Dublin 4 (RTE 1, Monday)
Slaves In Paradise (Channel 4, Tuesday)
Walking With Dinosaurs (BBC 1, Monday)
Living Proof (BBC 1, Wednesday)
Jauntily introduced by an RTE continuity announcer as Ireland's "most pilloried postcode", Dublin 4 - of which RTE is an integral part - was made to sound as though it is peopled by the most victimised in our society. The poor Fourites - isn't ridicule on grounds of address a dreadful form of bigotry? In fairness, I suppose the announcer's upbeat tone could be charitably interpreted as signalling some irony. Even so, tens of thousands of people, who believe their own postcodes are stigmatised at job interviews, might well consider the "most pilloried" description to be a whinge or, at best, a rather smug sarcasm.
But then, such people don't usually have local TV or radio stations, with national remits, to air their grievances. Still, allowing for the sophistry which can conveniently confuse geography and mentality, we can probably allow (while disputing the literal truth of) the announcer's sentiment. In its idiomatically pejorative meaning, "Dublin 4" suggests a state of mind which thinks it is the mind of the state or, at least, ought to be. Hence the legitimate and generally healthy criticisms which the term attracts. But nobody pretends that the geographical district is utterly synonymous with the mindset suggested by the cliche.
Showing us, as Michael Davitt's documentary successfully did, that geographically, Dublin 4 is not just a self-regarding, middleclass menagerie, does not invalidate the term as a form of shorthand for a particular set of political, social and class values. So, prostitutes, pigeon-fanciers and publicly pious, Rosary-reciting Catholics exist in Dublin 4, the postcode, even if they are deemed antithetical to Dublin 4, the mentality. Davitt's fast-paced programme sought to rescue the geographical reality from the cliche. The principal problem was that, as a result, the reality of the cliche was arguably understated.
Sure, Irishtown and Ringsend are as much parts of Dublin 4 as are Ballsbridge, Sandymount and Donnybrook. The approach taken was therefore valid, even iconoclastic, towards the cliche. But given the perceived Dublin 4-ness of RTE itself, any RTE-made documentary about the place could be considered something of an internal investigation. We did, to be fair, meet a media couple - financial journalist Frank Fitzgibbon and his RTE wife Isabel Charleton - who conformed more readily to the image most people have of Dublin 4 residents. They spoke about their work, their house and their marriage, allowing the cameras to inhale their taste in furniture and decoration.
But, being media people, they had sufficient media savvy. We didn't get to hear from the well-heeled lawyers, accountants and business types who live in the biggest private residences of Dublin 4. Perhaps they would not co-operate or perhaps they were omitted because they might have added strength to the cliched view of the district. Whatever the reason, the case for the cliche seemed under-represented. Had we been given figures for, say, average incomes, average house prices, average educational standard attained and ratio of cars to population, throughout all of Dublin 4, we would have had a greater perspective.
Comparing such figures with citywide and national averages would have shown us just how relatively affluent (or not) Dublin 4 actually is. As it was, Davitt's documentary, albeit well-shot and with a generally engaging mix of characters, appeared too arbitrary. It did say much about the people included and, by extension, about the postal district in which they live. But it's hard to believe that there are more pigeon-fanciers in Dublin 4 than there are yuppies (or whatever yuppies have become known as in the 1990s).
There was, of course, the Mexican ambassador, Daniel Dultzin. In fact, there was quite a lot of Mr Dultzin: walking, eating and playing music. There were also shots of people playing bowls, quoits, on the DART, in the pub and of a group of power-dressed matrons, who could, I understand, be classed as "ladies who lunch". But for all its busyness and its atmospherically-framing shots (the pigeon house chimneys, Lansdowne Road stadium, Baggot Street by night) Dublin 4, the documentary, was primarily an impressionistic piece of television. As such, it was quite good of its type and was never intended as sociology. But shorn of the context of hard statistics, it was more random than rigorous.
AN even more remarkable community than that of Dublin 4 was the subject of Slaves In Paradise. Founded in 1970, the commune in Friedrichsof, Austria grew up around its charismatic leader, Otto Muhl. Based on the axiom that "the couple relationship is the root of all evil", Otto and his 600 followers sought to create a "sexual paradise". Members could have sex as often as they liked because Otto had decreed that sex was essential to the healing process. "When a normal psychologist sleeps with a patient, the therapy stops," said Otto. "With me, it begins there."
In spite of its brazenness, this rather suspicious chat-up line was accepted as gospel. Mind you, Otto had some other great guff: "No animal is as greedy as the human woman"; "Women always want sex with men of status"; "Everyone fought to wipe my arse". Every night Otto would hold mandatory therapy sessions. Frequently these would be conducted in the nude and orgies regularly ensued. The commune members had decided to film and document everything and sure enough, some of their orgy footage - which resembled nothing so much as a pile of fattened Auschwitz corpses come to life - was screened.
This was funny. Two plump, middle-aged women -- looking, in fact, like ladies who lunched a little bit too often - thumbed through photograph albums of orgies. As they giggled and reminisced, they might just have been looking at an old school yearbook. But there was a serious and fascinating story here too. If it is true that a lack of sex can make people unhappy, it is equally true that a glut of it can too. Outbreaks of venereal disease dampened ardour at Friedrichsof and as time passed, the entire set-up - allegedly based on a fusion of Marxist ideology, Freudian therapy and unlimited sex - became utterly hierarchical.
Otto, of course, was the apex of the hierarchy and, it seems, all of the women wanted to sleep with him. Those who managed to bed Otto most often even referred to themselves as the commune's "first lady". But the original 20-year-old women were growing older and Otto set his sights - and everything else besides - on a younger generation. The fun stopped there as Otto ravaged a number of teenage girls, some under the legal age limit. He was convicted for this behaviour in 1991 and sentenced to seven years. Now however, aged 74, and with advanced Parkinson's Disease, Otto is in Portugal running a new outfit on Friedrichsof lines. His rota system for a different woman every night is still in operation.
Perhaps the most startling aspect of this attempt to destroy the nuclear family was how accepting of Otto's diktats were commune members. Many of them even went out to work in the financial capitals of Europe and gave millions to Otto. Indeed, some of them became so driven by making money that they regularly neglected their Otto-ordained duty to engage in lunchtime sex. Slaves in Paradise always had an Orwellian whiff and now only a small group remains in the original commune. Most of them are, they said, "now more or less monogamous". Even though it would be difficult to conceive of any group less monogamous than the Friedrichsof originals, we knew what they meant.
Few have followed the sex-guru to Portugal. Most of the middleaged women were not best pleased by Otto's fondness for their teenage daughters. At the outset, commune members believed that they were "the vanguard of society" and certainly, they took their experimenting seriously. But Otto's increasing megalomania and criminal behaviour reminded members that often the best reason not to follow a leader is precisely because that person is a leader. So, Otto leads on while his former followers, in true nuclear family tradition, revisit their past through perusing photograph albums over tea.
ALMOST as controversial as Otto's commune has been Walking With Dino- saurs, BBC's astonishing, computer-generated series. Certainly, since nobody actually knows just how dinosaurs moved and behaved, there is an unwarranted sureness to much of the commentary. Visually though, the series is so brilliant that even Kenneth Branagh's portentous narration can be forgotten. The cast includes such spectacular creatures as tyrannosaurus rex, stegosaurus, brontosaurus and all the rest of Hollywood's A-List dino-pack who got their big break in Jurassic Park.
Children love this stuff, of course - a reality which can lead to awkwardnesses when we are shown dinosaurs mating. We can, to be fair, credit the dinosaurs with some discretion. At least these BBC ones behaved so conventionally that they'd never have cut it with Otto and the gang. In a secluded forest clearing, two monsters made love and, yes, the earth did move. Explaining to a nine-year-old that there were bloke dinosaurs and babe dinosaurs in order to make baby dinosaurs kind of deals with a child's perplexed face. But most dinosaur-mad kids want to see the gory savagery of an allosaurus scrapping with a triceratops. An adventure movie, not a romantic drama, is what they expect.
Still, in producing a series for adults as well as children, the BBC has created a visual classic. Perhaps in time these computer-animated creatures will look as stagey and absurd as the men-in-rubbersuits dinosaurs of early Hollywood. But it's unlikely. Walking With Dinosaurs is more of a victory for computer wonders than for palaeontology, but it is also remarkable television. Combining geology, biomechanical engineering and even deductions based upon fossilised dinosaur dung, the makers have created the TV spectacle of the year. Even Otto's orgies couldn't match the primeval, thundering, seething energy of dinosaurs lunching on each other.
FINALLY, another tale of primitive living - Living Proof: The Boy Who Lived With Monkeys. If we got Orwell with Otto, we got Tarzan with this one. A three-year-old boy, who fled into the Ugandan jungle after witnessing his father murder his mother, was, allegedly, raised by monkeys for more than a year, before being captured and placed in an orphanage. Now, 10 years later, John Ssebunnya is attracting academics and TV crews. Douglas Candland, a psychologist and animal behaviourist, accompanied presenter Sally Magnusson to Uganda to investigate.
They listened to John's story and then arranged a reunion for him with the type of monkeys he claimed had fed and protected him. John never eyeballed the monkeys and generally approached them side-on and with his palms opened. Apparently, such tricks are known only to professional primatologists and people who have spent a great deal of time with monkeys. The experts were convinced. Most wild child stories turn out to be nonsense but this one was compelling. John remains a little shy and slow but has lost the extreme wildness he exhibited after first being captured. Crucially, he seemed more psychologically healthy than most of Otto's avant-garde humans.
Eddie Holt can be contacted at eholt@iol.ie