We’d all like to imagine the late Shane Warne on that great big oval in the sky, bowling a flipper. Or maybe the cricket legend’s preferred afterlife is loafing about on a banana lounge, sucking on a tinnie and smoking a cheeky dart. But according to Channel Nine’s chaotically incompetent and just plain strange two-part biopic, which has about the same level of dramatic sophistication as the subject’s commercial for Leggo’s chicken cacciatore, Warnie is currently spending his time poring over his existence and chatting about it endlessly, like a self-hosted episode of This is Your Life broadcast from beyond the grave.
Before we’ve been visually introduced to Alex Williams, the actor playing Warne, director Geoff Bennett does something weird and inserts footage of the actual Warne appearing on Parkinson. Rather than immersing us in the narrative world and pretending the actor playing him is actually him, this just reminds us that Williams, while sharing some physical similarities, isn’t the real deal. In sporting terms, you could describe this as a spectacular own goal.
