SPORT ON TV: Blackmail, guilt, suicide and a hint of crocodile tears

IT SEEMED to be a classic tale of having it all and throwing it all away. Sadly the one person who could have told us the real Inside Story (BBC1 Thursday) hanged himself in an east London lock-up last May. In his suicide note, Justin Fashanu said he was being blackmailed by the young footballer he'd slept with while coaching in Maryland: "He willingly had sex with me and then the next day he asked me for money. When I said `No,' he said `You wait and see'."

The boy himself, "DJ", appeared on the programme and looked genuinely distressed as he gave his version of events. But from Justin's brother, John, a player who achieved considerably more with a considerably lesser talent, and from their mother, Pearl Powell, who dumped them in a Barnardo's home then farmed them out to foster parents, there was a heady whiff of self-justification.

Powell abandoned her sons, she said, because she didn't have the resources to look after them, and she still seems to believe that wherewithal is more important than a mother's love. John suffered the same deprivation, of course, and didn't go off the rails, but then he didn't have to deal with being gay in a rampantly heterosexual sub-culture, and nor did he have prodigous early success to go to his head (or indeed the guilt or confusion associated with being a homosexual born-again Christian).

"Justin was my shining light... my strength, my inspiration," John said. But when his brother came out in 1990 he effectively disowned him, saying, "He'll have to suffer the consequences... I wouldn't want to get changed in his vicinity" - a remark he now regrets. But still Justin became "a liability to the family", and his waywardness was chronicled in detail by John. Without wishing to tread on anyone's grief I had a distinct feeling at the end of the film, as John said "I miss my brother", that he was doing his best to squeeze out a few tears for the camera. He didn't quite succeed, and looked instead as if he was about to sneeze. "I wish that I was more of a good son, brother, uncle, friend," Justin said in his suicide note. "But I tried my best. This seems to be a really hard world. I hope the Jesus I love welcomes me home." If the Jesus he loves exists, then he probably will.

Over on satellite the football soap, Dream Team (Sky One, Tuesday, Thursday), is back. Harchester United narrowly escaped relegation last season, and in the first episode of the new series they beat Spurs 3-0 to occupy the traditional no-hoper's early season slot at the top of the table.

There's a new chairman, the local dirty-dealer Jerry Block (played by Michael Meila, who, my mum informs me, was the landlord of the Queen Vic in Eastenders immediately after Dirty Den, before being bumped off). As he looks round the ground before the Spurs game, he turns to his factotum and asks him: "What do you see down there?" "The penalty area?" the underling ventures. "I see a block of luxury flats. I see profits," the scheming chairman corrects.

At this point he should have flung back his cape and twiddled fiendishly with his moustache, and indeed the plot took a turn for the melodramatic when a pounds 50,000 kickback for a local councillor fell - literally - into the arms of the Scally apprentice, Billy, in a nightclub toilet cubicle (it would take too long to explain the mistaken-identity plot mechanics, but the incident does give rise to the best line in the first two episodes, where the chairman says: "For all I know it was George Michael in there").

The first series' award-winning formula is adhered to - a fast-moving plot with short scenes and plenty of strands: there's the striker's wife bringing home a dark secret from Turkey, where hubby's on loan to Galatasaray, for example; and the chairman's comely wife, whose interest in football, the publicity blurb promises, will extend in future episodes to attempting to bed as many of the first team as is humanly possible. It has to be said that sex is shoehorned into the plot as often as is humanly possible - a shower scene with the young education officer, Helen, is particularly gratuitous - but then I've always thought sex and football go well together ever since coming home one Saturday night to find my flatmates coupling on the living room floor while watching Match of the Day.

The quality of any soap lies not so much in the narrative as the strength of the characters and by this criterium, Dream Team easily passes muster. My mum watches all the terrestrial soaps, so she knows the real thing when she sees it, and when I played her the tape of the first two episodes she was straight into it, despite being left cold by football (the only game she ever watched was the 1966 World Cup final). Now she's annoyed because she hasn't got a dish and she's hooked on Harchester.