On hearing there was a British television series called Sam, I got my hopes up that perhaps it would be about Samwise Gamgee, greatest person to have never lived.1 But, alas, reality is once again disappointing. Instead of the lush, well-kept gardens of the Shire we get the grey squalor of industrial cities in the coal fields of northern England. And instead of the strongest friendship in literature between two normal good people fighting against a looming superhuman evil, we get endless bickering over banal stuff.
All that is not to say that it’s not a good series! It’s about the petty side of man instead of the virtuous, but that does not necessarily make it bad. In fact, it’s better than The lord of the rings in one single solitary respect: it has a chess scene.
And it’s very clearly visible! A girl is playing chess with her grandfather and they have the following position on the board, although I’m not completely sure there really is a bishop on c1:2
Gah! You people deserve your life of despondency and grime. Why are the black bishops like that? Even if you’re one of those troglodytes that think the bishops go next to the rooks, you would surely still set up the board symmetrically. But these people seem to have only the vaguest notions of the games. The girl, who has black, takes on c4. This may seem like a reasonable move, but the grandfather has a staggering reply: Ng1-f4.
Girl: Hey! You can’t move a knight like that!
True, but you can also can’t put bishops like that. And you’re supposed to be teaching him the game! I understand that she’s young and normally I’d cinder some love and cut her some slack,3 but this is such a coalossal horror I can’t.
Realism: 0/5 If this odious spectacle is the day-to-day life of coal miners, I can understand why Thatcher shut down the mines.
Probable winner: Black, I guess, since she seems to be familiar with at least some of the rules.
1. [Instead, it’s about inspector Taggart: Mark McManus, who plays Sam, is also the titular hero of Taggart.] ↩
2. [Let me give credit to my usual diagram editor.] ↩
3. [Maybe even buy her a coke.] ↩