Tommy Tiernan’s comedy is an acquired taste: some audiences adore his effervescent shoutiness, others struggle to identify where the yelling stops and the joke begins. He can be a bit Marmite as a TV presenter, too. Tommy Tiernan’s Epic West, his 2022 valentine to Connacht, was a steamroller of hyperbole, giddy with guff about “sensuous” rivers and sub-Tolkien blather regarding eerie glades and misty mountains.
He is, however, in his element on the Tommy Tiernan Show (RTÉ One, Saturday, 9.40pm), in which he skilfully interviews guests whose identities have not been revealed to him in advance. For a comic whose act is all about volume, it is telling that, in the host’s seat, he understands the importance of shutting up.
The value of silence is underscored by the absence of a studio audience this season: it’s just Tiernan and a guest – a framing that gives the broadcast the air of a confessional.
First into the booth in an enjoyable series opener is comedian Dylan Moran. Where Tiernan’s humour is madcap, Moran’s is more macabre. Too macabre, perhaps: now in his 50s, there are reasons to fear that the darkness has taken over, that he’s forgotten to look to the light.
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“I’m worried about you,” begins Tiernan, who has known Moran since they were at school together in Navan. Moran, who manages to be both dishevelled and devilishly louche, shrugs off the concern. “It’s a big one,” he chuckles at Tiernan’s opening line.
Moran is rumpled – a barbed wit collapsing in on himself. But he is also a slick, seasoned pro, and it isn’t clear if his aura of midlife tragedy is an affectation or something of genuine concern. One thing that is apparent is that he’s probably spending too much time on his own. “It gets a bit lonely; it makes you funny in the head,” he says when Tiernan asks about his inclination towards solitude.
Some context might have helped the interview. Is Moran just a grumpy young man who has aged into a grumpy middle-aged one and no longer knows what to do with his shtick? Or has life dealt him a bad hand recently? If so, it would have been nice to have the details filled in. Instead, the viewer must play a game of guesswork.
[ Tommy Tiernan: ‘I know that I’m a nosy bastard’Opens in new window ]
Still, Tiernan is a thoughtful interviewer. That empathy is likewise on display when he talks to Sarah de Lagarde, who lost a leg and arm when she was struck by two trains at a north London Underground station in 2022. “I had a vision of my two daughters, who are nine and 13, and their faces flashed in my mind’s eye and they were like ‘Mommy what are you doing, you are coming home’,” she says. “So I know now what it feels like when you die.”
The final guest is ornithologist Seán Ronayne, who is on a mission to record the song of every bird native to Ireland. Ronayne suffered social anxiety as a young man and found that the great outdoors was a place where he could be at ease. “It brought me out of my shell,” he says. “I struggled with the social element of people.”
Tiernan is engrossed as Ronayne plays a selection of his field recordings. Any temptation to milk the subject for laughs is resisted. Instead, he sits back and lets his Ronayne rhapsodise about hawks and harriers. After the starkness and darkness of the Dylan Moran segment, it’s a comforting comedown – scratching an itch that other talkshows aren’t even aware exists.
