Mark Little returns to RTÉ to host a fictional news hour about global warming – so it’s apt that Tomorrow Tonight: Ireland 2050 (RTÉ One, Wednesday, 9.35pm) is a great glowing dumpster fire. Both dull and unintentionally side-splitting, it makes you wonder if it should ever have reached our screens.
That said, there is the kernel of an original idea here. RTÉ is addicted to property television and crime drama. Tomorrow Tonight strives to be different, so it deserves credit for at least thinking outside the box. It is styled as a news broadcast from the year 2050, at which point Ireland is in the grip of the climate crisis, struggling with flooding and energy supply. The farmers are still complaining, too.
Hang on, some viewers might protest. Is this 2050 or merely 2023? The woes of the future indeed feel similar to those bedevilling present-day Ireland. Still, there is at least one up-and-coming property market: the moon. It is from the lunar surface that a correspondent beams in for a chinwag with Little – though the scene looks as if it was filmed in a chilly corner of the RTÉ canteen. Welcome to Prime Time meets The Twilight Zone.
Cheap-looking sci-fi has its place. Doctor Who was at its best when the Daleks were made from Styrofoam cups and bits of twig. And let’s not forget the charms of the “Hauntology” genre – shoddy 1970s telly where the horrible production values were part of the appeal.
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Patrick Freyne: I am becoming a demotivational speaker – let’s all have an averagely productive December
There is some of that with Tomorrow Tonight. There’s also some hammy acting, with people pretending to be UN officials, refugees and the like.
As an exploration of climate change and its impact on Ireland, Tomorrow Tonight misses the target. The facts are undoubtedly 100 per cent accurate. And RTÉ is, of course, to be commended for reporting on the most significant existential crisis of the 21st century.
But it isn’t cheesy enough to qualify as shonky science fiction, and it’s far too hokey to succeed as factual TV. Tomorrow Tonight verges on being so bad that it’s good. Maybe RTÉ should give the concept another go. It has come so close to making something fantastically weird apparently by accident.
