Planet Ping Pong

Time Shift enters the world of table tennis and traces how an English parlour game once known as ‘whiff-whaff’ became the most popular sport in Asia, championed by Mao Zedong and how it almost brought an end to the Cold War.

The programme revisits the glory days of table tennis in the 1930s and 1940s, when thousands packed Wembley Stadium in London to watch heroes like Johnny Leach do battle with the greats of Europe.

It researches how a simple bat made of sponge changed the game forever in 1952 and the programme interviews one of the game’s mavericks, the New York hustler Marty ‘the Needle’ Reisman.

Наступний епізод

S06E09 - Parallel Worlds: A User's Guide