Deirdre O’Kane Talks Funny (RTÉ One, 9.10pm) suffers from a crisis of identity and will do little to spruce up RTÉ’s Saturday night schedule. The format of host and guest seated opposite suggests an in-depth interview show in the vein of Piers Morgan’s Life Stories.
But that isn’t what is served up as O’Kane hunkers down with the first of the six comedians with whom she will banter over coming weeks. She and Pat Shortt are friends, we learn, and their conversation has the bouncy vagueness of two old pals catching up.
There is no deep analysis and not much humour either. Shortt laughs and laughs but, as the episode goes on, his hooting acquires a slightly unnerving edge. It is the chortling of someone papering over uncomfortable silences.
This is no reflection on O’Kane who makes the absolute most of a testing formula. Nor does it take away from the significance of RTÉ green-lighting a female-presented weekend chat show (to belatedly join Miriam O’Callaghan’s Saturday Night With Miriam which ran for a number of years from 2005). This should have happened decades ago. It says something about the entrenched gender dynamics in Irish society that it still rates as a novelty.
Shortt, meanwhile, is a natural natterer. Of course, we already know that, as it feels as if he’s on RTÉ so often anyway.
For Talks Funny to work, then, it needs to go beyond Late Late Lite bonhomie and engage more deeply. And it isn’t as if there is a lack of material. Did the death of Shortt’s mother when he was young turn him towards comedy, for instance? He explains in a throwaway remark that his father recently revealed that he won an All Ireland medal in 1947. But for what? Hurling? Handball? Competitive monkey throwing?.
Was Shortt snr buttoned-down in other ways? Might this have contributed to the duality of Shortt’s career, which has pivoted from the hurly burly comedy of Killinaskully to misery extravaganzas such as Lenny Abrahamson’s Garage? You come away none the wiser about Shortt either as person or comic.
O’Kane, to her credit, finds an interesting line of inquiry when quizzing him about his reluctance to perform his chart-topping Jumbo Breakfast Roll song.
But Talks Funny is simply not set up to be the sort of show where guests are pushed to reveal their deeper selves. Quite what sort of show it is supposed to be is, however, unclear.
O’Kane, it is worth repeating, is hardly at fault. She is convivial, quick on her feet and never less than composed and professional. She deserves a showcase equal to her talents.
Alas, the aura of chumminess that hangs over the entire affair is off-putting – never more so than when Shortt unpacks an anecdote featuring Ryan Tubridy and Graham Norton. Cynics will grumble that RTÉ is just having a conversation with itself again while the rest of us are pressed against the window, gawping in. It’s a nadir in a broadcast that doesn’t have nearly enough high points to compensate.
