TV Review: The one good thing about The Rose of Tralee being spread over two nights was that Ryan Tubridy got to have a second go at presenting it. He began his first night tripping over his words and continued it wriggling in his tuxedo, writes Shane Hegarty.
He is not a man who pours into a dinner suit, but who seems to have become ensnared in one and is keen to free himself. The suit became the medium through which he displayed his nerves. He tugged at the sleeves and fiddled with the breast button. His hands so regularly veered towards his pockets that he looked for all the world like a man who had misplaced something about his person.
He struggled to fill the stage or to inflate an event that remained stubbornly flat. Radio allows for intimacy, but in the wide-open plains of television some of his asides were lost and his physical discomfort was magnified. For much of the opening night he presented as if engaged in a minor parody of his predecessors; a little Gay here, a lot of Marty there.
When experience was required, there was none to draw on. He directed the New York Rose towards melancholic reminiscence of September 11th and then set her adrift. An old hand would have been adept at skimming the shallows of pathos before bringing her back into lighter territory and allowing her to leave on an upbeat note. He also made a joke about stealing cutlery that would have been perfectly good during any year in which the incumbent Rose had not been arrested on suspicion of shoplifting.
Nerves, however, make thoughts and words arrive in the same disconcerting tumble. You try presenting a live television show for over three and a half hours in front of a million people and you might discover that neither arrive at all.
The second night demonstrated evolution, if not revolution. In the suit he was less shaken and stirred. Its breast buttons did not come under such bombardment. Nervous energy was channelled into genial buffoonery, quicker wit and sharper repartee. He settled into his prescribed role as inoffensive talent show host and firm male hand guiding the girls towards the microphone. There were only brief forays towards the boundaries. He couldn't resist asking the Texas Rose what she thought of George Bush Junior. When she praised him, the audience clapped as if not quite sure whether they were applauding the Rose or the Bush.
Irony, though, remained an undiscovered country. There were no sly, knowing winks to the camera. As the Darwin Rose made animal shapes out of balloons, just like Grandmother used to make, she pumped up the long, thin balloon from the hip and there was neither a snigger nor a phnarr. In coming years Tubridy will stamp his personality on the event, but for most of this one he put himself forwar as a thoroughly modern Marty. He even indulged the audience in the festival's annual joke, in which the host reluctantly hitches up a Rose's skirt so that she can dance. It gets funnier every year.
Meanwhile, if his youth somewhat undermined the patriarchal overtones, it also neutralised the usual potential for lechery.
Those journalists who asked what kind of self-respecting woman would want to put themselves forward for the anachronistic embarrassment that is The Rose of Tralee were given their answer with the arrival of the first Rose. She was from Limerick. She was a journalist.
She had fired the starter-pistol on a slow marathon of banality which, like everything in Irish society, could not conclude without there being a speech from a dignitary whose charisma had been smothered by his chains of office.
In between, the event was so laden down with sponsors that one of the Rose's party pieces included reciting the Kerrymaid ad.
Their personalities came from within the same narrow band. RTÉ's continued patronage endorses the distasteful rule that excludes young mothers from entering, but there should really be room in the competition for the fallen Roses, for those whose petals have been trodden on, for those with thorns.
They would at the very least have better stories to tell.
For a man brought up in this post- feminist age, though, The Rose of Tralee is a confusing thing to witness. It represents so much that we were told women had rejected: traditional notions of deportment, of carrying herself well, of having personality but not so much that she embarrass herself. Yet, here are university graduates, businesswomen, more primary school teachers than seemed proportional, who - for patriotism or fame or the simple desire to live out girlhood fantasies - have repeatedly replenished the event's stock.
Ultimately, they present themselves to a man who makes jokes about the women "talking back" to him and, rather than leave his testicles swinging from the nearest lamp-post, they just widen their smile. The sash sits comfortably across their torso and they are quite obviously having the time of their lives. That, in this supposed age of choice, some plump for the things they were supposed to reject is probably the one truly feminist thing about the Rose of Tralee. And for that observation, I now fully expect to spend much of the next week shinning up lamp-posts in search of my testicles.
Malcolm In The Middle returned to TV3 on Monday night just as the country was turning over to Ryan Tubridy. It has never quite infiltrated the imagination here, perhaps because, in its unsentimental and slapstick riposte to The Wonder Years, it draws so much on American experience. It continues to be, though, reliable and resourceful comedy. While best known for capturing the boredom and desperate unfairness of adolescence, it does exactly the same for parenthood. There are few comedies in which a mother will give her seven-year-old son a black eye after pelting him with stones as he clings sunburnt and scared to the end of a rope swing, and in which the context will fully justify it.
Elsewhere this week, Walking The Dog was a Townlands documentary about three people and their dogs and was no more ground-breaking than that suggests.
But this was a light summer documentary about companionship that will have been enjoyed by dog owners and, for half-an-hour anyway, some who are not pining for the damp smell of dog hair on the sofa and the unruly tug of a mutt at the end of a lead.
In On Holiday With . . . The Gellers we went to Croatia with Uri and family. If the programme-makers had enlisted his powers he could have told them that it would have worked better if it dropped the pretence to being a travel show and kept with its aspiration towards being the latest bit of B-list celebrity voyeurism.
Geller, as if you didn't know, is an interminable show-off, like a child with a new game but without the social expertise to know when everyone else has seen enough. He cannot pop to the toilet without showing the attendant his spoon-bending trick. He rubbed spoons for stewards and passengers on the flight over. For a man of such immense power, you might have thought that the pilot would have requested he be switched off along with the mobile phones and laptop computers.
Geller is the worst kind of magician; not simply one who doesn't reveal the secrets behind his magic tricks, but who refuses to acknowledge that they are tricks at all. He has the kinetic enthusiasm of a novice. In Split, he climbed a steeple insisting that he could make the church bell ring with his mind. Sure enough, it clanged away on cue. He rang his brother-in-law to tell him all about it, refusing to be deflated by the simple observation that it always rings at the top of the hour, regardless of who is pointing their mind at it. On a ferry trip, he leaned close to a compass and showed us how it shifted position at his command. I too can perform this feat, although I would allow you to search me for magnets afterwards.
For a telepath, Uri Geller shouts a lot more than would seem necessary.He informed every waiter of his vegetarianism as if it confirmed him as a man existing on a higher moral plane and revealed his sixth sense to be only one of tireless self-importance. Having said that, he really must have amazing powers to make your skin crawl from over 2,000 miles away.