Unreported World

Series twenty four, episode one
In the first of a new series, former Paralympian Ade Adepitan investigates basketball in Cuba, where poorly paid sportsmen are forced to defect abroad to further their careers and, effectively exiled, leave their families behind. All a far cry from our own pampered sports stars. This issue is a pinpoint symptom of a political system which is too complex to be documented in only 25 minutes.

Still, if you look past the basketball, you can glimpse a snapshot of a life in communist Cuba, teasingly touching on issues that are never really explored in full. Issues of family, economy, national loyalty and oppression spring up around a central theme: is sport driven by love or money? Whether this question alone is worthy of the usually harrowing ‘Unreported World’ strand is arguable, but it certainly offers a unique angle on a much wider issue. Claire Winter