Cuimhni Gaeltachta (TnaG, Monday)
Welcome To Australia (ITV, Tuesday)
Jeffrey Bernard (Channel 4, Monday)
The Mystery Of Men (BBC 1, Monday)
`I got freedom here," said Nell McCafferty of her teenage trips to Ranafast in the Donegal Gaeltacht. It was there, in the 1950s, that, at 13, she smoked her first cigarette; at 14, she first tasted poitin; at 15, she experienced her first French kiss. Nell didn't say whether or not she continued to travel to this vice den after the age of 15. Given her thirst for freedom, Last Tango in Paris wouldn't have been in it by the time she was 18. Perhaps an XXX-rated documentary - Last Ceili in Gortahork - could solve TnaG's ratings problems.
Cuimhni Gaeltachta also asked Ken Whitaker and Mary Redmond to recall summers spent in Ranafast. Ken went there in the 1930s; Mary in the mid-1960s. Neither admitted to sampling the memorable rites of passage which Nell described. But all three were warm in their praise of their times in the Gaeltacht. Crucially, they were approving without resorting to the sort of sentimental gush that can ruin such sentimental journeys. No doubt, it would be possible to find a well-known trio with nothing but contempt for and poisonous memories of teenage gaeltacht summers. But, sin sceal eile . . .
Whether remembered as a cultural Butlin's or a Gaelic gulag, the gaeltacht has been central to tens of thousands of teenagers. Mind you, there was always a sweet'n'sour aspect to the deal: sweet freedom in a parent-free, hormone-fizzing, co-ed set-up; sour prospect of stodgy schoolroom stuff during the summer holidays. An analysis of its contribution to the project of preserving the Irish language would be problematic. An analysis of its appeal to bright, highly-motivated youngsters like Nell, Ken and Mary is not necessary.
It's not as though these gaeltacht trips were always about furthering the ideological aims of Irish nationalism - at least not from the points of view of the teenagers and their parents. There were often grubbier, more pragmatic reasons behind the decisions to head west during the summer holidays. Long before the glut of cramming schools spawned by the obscene "points race" mentality, such gaeltacht summers were regularly seen by ambitious parents as a way to improve their children's exam performances. Ostensibly, it was about resurrecting romantic, Gaelic Ireland. In reality, it was more often about securing an advantage in an increasingly hardheaded society.
"It taught me how to think in Irish," said Mary Redmond, who remembered the culinary delights of Ranafast: sliced pans, stew, sliced pans, the odd egg, sliced pans, tapioca, sliced pans, rhubarb and sliced pans. Sometimes, she said, and Nell McCafferty concurred, there would be French toast. Not as exciting as French kissing but, pointedly, it was foreign without being British. Talking in Irish, thinking in Irish, living in Irish - even sinning (as it was then) in Irish - these were the goals. They weren't always easily attained but so long as you didn't lapse into talking, thinking or living in English, salvation remained possible.
Reports suggested that the "bean an ti" was a major dudette in the overall gig. Some were, reputedly, warm, understanding and maternal; others were spoken of as Ireland's tougher version of the female corps of the Nazi SS. We saw a class in action: "Chuaigh Sean suas an staighre," said the teacher. "Thug Mamai milsean do." The teenagers repeated these simple sentences. It wasn't the sort of holiday they might nowadays expect on the Costa del Sol. But beneath brooding Errigal, they knew that enduring the Irish lessons was really a trade-off for the hours of freedom. "Saoirse, saoirse agus saoirse," said Nell, characterising her Ranafast summers.
Old footage - black and white and colour - of swimming days and ceili nights, suggested the Butlins aspect of such gaeltacht gigs. We saw too, students singing an Oasis song translated into Irish. Such gaelicisation of popular culture seemed like the Irish language equivalent of a folk mass - a milsean to sugar a more fundamental pill. Ken Whitaker recalled priests on anti-hanky panky patrols. With TnaG (soon to become TG4) receiving plaudits this week for live screening of the Dail's Public Accounts Committee, the future might well be ag feachaint suas for the Irish language channel.
Certainly, Cuimhni Gaeltachta was a worthy, albeit nostalgia-laden, little effort. All that remains to be done now is to make a documentary about the darker side of teenage summers in the gaeltacht. Every kid didn't find freedom, freedom and more freedom there. If it was never quite a Lord of the Flies experience, for many there was more to it than French kissing and French toast. Some, indeed, found the going so distasteful, that they opted to take French leave from Irish Ireland. Their stories are worth hearing too.
Stories of Australia's Aborigines were told to, and by, John Pilger for his latest polemic: Welcome To Australia - the secret shame behind the Sydney Olympics. Beneath the image of a thriving, multi-cultural society, there lies, argued Pilger, an utterly disgraceful record of racism against Native Australians. It's true, of course, with many Irish-Australians to the forefront in suppressing Aboriginal people. It's true too, though, that Pilger's typical analyses of a society's power structures, while valid, do seem sadly dated nowadays.
Still, the facts bear out what he had to say. More than 100,000 Aborigine children were stolen from their families in this century and made to work as, effectively, slaves. Aborigines, despite living in a very wealthy country, continue to die in their thirties and forties. Infant mortality rates remain three times greater than those of the rest of Australia's population and many children go blind from easily preventable diseases. Suicide among young Aborigines has reached "epidemic proportions", as have deaths of Aborigines in custody. And so it goes . . .
We saw splendid shots of white Australia's magnificent sports facilities. Cut, then, to Aborigines playing Aussie Rules football in a barren, brown dust bowl. For generations a form of apartheid kept Aboriginal sports stars out of Australia's national teams. Unlike the blacks of South Africa, they didn't have the weight of numbers (Aborigines make up just two per cent of Australia's population) to force political change. Before the emergence of such stars as Mal Meninga (rugby league), Yvonne Goolagong (tennis) and Cathy Freeman (athletics), great Aboriginal competitors such as Wally McArthur (athletics and rugby league), Eddie Gilbert (cricket) and Ron Richards (boxing) were generally shunned by white Australia.
Next year, the Olympics return to Australia. Melbourne staged the 1956 games and now it is Sydney's turn. Pilger spoke of "Australia's disastrous human rights record towards its minorities". If it was the language of polemic, it was none the less the language of truth. He suggested that genocide has been under way down under for the last 200 years. That it hasn't merely taken place in specific locations across a short period of time, as in Cambodia, Rwanda, Nazi-occupied Europe, the USSR between the world wars, Bosnia and Kosovo, doesn't mean that it hasn't taken place, he said.
Given the blinding PR dazzle which accompanies world events like the Olympics, this documentary was a valuable corrective. It ought to be repeated very close to the games' opening ceremony next year. It won't be. Even so, the realisation that racism is a global, bred-in-the-bones way of seeing the world will do no harm. Attacks on Pilger have become increasingly common and vitriolic and certainly, he has made a few, rather sanctimonious, even smug, documentaries (most notably the one on the new South Africa), in recent times. But he returned to winning ways with this pre-Olympics torching of the nasty side of Australian society and culture.
`I wonder how you'd write a column if you were a hostage," mused Jeffrey Bernard. "I am a hostage," he concluded. So he was. This repeat documentary - Jeffrey Bernard: Reach for the Ground - shot shortly before his death a couple of years ago, was less a celebration of the life of a public roue, than a cautionary tale about the inevitable results of sustained debauchery. In his flat in a high-rise block above Soho's Berwick Street, Bernard was a sad sight. With part of his right leg amputated and his face, in his own words, "like a crumpled shroud", he was, well, more than merely "unwell". He was dying.
This partial-profile opened with an actor preparing to play Bernard in a revival of the West End hit Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. The title was taken from the succinct apology run by The Spectator whenever Bernard's wonderful Low Life column didn't appear. "I know the part quite well and a nasty part it is," said Jeff, sucking on a Players Medium Navy Cut. He agreed that, despite being married four times, alcohol "was always the other woman in his life". It was, he said, "a love-hate affair".
By the time this one was filmed, Bernard, the legendary drinker, womaniser and gambler, was reduced to placing ads in the personal columns of The Spectator. Laconic to the last, he worded his ad as follows: "Alcoholic, diabetic amputee seeks sympathy fuck." It would be difficult to construct another six-word sentence that would have comparable truth and power. So, it's vulgar; but there's more humanity in six words of Jeffrey Bernard than in 60,000 of many of today's top-earning writers. As a chronicler not just of his own life, desires, victories and failures, but also of Soho (London's Gortahork area) and even the wider England in the second half this century, he was superb. His writing will survive the Grim Reaper.
Finally, The Mystery of Men. Screened as a special for Britain's bank holiday, this was a black farce, based on Guy Bellamy's novel and adapted by Nick Vivian. It focused on a group of four drinking men who take out a combined insurance policy, which will guarantee the survivors £100,000 each when the first one croaks. Set in a sleepy, middle-class, rural English village, Neil Pearson, Robert Daws, Warren Clarke and Nick Berry played the four. All had wives, who were nagging, neurotic or promiscuous.
Predictably, there were repeated dollops of nudity and sex and some of the scenes were very funny - not least when a bright young vixen got into Ranafast mode and seduced her world-weary, wife-nagged English teacher. Of course, the insurance deal became corrupting, with every grim twist adding to the lads' (and their wives') moral dissolution. It did though, go on a bit - 95 minutes was unnecessary - and while it had many strengths, most notably the acting, there are better stories on which to spend TV drama monies. Still, women used to have a monopoly on this "mystery" guff, so maybe The Mystery of Men was a nifty blow against sexist stereotyping. Then again, maybe not!