evoking so much emotion from about half a page of lines in the whole two hour film and Jack O'Connell was shockingly good. When he plays Cook he's just a shouty man but there was so much subtlety in his performance as Robert expressing an underlying vulnerability. And it's not like in Skins where they get a nasty character to say a couple of nice things and then expect us to accept them as lovely people (Cook, Katie). There was a constant compassion behind his jack the lad front. Throw in a couple of experienced pros in Gina Mckee and Eddie Marsanon top of these excellent kids and in my opinion that's a pretty solid cast.
With regards to AA Gill I love his writing style but can one ever really trust the judgement of a man who Jeremy Clarkson names as his best friend?
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