Gods Of Snooker: Documentary series on BBC Two

The BBC will broadcast a brand new three-part series this May – Gods Of Snooker – which tells the story of snooker’s memorable ‘golden age’ in the 1980s.

During that remarkable period, sporting superstardom was embodied by a select group of well-dressed men in tight-fitting suits – utterly poised, chasing after multicoloured balls on a green table. Snooker had landed on our screens and captivated TV audiences in their millions.

In this new three-part series, airing in a primetime 9pm slot across three consecutive Sunday nights on BBC Two, as well as streamed online via BBC iPlayer, snooker’s golden age will be brought back to life by those at the very heart of the story.

Contributors include Jimmy White, Steve Davis, Dennis Taylor, Stephen Hendry, Ray Reardon, Barry Hearn and more, all sporting heroes from working-class backgrounds who quickly became household names.

Mixing sporting prowess with unapologetic excess, this new generation of snooker players managed to take the game out from the dark corners of working men’s clubs into the bright lights of a money-spinning, sporting soap-opera.

This is a story of a magical era, when an entire nation could be united by a fascination with snooker and where its leading players became unlikely superstars.

Produced by Louis Theroux and Mindhouse Productions, the first episode of Gods Of Snooker will air a week on from the conclusion of the BBC’s coverage of the 2021 World Snooker Championship.

Commenting on the series, Theroux said:

“I couldn’t be more excited to be involved in this documentary series. The story of the heyday of snooker is a remarkable one filled with drama and angst and enormous talent.

“For the documentaries I’m involved in, I get most excited about those that are the most human: conflict, triumph, disaster, all the big emotions, played out before your eyes, and you have that here on a scale that is both epic – the national stage – but also intimate – the hush of the snooker hall.

“I’m old enough to remember the 1985 black ball final between Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis. I was 15 and everyone was talking about it at school.

“But that was just one of many high-points in an era when god-like talent came to earth in the form of the professional snooker player. Just to add: we’ve been privileged to work on this with almost all those stars of that time.

“To say I’ve been involved in a documentary series with Steve Davis, Jimmy White, Ray Reardon, Cliff Thorburn, to name just a few, is an amazing feeling and quite honestly not something I ever imagined.”

The first episode of the series explores how Alex ‘The Hurricane’ Higgins helped transform snooker from a game played in the backrooms of working men’s clubs to a national sporting obsession.

Interest in the sport had been growing thanks to the new possibilities of colour broadcasting, and in particular the weekly snooker show Pot Black, first commissioned by none other than David Attenborough. But it was the antics of the unpredictable Ulsterman and snooker genius, Higgins that took the game stratospheric.

Episode two takes a look at the sport’s growth following the emergence of Steve Davis. Though snooker was firmly established on our TV screens by the early 80s, the game’s money-spinning potential had not yet been realised.

One of the first to spot a business opportunity was savvy Essex-based sports promoter Barry Hearn, who had recently taken Davis under his wing. The polar opposite of people’s champion Alex Higgins, Davis was slow, precise and intent on grinding out victories rather than entertaining with risky flair shots. Hearn was certain that his young apprentice was a future world champion, and together, the pair plotted world domination.

As Higgins’s career took a downward turn, Davis quickly became a winning machine, bagging trophy after trophy. But his ‘robotic’ performances failed to win over a crowd who preferred their sporting heroes more flawed and unpredictable.

Capitalising on Davis’s success, Hearn started to build his own snooker empire – the ‘Matchroom’- and recruited a small group of players he could mould and market, creating a soap opera out of sporting rivalry, and in the process, bringing lucrative sponsorships (and even hit pop singles) into the game.

By the mid-80s, snooker was at the peak of its powers, and in 1985 nearly 20 million people tuned in to see Steve Davis play Dennis Taylor in the World Championship final. It was an encounter that became known as the ‘black ball final’, widely believed to be the best snooker match of all time.

After that, Britain really did go ‘snooker loopy’, and a select group of cue-wielding sportsmen were suddenly the biggest superstars in the country.

The final episode takes a look at Jimmy White, who was next in line to take the crown of ‘people’s champion’, but also had an insatiable appetite for the highlife and a string of vices – including cocaine and crack – that threatened to overshadow his raw talent and enormous potential.

Twelve years younger than Alex, Jimmy soon realised that Alex’s popularity and ability was at odds with his success in the game, having won only two world championship trophies, in a sport many thought he should dominate.

Jimmy began the 1990s clean and well-prepared and got his best opportunity yet to win his first world championship, coming up against a young emerging Scotsman called Stephen Hendry. With White as the hot-favourite and with the crowd urging him on, the 1990 final turned out to be a pivotal moment in British snooker and paved the way for what was to come in the next decade.

Gods Of Snooker airs on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer from 9 May

–

–

SUNDAY 9th MAY

–

SUNDAY 16th MAY

–

SUNDAY 23rd MAY

–

–