Blackball

Blackball is a British comedy about Cliff Starkey, a young working-class lawn bowls player with a rare gift for the game. His cocky attitude and constant challenges to Ray Speight, the town's decorated champion, make him an embarrassment to his local club, and matters are not helped by his secret romance with Ray's daughter. When his behaviour leads to a long ban from the sport, it looks as though his talent will go to waste.

Everything changes when an American sports agent, Rick Schwartz, takes Cliff on and turns him into a media celebrity. The publicity grows so large that the bowls authorities are forced to lift his suspension, and the local team sees a chance to face a powerful Australian side. The question becomes whether Cliff can recover his form and win back the friends he left behind.

Mel Smith directed the film, his third feature after Radioland Murders and Bean, from a screenplay by Tim Firth. Paul Kaye leads the cast as Cliff, alongside Johnny Vegas, James Cromwell, Bernard Cribbins, Alice Evans and Vince Vaughn. Produced by Working Title Films with American partners, it was released in 2003. On IMDb it holds a rating of 5.6 from around 4,600 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 5.2 from a much smaller number of votes. The critics' rating of 4.7 from 21 reviews places it somewhat below even the modest audience scores.