Sport on TV: The Republic still carries torch for class struggle

In 'Chinese School' (BBC4, Tuesday) we are told that "sports days really are like a small Olympic Games". With excitement building as the Beijing Games draw near – and nary a thought for Tibet or Darfur or torch relays – a thousand athletes take part in the three-day event at Haiyang Middle School in the rural province of Anhui, and there's even a proper opening ceremony. But the obvious difference from the real thing is the school motto, "Be honest". In the Olympic village, such principles won't catch on.

How we mocked the Far Eastern habit of doing mass exercise before work. Now we are all down at the gym first thing, pounding away on treadmills as though we were rotating the wheelsof industry ourselves. At Haiyang, morning exercise is on a mass scale, and it makes planning an opening ceremony easy, too. But when the costumes arrive, the girls are disappointed to find they will be wearing cheap, lurid raincoats. Still, very useful if the weather is bad – something to bear in mind for London 2012.

One child who may yet make it to the London Games is Dai Deli, if he has not already opened a food emporium in the Valleys. He is the track and field star at Ping Min Primary School, 1,000 miles from Beijing. "I know nothing about the Olympics," he admits, but he dreams of training in Beijing where "they run differently from me".

"They" will doubtless make sure he is on the right track. At Xiuning High School, Secretary Jin of the local Communist Party is on hand to "oversee the moral and political side of school life". School radio DJ and aspiring Maoist Zha Yujie heralds the 100m final thus: "A new hero is about to come, shedding tears and blood. That hero is me." It's easy to say from the commentary box.

"It has all the makings of a 'Dallas'," commentator Clive Tyldesley said on ITV during the first leg of the Champions' League semi-final between Liverpool and Chelsea, referring to the infighting between the owners of Liverpool. "It could become 'The Sopranos' if they're not careful. It certainly isn't 'The Waltons'." OK, that's enough, Clive. As soap operas go Brookside versus WestEnders is usually very dull but the latest episode was salvaged by John Arne Riise's cliff-hanging (if not cliff-jumping) climax. Tyldesley was wrong to say "The semi-final is following the same old script".

He kept referring to someone called Drug Bar; presumably he meant Didier Drogba, one of the biggest actors around. But this week it was David Pleat's turn to get the cast list all wrong: Hargraves, Trevez, Benny Noon – no relation to Alfie Moon.

At the end Jamie Redknapp was reduced to saying: "Everyone's lost the plot in the end." Nothing new there, Jamie. Richard Keys told us that 10 Barcelona players were going through divorces. Now that's showbiz. Surprising, then, that they didn't score.