TV Review: The BBC was a co-producer of the first series of Bachelors Walk, but when it broadcast the programme via the isolated wastes of the BBC Choice digital channel, it cut scenes and dumped the jazz in favour of unwieldy slabs of nostalgic 1980s hits. And once they had shown it, they ditched it. The fools.
The BBC, it seems, just didn't get it. We, on the other hand, not only got it but were quite reluctant to give it away. This series was its third and strongest. It confirmed itself as a ratings winner, a winter staple. And on Monday, with a certain abruptness, it announced its exit, "the final episode of the final series," according to the continuity announcer as she sprung the news on us. Get it while it's hot.
Michael, Barry and Raymond did not exactly skip merrily away into the distance along the Liffey boardwalk. This series had been threatening to immerse itself into well-crafted gloom for a couple of episodes now, and this week, once it had given perennial loser Barry his first decent pay-off, it pulled the melancholia close and set about dismantling the relationships of the other two boys. Having hung about waiting for a decent plot or two, Michael's wife, Jane, finally had enough. It looked bad as soon as she said no to a cappuccino. In Bachelors Walk, nobody turns down a cappuccino.
Meanwhile, Raymond and Alison parted ways after scenes that were raw and uncomfortable. His insistence on gleaning the explicit details of her unfaithfulness included jagged lines calculated to make you spray the tea from your mouth.
It ditched the jokes and went for the solid drama; going out on a low that was something of a high. It is a tribute to the three writer/directors - Tom Hall and Kieran and John Carney - that they had created characters with whom they could take such a bold step and have the viewers follow. It is a tribute to the actors that they managed to pull it off without flailing into bathos.
Then again, Bachelors Walk has confounded expectation from the off. As a comedy drama rooted in modern Dublin, it should not have worked on Irish television without coming across as forced and self-conscious. After tottering a little with the second series, it should not have come back so strong. Having been so good this series, everyone involved should have rubbed their hands and looked forward to the rewards of a fourth. Instead, they quit while ahead. Even John Carney's jazz score should have been self-indulgent and incongruous, but that anyone saw fit to replace it with a spot of Echo and the Bunnymen seems quite absurd.
Bachelors Walk gave RTÉ confidence that it could do long-running drama that was light of touch but which still got under the skin. It gave the viewer confidence in finding drama that was smart, funny and cool in an uncool way.
Even better, it wouldn't necessarily be broadcast from London.
At least the removal of Bachelors Walk alleviates Monday night's schedules pile-up. ITV has Between the Sheets and RTÉ1 has Prime Time Investigates. BBC2 has the ever-reliable Room 101 and the overlooked sitcom, Absolute Power. Network 2 has Friends, which may have reduced itself to inflicting identical storylines on each of the six characters in turn, but which, because it is in its final series, at least offers the curiosity factor of discovering how it's all going to end.
Later, the station has The Blizzard of Odd, a programme still far smarter than its mix of offensive pithiness and nudey movies might suggest, and funnier than almost anything else around. Colin Murphy's television review, in particular, is a well-oiled skewer. This week, as it disembowelled former Miss Ireland and media fixture Yvonne Costello, it featured some footage from RTÉ's old celebrity mime show, Play the Game. What it didn't mention, though, was the cruel task being set to Larry Gogan. Gogan, according to the caption, was to mime JAMES GANDON. You try that one on Christmas Day.
Against Bachelors Walk, Little Britain has been running, a sketch show, as the title suggests, not necessarily aimed at us, but which hits the target nonetheless. The series written by Matt Lucas and David Walliams is a bit of a cross between The Fast Show and League of Gentleman, a comedy inhabited by a cast of grotesques and linked by a nonsensically worthy narration from Tom Baker ("as the sun sets in southern Britain, those in the north are just waking up . . .").
It sets to work on that part of the brain vulnerable to the catchphrase, so sketches that aren't necessarily brilliant at the time become hilarious in the re-telling. Familiarity breeds delight. The quality of the jokes varies, but the series is scattered with fine moments. Its sharper characters include the spin-doctor with a crush on the prime minister and, especially, Lou and Andy, a partnership of carer and devious wheelchair-using grump. Viewing these sketches is like watching the best clips taken from a decent sitcom.
Channel 4, meanwhile, has been running its Bodyshock season on Mondays. Last week we met the boy who gave birth to his twin. This week, in Wild Child, it was children brought up either in complete isolation or by wild animals.
Feral children fascinate scientists: the Ukrainian girl who spent six years living in a kennel, the boy adopted by a pack of wild dogs, the Los Angeles girl who spent her first 13 years in one room. Each brings with them ammunition for the nature-versus-nurture debate. However, rather than recreate the conditions in a lab, scientists must wait for the rare occasions on which these children turn up.
"It is the natural experiment we are not allowed carry out," said the narrator. One primatologist thought it worth inverting the idea and treated a chimp like a human child, insisting that its only peer be his own infant daughter. After 18 months the chimp, as you would expect, made for a PG Tips natural. More interesting was how the scientist's infant daughter began to speak in whoops and shrieks. End of experiment.
After a couple of programmes, Bodyshock has proven to be watchable but uneven, sullied by how it niggles at the conscience. The ratings are high but the intent may be lower. It glistens with the sheen of science, but is smudged by freak-show voyeurism. Next week, it looks at shark bites. After that, it examines the case of the Elephant Man. Roll up, roll up, roll up.
On Tuesday night RTÉ1 re-broadcast Tom Crean: Antarctica's Forgotten Hero. How quickly a subtitle becomes irrelevant.
"He is still forgotten," said mountaineer Reinhold Messner. "Only a few specialists know a little bit about him."
Not any more. Most of the population now knows a little about him, informed by both an increasing interest in Antarctic exploration and by those specialists in the advertising industry. If there's one thing we know for sure about Tom Crean's adventures, it's that we must all drink Guinness.
Antarctica's Forgotten Hero was made by Crossing The Line Films, a production company with the welcome habit of filming the most inhospitable spots on earth with such beauty you almost want to abandon the couch and go explore them. Since this was originally shown on TG4 last year, Crean has continued to become an idol. His endeavours gain lustre with each telling.
There was the 1,800-mile walk on Scott's second voyage, the final 35 miles of which he did solo in 18 hours, in order to find help for a dying companion.
Most famously, there was the epic adventure with Shackleton's crew, culminating in the 800-mile ocean journey in a lifeboat and the traversing of a mountain range. It was a two-year journey completed in time to join the Great War, which killed some of those whom the ice had not.
When he returned to Ireland as a retired British naval officer, it was at a time when it was best not to boast about such things, when heroes were sought out in far murkier places than the South Pole. It is ironic. If someone was to hold a poll on the greatest Irish person today, surely he would by now have clambered towards the top, this modest, jovial hero.
And in almost every picture, he clasps his pipe between an untroubled grin. The conditions say frozen wastes but his smile says tropical beach.
