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Episode 1

Gods of Snooker Series 1
Episode 1 of 3

Alex 'The Hurricane' Higgins upsets the snooker establishment but helps transform a game played in the backrooms of working men鈥檚 clubs into box office gold.

The first episode explores how Alex 'The Hurricane' Higgins helped transform snooker from a game played in the backrooms of working men鈥檚 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 Ulstersman and snooker genius, Higgins, that took the game stratospheric.

Raw and unpredictable on the table, outspoken and badly behaved off it, Higgins declared war on the 1970s snooker establishment, entering into a years-long rivalry with the man who more than anyone embodied the old guard, ex-policeman Ray Reardon. Higgins and Reardon didn鈥檛 see eye to eye, but it was well known that Higgins could start a fight in an empty room. As the 70s wore on, the tabloids gleefully reported on a string of on- and off-the-table misdeeds.

Almost inevitably, Reardon and Higgins eventually came face to face in the World Championship final of 1982, in what was by far the biggest tournament to date. The clash of the two snooker titans - the paragon of the establishment against the self-described 鈥楶eople鈥檚 Champion鈥� - would be the match that redefined the British public鈥檚 relationship with the sport and set the course for a decade where it would become box office gold.

10 months left to watch

58 minutes

Last on

Sun 9 Apr 2023 23:30
麻豆约拍 Two except Northern Ireland & Northern Ireland HD

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Music Played

Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes

  • 00:01

    Jacques Dutronc

    Cactus

  • 00:07

    Undertone

    Family Entertainment

  • 00:10

    Winifred Atwell

    Black & White Rag ('Snooker' Theme Tune)

  • 00:12

    Neu!

    Hallogallo

  • 00:13

    Sweet

    Block Buster!

  • 00:14

    Franco Lorca

    The Air That I Breathe

  • 00:15

    T. Rex

    Ride a White Swan

  • 00:16

    T. Rex

    Ride a White Swan

  • 00:18

    Dr. Feelgood

    Milk And Alcohol

  • 00:23

    Dr. Feelgood

    Roxette

  • 00:26

    Cream

    Strange Brew聽

  • 00:29

    Shuggie Otis

    Bootie Cooler

  • 00:33

    The Douglas Wood Group

    Snooker

  • 00:34

    Todd Terje

    Delorean Dynamite

  • 00:35

    Department S

    Is Vic There?

  • 00:43

    Bronski Beat

    Smalltown Boy

  • 00:44

    Bronski Beat

    Smalltown Boy

  • 00:50

    Kosheen

    Little Boy

  • 00:58

    Depeche Mode

    Just Can't Get Enough

Credits

Director Martin Fuller
Producer Laurence Turnbull
Executive Producer Arron Fellows
Executive Producer Louis Theroux
Production Company Mindhouse Productions

Broadcasts

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