Lady Gregory: Ireland’s First Social Influencer (RTÉ One, Thursday, 10.15pm) has a whizz-bang title that feels aimed at TikTok users rather than licence-fee payers. But while the first of two episodes provides a fascinating overview of the life and times of this leading light of the Celtic revival, the documentary never follows through by explaining why Lady Gregory should be considered the early-20th-century equivalent of an Instagram icon or Love Island contestant.
Also left unexplained is the decision to pair up the Dublin Senator Lynn Ruane and the British actor Miriam Margolyes. The goal is presumably to mimic the vibe of Margolyes’ engaging Channel 4 travelogue with Alan Cumming. There, the unifying factor is their shared Scottish background. In the case of Ruane and Margolyes the logic is more obscure.
All the cliches are ticked off: the Gregorys lived in a big house, her father was a dreadful landlord, she was eventually married off to an aristocrat 35 years her senior. It’s all a bit Wuthering Heights: Galway Edition
Still, they make for jolly company. We start in London, where Margolyes meets an expert on Gregory who laments the writer’s fall from fashion. Crossing to Dublin, the Harry Potter star hits peak Brit Abroad mode when remarking that Ruane has “a very strong accent”. Margolyes has a strong accent, too – though, of course, she probably wouldn’t see it that way.
Once they’re in their van and on the road, however, the show gets into gear. We learn that Gregory was born into a baroque Anglo-Irish family in Roxborough. All the cliches are ticked off: they lived in a big house, her father was a dreadful landlord, she was eventually married off to an aristocrat 35 years her senior. It’s all a bit Wuthering Heights: Galway Edition.
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Despite her suffocating upbringing, she cultivated a passion for the Celtic heritage of the people of the west. She learned Irish, spent time on the Aran Islands and became a supporter of the young WB Yeats. More than a supporter, in fact, he essentially behaved like an unruly student crashing her pad. He glugged her wine, wolfed her food and then skipped off to write poetry.
“I don’t much like WB Yeats,” Margolyes tuts. “He drank the wine, ate all the good food and did f**k all.”
Part two is still to come, so it would be premature to take a definitive view of the series. But it would have been nice, in this first part, to delve further into Gregory’s present obscurity. She cofounded the Abbey Theatre and helped preserve many of the Celtic myths so popular around the world today, yet Yeats’s profile thoroughly obscures hers.
Why was this? Misogyny is bound to play a part. What of the fact that she was the daughter of a rack-renting landlord? It feels telling that most of the experts singing her praises are British – Gregory seems to loom larger for them than for many in the country where she grew up.
This, though, isn’t a documentary to get lost in the weeds. Instead, Ruane and Margolyes have a merry time traversing the country. They learn a bit along the way. But, more importantly, they enjoy hanging out together – and that effusiveness has made it to the screen.
