TV Eye: Our Cup runneth over

The moment we have all been waiting, and waiting and waiting for. Photo / Brett Phibbs

What a moment it was. And it was an occasion that many of us thought would never come.

But there it was, like a miracle, on Sunday night on Sky Sport 1. Just moments after the final whistle blew in the final match of the Rugby World Cup, with the triumphant All Blacks and the beaten French staggering around like men who'd been fed through a wringer, the immortal words were finally spoken.

"We're just going to be quiet up here for a while," said Sky Sport's Grant Fox from the commentary box, "[and let] you take in the pictures of the players, the raw emotion of it all."

Then there was silence. For 13 seconds.

Time moves quickly in test match rugby, I suppose. But after all the words, the millions upon millions of words uttered by Grant Nisbett, Foxy and "Smiddy" since this World Cup began (168 years or seven weeks ago, depending on your sense of time), it was nice to hear them shut the hell up, even if it was only for 13 seconds.

Still, as the host broadcasters' A-team, this trio - as they would no doubt say - did what was asked of them. They did the hard yards, they refused to be out-passioned and they left it all on the field. I thank them, and to honour them I will again cancel my Sky Sport subscription.

But what oddly unsightly scenes followed the blessed 13 seconds of silence and the "raw emotion of it all".

Are Rugby World Cup presentations designed for the stadium crowd or for the television audience?

Perhaps having a large group of people shake hands for 10 minutes before standing on a low, curved and rather cheap-looking stage while looking happy (the winners) or glum (the losers) while waving makes plenty of sense from the stands.

From home it looked as unprepossessing as the game that had just ended. It certainly seemed like a lot of faffing about when all that was really needed was to hand Captain McCaw the cup so that he and his team might bathe in the deserved cheers of a grateful nation. But so, I suspect, it goes with such ceremonies; there's no pretty way to hand out three score of handshakes and medals.

And now, in a segue as ugly as a RWC medal ceremony, let's move from one thing people won't stopping banging on about to another: John F Kennedy.

The 35th president of the United States of America, though he has been dead for nearly 50 years, still manages to capture the imagination of television and film producers for reasons that escape me. Perhaps all it takes to be a great American president for all time is to have a great haircut and a fine speechwriter. But here, again, with The Kennedys (Prime, Tuesdays, 9.40pm), is another retelling of the heady rise and bloody fall of JFK.

This eight-part miniseries, which picked up four Emmys (including for hairstyling!), had a bit of a troubled birth, with critics and historians lining up to damn it with outrage before it even made it to screen. They were, reportedly, concerned that it would paint an unflattering portrait.

It's hard to see, on the evidence of the first episode, quite what the fuss was about. It's handsomely designed and shot, and well cast, with Greg Kinnear as JFK, Barry Pepper as RFK and Tom Wilkinson as Joseph Kennedy Sr delivering pretty good Boston accents and jaw-thrusting performances. Even Mrs Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, manages to do a bit of acting.

This series main problem is, of course, that we've heard it before, ad nauseam: the angry ambition of Joe Sr, the death of Joe Jr, JFK the war hero, JFK the shagger, Bay of Pigs, Cuba ... it's all so familiar. And, in the style of such historical miniseries, this production is all historical shorthand (courtesy of newsreels and newspaper headlines) and stagey scenes, rather than than gutsy, full-blooded human drama. But then again, after the events of last weekend, this country might have had enough of the latter just for the moment.

-TimeOut