The Gatsby Club, despite its name, is not a place of hedonistic gin-drinking and riotous skinny-dipping. In fact, the façade dropped the moment Clare Balding told her guests in the first episode: “It’s soft drinks only, I’m afraid.” Poor Clare: even Graham Norton’s guests are allowed to pretend to drink wine.
Sometimes we have to adapt to survive. Jay Gatsby knew this. And just like the doomed hero of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, this year’s revamped BBC highlights programme has been forced to remake itself. Catching Wimbledon 2day (the much-derided digit, we were told, reflected its place on BBC2) each night during the first week was like watching a time-lapse video of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.