Sportless TV goes all nostalgic on a truly surreal Saturday | Rob Smyth

Sport on television has been reduced to a diet of archive footage or repeats of Mrs Brown’s Boys

So, the show doesn’t have to go on after all. Most elite sport in the UK has been postponed because of coronavirus but there are two shows in 21st-century sport – one at the stadiums, one on the TV – and the latter is going to continue in the form of wall-to-wall nostalgia. There is endless airtime to be filled: Sky Sports have nine channels, BT Sport three, Eurosport two, and there are also the traditional sport slots on free-to-air TV.

The announcement that the BBC would replace Match of the Day with an old episode of Mrs Brown’s Boys achieved the impossible: it managed to unite social media. Admittedly the common reactions were contempt or disgust but it was still an achievement of sorts. Many appealed for the BBC to show a classic MotD episode instead; others suggested Test Card F would be a preferable alternative to the slapstick travails of Agnes Brown.

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