The aerial shots of our amazing countryside and coastline were stunning in Secrets of the Irish Landscape (RTÉ One, Sunday), quality work by all involved and a look at Ireland from a different editorial angle. The programme’s presenter, Derek Mooney – an affable, easy-going enthusiast – set out to follow in the footsteps of yet another of our unsung scientists, Robert Lloyd Praeger, a naturalist who in the 1890s spent his spare time walking around Ireland – an estimated 7,000km in five years – documenting the flora he found.
His work posed the question of how exotic species – or even any plants at all – arrived on our island after the Ice Age. It was uplifting and informative. Who knew that Arctic saxifrage was so important, and you’d have to admire the botanist for hanging off Benbulbin in a gale to find it.
What was curious, though – distracting, even – was why, when Mooney was following in the footsteps of Praeger, who went everywhere by train or on foot, he did so in a hulking jeep whose every detail the camera lovingly lingered on. Shots of Mooney driving it up a mountain, close-ups of tyres crunching through gravel, even an aerial shot of the gleaming hulk on a ferry.
Ads during the breaks did announce that the programme was sponsored by the car company, although RTÉ says the programme paid for the vehicle, which was “editorially justified” by the long journeys across rough terrain and was no part of any sponsorship arrangement when the film was made – nevertheless viewers were treated to what looked like an adman’s storyboard come to life in a heritage programme. Oddly distracting.
Nine series in and you know what you’re getting with The Apprentice (BBC One, Tuesday and Wednesday). There’s grumpy Alan Sugar behind his big desk. “I’m sick of cliches,” he said in the first programme, dismissing the assembled apprentices’ CVs, before advising them that “actions speak louder than words”. The 16 delusional wannabes each say breathtakingly daft things, straight-faced, right to camera, such as, “I take my inspiration from Napoleon,” or, “I have the body of Jessica Rabbit and the brain of Einstein.”
They’re so interchangeable that you’d be hard pressed to tell one year’s group from the next, and they follow a strict checklist. There’s the public-school type: this year it’s Jason. “You’ve spent all your life as a student,” snarled Sugar, spitting out the word as if the posh boy had just admitted to being a mass murderer instead of being a polite sort with an interest in history. There’s the strangely compelling weird one: pasty-faced Alex from Wales, who went a little mad with the eyebrow tweezers and was called Dracula by one of the other contestants. And there’s the Irish one, Leah Totton, a doctor from Derry.
As usual (excluding the Transylvanian one, obviously) the men look like eager young estate agents with time-consuming haircuts.
This year the women have ratcheted up the glam factor, working those tottering heels and that face-down-in-the-make-up- counter look – not usually the signature style of successful businesswomen.
Fresh-faced teacher Jaz – no sticky lip gloss or power suit – was the first be on the wrong end of Sugar’s pointy-fingered “You’re fired”, because her team didn’t win the challenge of flogging a load of toilet rolls, high-vis jackets and Chinese good-luck charms. Though she should have been given the heave-ho for her “I’m half machine. I can process things at a speed that is out of this world.”
It’s all still good fun in its formulaic, slick way – even if it’s not the must-see, water-cooler telly it once was. It might be time after the next series – 10 is a nice round number – for Sir Alan to do a Sir Alex and quit while he’s ahead.
At least there' s still some fire in The Apprentice . Dragons' Den (RTÉ One, Sunday) limped over the finish line after a dull series with a strange two-parter, Junior Dragons' Den . Here, young people pitched ideas – some astonishingly good, and from eye-poppingly smart children who were then lightly patronised by the six dragons before some were awarded a "bursary" of €2,000.
Overall, there simply weren't enough interesting business ideas or even products to sustain the series – every episode felt dragged out in a blur of website ideas. This year the producers had to replace three dragons (to lose one dragon, etc), and even after watching most of the series I can't remember the names or the businesses of the two new men. All I can remember about the smiley one is that he kept talking about Silicon Valley and about the other one that he kept trying to cut penny-pinching deals. (I cracked and looked it up: they're Barry O'Sullivan and Peter Casey.) The third new dragon, Ramona Nicholas, was memorable only because she came close to outdoing Gavin Duffy in hamming it up for the cameras. It's as if Dragons' Den was their big TV springboard, the nervy contestants who walk up the stairs to pitch ideas being just the props.
The United States of Television: America in Primetime (BBC Two, Saturday) is a four-part series, presented by Alan Yentob, that has been a treat for anyone interested in how television has developed, particularly how certain character types evolved. This week's third part looked at the rise of independent women on the small screen, from the 1950s people-pleasing, one-dimensional, vacuuming housewife to complex, sometimes challenging contemporary characters, such as Nurse Jackie and Weeds ' drug-dealing mom, who "put the herb in surburbia".
For decades advertising dollars boxed women into conservative domestic roles, but, slowly, characters such as Mary Tyler Moore, Murphy Brown and Roseanne emerged, and women on screen began to reflect real life. And then cable TV, unfettered by the conservative demands of advertising, yanked the apron strings off, particularly HBO, with Sex in the City , and other shows whose modest cable ratings were in inverse proportion to their impact on television and beyond.
The Good Wife could have been a title from the make-your-husband-a-martini 1950s, but the first scene shows Juliana Margulies's character not standing by her powerful husband after his downfall, then returning to the workplace where her life become a recognisable balancing act between career, family and personal desires.
"Now when women turn on the TV they see characters they recognise," said Shonda Rhimes, creator of
Grey's Anatomy
, and she's right.
tvreview@irishtimes.com
