Many years before portraying iconic characters, such as New York Continental owner Winston Scott (John Wick), saloon owner and pimp Al Swearengen (Deadwood), and crafty conman Mr. Wednesday (American Gods), Ian MacShane played Ian Deegan, a Nottingham demolitions expert with a penchant for snooker, in the 1994 UK TV movie White Goods.
Few people have heard of the movie. Among those that have, it’s seemingly because Mr. MacShane has sex on a snooker table with a 24-year-old Rachel Weisz, still 12 years before her Supporting Actress Oscar. (No nudity, but lots of balls are unintentionally pocketed.)
But, don’t let the lack of familiarity with the film intimidate you. If you can find it – which is a big “if,” as I had to source White Goods on a rare film site that sent me an unmarked, burned DVD – then it’s well worth the watch.
Ian Deegan is rough, gruff, loud, and proud. He’s a boozer, a flirt, and a relatively decent snooker player. The yin to his yang is Charlie Collins (Lenny Henry), a soft-spoken teacher, who paints, excels at trivia, sips his drinks, and steers clear of the baize. They’re black and white neighbors in a blue-collar neighborhood, where surface differences don’t interfere with solid friendships.
Opportunity comes knocking in their working class hamlet when the producers of the game show Snooker Challenge have a last-minute cancellation and need to find a pair of new contestants. Thrust into the hurly-burly of the Lenton Lane Social and Snooker Club, the show’s producers settle on Deegan and Collins. It’s a quotidian decision for the producers, but it’s potentially game-changing for Deegan and Collins’ families, who imagine their lives transformed as a result of winning all those ‘white goods’ (i.e., historically white appliances such as washing machines, fridge-freezers, tumble dryers and dishwashers.)
And, boy, do they win! After a well-played first round when “points are prizes,” the blokes earn quite the booty, such as a month’s supply of white rum and white wine, plus a year’s supply of white cleaning powder. In round two, Deegan defeats the show’s snooker champ and former Crucible winner Paul Ryan. Finally, in the ultimate Pot of Gold round, Collins seemingly defies the odds by correctly answering why Van Gogh painted old boots during his Paris period.
Snooker Challenge is entertaining cinema, but it’s a brilliant lampoon of the British trivia-and-sports game shows that premiered in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Its most obvious target is Big Break, in which teams competed in a series of rounds in which one contestant’s success answering questions translated into advantages for that contestant’s teammate on the snooker table. Similar real shows included Full Swing (golf), and the genre’s progenitor Bullseye (darts).
The parodizing digs deep with its mockery of the game show’s (white good) prizes, imbecilic contestants, a toffee-nosed producer (who refers to the Lenton Lane Snooker Club as a scene out of Jurassic Park 2), a solipsistic snooker champ, and a dim-witted production assistant. But, it really sharpens its fangs with the portrayal of Mickey Short (Chris Barrie), the foul-mouthed Snooker Challenge host, who has a rat-a-tat stream of one-liners disparaging the game show’s prize girl, Lucy Diamond, a former Page 3 glamor model. “Juicy Lucy,” “Lucy with long legs, watch them go,” and “Oh, bounciest one,” are just some of the misogynistic monikers he snipes at her with glee.
White Goods isn’t content to limit its satire to game shows. Though not as sharp-toothed as some better known late-80s/early-90s send-ups of consumerism (e.g., They Live; Falling Down), the film’s final third pivots from game show to neighbor wars, as the outcome of Snooker Challenge is questioned and suggested to be rigged. Deegan and Collins, and even more so, their wives, become locked in a bitter rivalry over who deserves all the show’s spoils.
The formerly friendly families trade barbs as they try to outmaneuver one another for the prizes, once they are delivered. Selfish comments, such as, “Where is my microwave?,” escalate into hurtful insults that sting of classism and prejudice. The tension overflows as Deegan resorts to storing the white goods in his shed and wiring them with a detonative device, lest the Collins family try to steal them back.
It is only once the families children start mimicking their parents and trading blows over the mounds of merchandise do the mothers realize their avarice has gone too far. I won’t give away the ending, but let’s just say it’s pretty explosive.
