In the era of rolling news coverage, Hugh Leonard's 1966 docudrama Insurrection (nightly, RTÉ1) is fascinating. Aired for the first time since the 50th anniversary of the Rising, it's a fake news programme and a wonderfully postmodern oddity.
In it, 1960s reporters wander through the streets of 1916 Dublin to report on an unfolding rebellion. Ray McAnally is the bemused news anchor, marshalling dispassionate reports as English soldiers are massacred, rebels and bystanders are shot without trial, plans are cocked up, key figures are interviewed, and a host of Dublin characters, fresh from whatever O’Casey set they wandered off, careen into shot and have their say. Many scenes of carnage are convincingly presented in the narrow-angle lens of news cameras, while others are chillingly seen as silent sequences of still images.
It makes impressive use of its limited budget and is largely devoid of both unquestioning pageantry and clever revisionism. For the latter, you can check out Michael Portillo's empire- centric The Enemy Files (Monday, RTÉ1) in which he goes Torying around Dublin with a file of contemporaneous government documents giving the Brit's-eye view on the events of 1916 (ultimately, I assumed he was actually scoping us out for another invasion and that it would end with him shooting a flare in the air and the New Helga floating down the Liffey). While The Enemy Files is entertainingly infuriating, Insurrection is inventive, informative, irreverent, funny and surprisingly clear-eyed.
Daytime marathon
After the time-travelling of Insurrection, I really wanted to immerse myself in the present moment. Luckily there are a whole heap of programmes that eschew world-changing historical events and are all about the here and now. Midday (Monday to Friday, TV3), Today, The Seven O'Clock Show: the present moment is their USP. Nobody binge-watches 10 episodes of Midday on a Bank Holiday Monday a month later. That's not when you watch it, you weirdo. You watch it at midday.
On Monday, Midday's panel included a small dog in a jumper sleeping on the desk. It contributed very little, to be honest, but I liked the no-nonsense way in which it snoozed. It was there with Twink for no good reason, which made me like Twink even more than I already do. Twink can do whatever the fuck she wants. Indeed, I'm pretty sure that that sentence comes from the Proclamation of the Republic. Now, that's a document that is relatively light on detail. And this is why you need programmes like Midday to exist: to trash out the day-to-day rules of an ordered civil society.
On this episode Twink, Terry Prone, Andrea Smith and Rosemary MacCabe gathered around likeably self-deprecating presenter/commissar Elaine Crowley to consider policy on a number of issues: tipping, dogs in restaurants (guess where Twink stood on this), liposuction, the appropriateness of fantasising about one's exes, and popular children's names (before this item, when Crowley mentioned that one of the panellist's names was on a "list", I worried about a purge). The issues are vigorously discussed and then policy is dictated. In the absence of a functioning government, Midday is very useful.
Today with Maura and Dáithí (Monday to Friday, RTÉ1) is another programme that knows what time it is (well, within 24 hours). Usually hosted by Maura Derrane and delightful shaved bear Dáithí Ó Sé, on Monday, Derrane was replaced by Amanda Brunker. She was wearing a patterned jumpsuit that made her look a little like a Dadaist paratrooper. Dáithí Ó Sé knew something was different about Maura. You can't fool him. At one point, he produced an RTÉ Guide with Derrane on the cover while making a sad noise like Chewbacca.
Witness protection programme
Today is a magazine show so the duo regularly zip through a whole heap of items (fashion, gardening, cookery, photos of viewers) in their guise as a witness-protection programme married couple living in an open-plan house. There's a lovely item about Down Syndrome Day and an interlude about children in Kilkenny making a time capsule. "If you're watching this I'm probably dead," says one young girl brightly to camera.
There’s a fashion show involving underwear worn as outerwear (“Superman and Batman are the only people who can wear their underpants on the outside,” says Ó Sé firmly). And then we move from the fake sitting room to the “kitchen” (I dread the day they think we’re ready for the “bedroom”), so Ó Sé can salivatingly watch cookery demonstrations while fantasising about trees filled with honey in the woods where he lives.
Ó Sé and Brunker also interview the Jedwards about Sharknado 4 (these words were unknown to the martyrs of 1916) and talk to an enchanted wizard who healed Michael Flatley by wobbling his hands. Seriously. "The man who cured Michael Flatley" says the caption over the wizard, who doesn't call himself a "wizard" but a "healer". After a while discussing wobbly hand powers, Ó Sé lets rip with some light scepticism: "What about people who say, 'Michael, here now lad, stop the coddin'?' "
The Seven O'Clock Show (Monday to Friday, TV3) has fewer items and a looser, easier style. Nature experts, chefs, politicians, telly presenters, actors, musicians and a baby goat wander to the couch. Twinkly Martin King is basically Dáithí Ó Sé from the mirror universe (Dublin) but the show gets its gently subversive energy from co-host Lucy Kennedy, who knows she's on television (Ó Sé and King do not; I fear the moment they find out) and also knows that we know she knows she's on television. It's fun.
Anyway, I salute all of these pros, daily analysing the minutiae of Irish lives and lifestyles while holding empty coffee cups. They're the brass-rubbings of the golden age of television and goddamnit we need them. Was it for this the wild geese spread the grey wing upon every tide? Having seen Insurrection, I can say without a doubt: probably.
