Television Review

WHENEVER THE BBC is especially pleased with a new series, it habitually honours it with the prefix "major". So it was, then, that BBC Wales's The Union Game (Sun, BBC2) arrived, a major new series in four parts on the history of rugby that fully deserved the accompanying tribute.

It was dashing, exciting and on occasion hard to keep pace with, as if the narrative was being swept along by the Welsh three-quarters of the 1970s. When things became hurried or untidy - on the class-driven split between league and union, for instance - it felt as if the Welsh three- quarters of the 1980s had taken over.

The issue of sport as a device of social control was handled adeptly. Before the 1820s, public games consisted of 500-a-side free-for-alls which, post-Chartism and the Peterloo massacre, understandably gave the middle classes the jitters. Rugby was invented as a networking tool for old boys but soon found a more useful purpose as a forum for controlled social explosion. A mere 15-proles-a-side, with the lusting hordes penned in on the sidelines, was a brilliant piece of crowd management.

Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby school, had similar ideas: exhaust the boys with a vigorous game of rugger, and there will be no high jinks after lights-out; concussed they may be, but they'll sleep like babies.

Masters of the Universe (Sun C4) also deconstructed a popular contemporary ball game, one in which the international bright young things who work as McKinsey management consultants fancy themselves as expert: hardball.

The McKinsey technique produces staff who think of themselves as being a breed apart, both in terms of their expertise and their no-questions- unasked approach to problem-solving. The film followed consultants from around the world as they spent a week analysing a loss-making newspaper in Sweden. In role-play exercises between consultants and workers, they responded to theoretical concerns about 700 redundancies. "I recognise that you have major concerns here and I will get to them shortly," was one of the replies considered appropriate.

The editing was pointed, but the irony was deeper than expected. Veteran McKinsey trainers stressed the need for humility when sharing their devastatingly brilliant analyses. This pseudo-humanity was intercut with scenes from self-satisfied internal corporate videos. After a week of exercises and brainstorming, the consultants reconvened to see which of their hypothetical solutions matched the real-life approach used to save the newspaper. The first two members of the team with the right answer were called Julia and Steve. The last was called Canute.

The woman from the FT hit it on the head, wondering why the brightest graduates want to be management consultants when they grow up, rather than managers. In a sane world, surely the latter are the ones who matter. Ultimately, it wasn't about enterprise or freshness of approach; these self-regarding people are merely the latest enforcers of capitalism. As The Union Game showed, beating up on working people isn't new - nor is it difficult in our current political climate.

Robert Hanks is away