Back - To The Soccer!
Back – To The Soccer! is a one-off Comedy-Drama
for television. It is envisaged for transmission immediately prior to the
next football World Cup Finals in Qatar.
The story is send-up of the ‘Back to the Future’ series of films. It is conceived as an ideal vehicle for Ant McPartlin and Dec Donnelly, as Duck and Matty, playing on the physical similarity with Christopher Lloyd (Doc) and Michael J Fox (Marty).
Set in Summer 2002 during the Soccer World Cup, the plot takes us back in time to the weekend of 30 July 1966, and the famous England victory over Germany.
Naturally, events don’t go to plan, and as we know the future can be changed…
There are three main characters taking most of the action, with scope for several cameo or look-alike appearances.
STORY OUTLINE
Matt McKay, (‘Matt’, ‘Matty’) is twenty something, a clerical worker in local government, living in the North East of England. Matt is one of the country’s greatest soccer fans.
Steve Potter (‘Spoof ‘) is not the sharpest knife in the box, but is a good-hearted lad who has been Matt’s best mate since boyhood. He is currently unemployed.
The story opens in Matt’s flat. He and Spoof are watching TV as England are beaten by Brazil in the quarter final of the 2002 World Cup. Very upset, Matt starts to reminisce about the great World Cup-winning team of 1966, and the famous victory over Germany. The walls are covered with photos and memorabilia of that England team.
One of Matt’s great regrets in life is that he wasn’t yet born when the game was played. What wouldn’t he give to be able to go back in time…
‘Well maybe you could…’ says Spoof, and he relates the story of Professor ‘Duck’ Duckworth, a mysterious ‘Mad Professor’ character living out on the moors who, as local legend has it, invented a machine that once carried him back to the past.
Despite (almost) total disbelief Matt allows himself to be talked into tracking down the source of this story. As the idea takes hold they decide to try to find Prof. Duckworth.
Find him they do, and after some time establish that a) he did have a machine, b) it did work and c) he will NEVER EVER use it again. Why? Duck won’t say.
It seems like the end of the line.
The lads go away to forget it, but the thought, however unlikely, has gripped Matt and he won’t give up.
He goes back armed with a bottle of Scotch. Duck Duckworth is also a great Soccer fan, but not a great drinker. He and Matt hit it off and with the help of the whisky, Matt convinces him that a trip back to see England win the World Cup would be the most wonderful thing that any fan could do, and what could possibly go wrong…?
Time travel is not a precise science, and inevitably things do go ever-so-slightly wrong, with far reaching consequences for life in the UK.
DOWNLOAD THE SCRIPT AS A WORD DOCUMENT