One of the first things you hear in Million Dollar Pigeons (RTÉ One, Monday, 9.35pm) is a familiar voice. “As far as you’re concerned, this pigeon may be one of those cooing nuisances that blights city streets,” it says. “But to thousands all over the world he’s a lot more.”
It’s Bill O’Herlihy, but rather than sparring with Eamon Dunphy or Johnny Giles the legendary sports broadcaster is on the screen as a young RTÉ reporter in glorious black and white.
He’s explaining the appeal of pigeon racing back when it was a popular urban sport. Today it is in decline, pigeon fanciers tell Gavin Fitzgerald, whose nifty documentary captures the hobby at a crossroads. In Europe and the United States the community is old and financially constrained. In Asia, a rising power of pigeon racing, money is no object, and champion pigeons can fetch more than $1 million at auction.
Million Dollar Pigeons is several documentaries in one, and if they never quite cohere – you could drift off and wake up not having missed anything – the overall effect is charming. This is slow TV that never gets its feathers in a flap as it delivers a fascinating insight into a beloved pursuit.
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If there’s a criticism it’s that it is going out on RTÉ on a random Monday in July. This art-house documentary is ill served by what is essentially a primetime slot. Viewers tuning in expecting something pacy and ripped from the headlines may be underwhelmed – a ding not against the film-maker but against RTÉ, which should be more considered in its curation of speciality films.
In Dublin we meet John O’Brien, who explains that a vision on the Hill of Tara inspired his love of pigeons. “A shaman guy I know said they were going to … Tara to do mushrooms,” he says. “Leonardo da Vinci came to me. Once I started seeing he had pigeons, there was such a connection.”
Inspired by Leonardo the pigeon fancier, he joined a club in west Dublin. Now he has his sights on the grandest prize of all: a “million dollar” pigeon race in South Africa, which offers life-changing prize money to successful trainers.
Bird breeders all say the same thing: pigeon fancying is a supportive community until you become good at it. At which point the knives come out and everyone is jostling to take you down
There’s a catch, of course. If the rewards are vast, the entrance fee is hefty, too; $1,000 per pigeon. Clondalkin Pigeon Club sends its four best birds – only for three to die in quarantine. There are other problems. Just three pigeons make it to their destination on the first day of the race – resulting in a chilly reception for the organisers at prizegiving.
O’Brien and his fellow pigeon fanciers in Clondalkin are disappointed, but they decide to push on and enter one of their birds in another big-money race, in Thailand, run out of a coop staffed entirely by women. (The boss is a man.) The bird finishes just shy of 600th place – yet for O’Brien taking part is what matters.
The stories of these big-money races are intercut with interviews with bird breeders across the world. They’re an interchangeable bunch: generally old, invariably American or Australian. And they all say the same thing: pigeon fancying is a supportive community until you become good at it. At which point the knives come out and everyone is jostling to take you down.
Back in Dublin, John O’Brien is closing his coop after a relationship breakdown. He’s moving out, and the pigeons can’t come. He’s heartbroken – and mystified by the sport’s progression from backyard pursuit to cash-rich industry in which bidders plonk down eye-watering sums for a pigeon they fancy. “Two million?” he says. “Relax, mate. It’s a pigeon.”
