Sink Or Swim review – hugging, learning and the occasional jellyfish

It’s manipulative and sappy, but this show about celebrities attempting to swim the Channel will make you well up like a rain cloud

“White men can’t jump. Black men can’t swim,” says Linford Christie. What nonsense. The 59-year-old Olympic gold medallist and former world champion is now spending 12 weeks proving himself and the stereotype wrong.

Along with 10 other celebrities who, like 25% of British adults, struggle to swim, Christie is getting in condition to form a relay team that next month will swim 21 miles across the Channel. Which, as you know, is an obstacle course featuring jellyfish, waves, cold, polluted water, plastic debris, container ships, gulls ready to feast on your still-warm corpse, and the piercing shards of shattered human dreams. More people have climbed Everest than have swum the Channel, says Keri-Anne Payne, the two-time 10km open-water world champion and coach to this – no offence – unpromising bunch.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZyzH6F