TV REVIEW:
This Is MeRTÉ1, Monday
The EnforcersRTÉ1, Thursday
Alan Carr: Chatty ManChannel 4, Sunday
Spain: Paradise LostUTV, Wednesday
FEELING A little deflated in the cloudy aftermath of a drizzly Monday, I pulled myself together to view DVDs of the opening programmes of two new documentary series from RTÉ, both undemanding half-hours which will run over the summer months, both probably made for the price of a pint (I exaggerate a little wildly), both examples of hardworking, well-intentioned television crying out for a bigger investment of capital to truly interrogate the inherently good ideas they spring from.
I kicked off with This Is Me,the first in a series of observational documentaries, sponsored by Rehab, following the lives of five "exceptional Irish people". Rehab's logo reads "Investing in People, Changing Perspectives", and indeed this is exactly what the programme was attempting to do, by exploring the life of Michael Stewart, bodybuilder, boxer and motorbike enthusiast, who was involved in a near-fatal road accident eight years ago, which resulted in him losing both legs. Stewart's story is inspirational insofar as he has managed to find the strength, both physically and emotionally, to embrace life without limbs and he now walks and drives with the assistance of two prosthetic legs, one computerised.
Determined to get back to the gym and return to his previous level of fitness, Stewart now displays his bronzed, shimmering and sculpted torso atop his metal legs in competitions throughout the land, where he has become a hero to the bodybuilding fraternity. Since the accident he has also met and married his wife, Deirdre, and they are hoping to have children, so this was an altogether heartening tale of a likeable, straightforward and resourceful individual with huge spirit and tremendous grit. And overcoming some lingering demons to stand in a lay-by on the side of the road where his accident occurred, watching the relentless traffic thunder past, Stewart uttered words that should resonate with all of us: “You’re better off five minutes late in this world than 20 years early in the next.”
The only problem I had with the documentary lay in its inability to broaden its focus and investigate the issues at the core of the piece. Stewart merely touched on the difficulties of life in the National Rehabilitation Hospital, and of his own struggle to regain confidence and independence, but watching him talk to a room full of people, some of whom had undergone similar experiences, you desperately wanted the piece to open out and explore the varied realities of lives cauterised (or not, as the case may be) by immobility or institutionalisation. Still, I suppose one should try not to be parsimonious in one’s appreciation of a good news story, even if the whispers of many other tales could be sensed waiting in the wings.
RTÉ'S SECOND NEWoffering for these balmy (-ish) days is The Enforcers, another "observational" series (like buses, innit — you wait all year for an ob-doc, then two come along together). The Enforcers, which follows various environmental and health workers as they set up sting operations to catch illegal dumpers and chase recalcitrant shopping trolleys around depressing housing estates, has a wider remit than This Is Me, along with sexier graphics and a somewhat over-enthusiastic soundtrack consisting of jaunty tunes when trolleys are misbehaving and mournful tunes when the chap from the council picks through the detritus of the life of a deceased pensioner.
This type of television has proved immensely popular across the water, with a slew of grime-and-gloat programmes clogging up Channel 4’s pipes for the past year or two, but in my shaky memory this is the first of its kind on home turf. A misanthropist’s charter, there is nothing quite like CCTV footage of bristling men swaggering in and out of white vans with rusting washing machines and skip-loads of builders’ waste (with which they liberally choke our forests and beauty spots) to make you feel like you are sharing this turf with a bevy of ignorant gombeen men. But bar stalking the forests like an indignant warrior clutching your quiver of outrage, there seems little that can be done.
Despite hidden cameras in the undergrowth and the rapt attention of some poor bloke who sits in an office all day dipping into a packet of Jelly Tots and viewing hours and hours of grainy footage, the entire operation to catch these fools becomes unstuck when the savvy little polluters employ false number plates.
The Enforcersis not bad telly at all actually, and is quite persuasive in its attempts to turn us all into the Irish equivalent of Disgusted from Tunbridge Wells.
I suppose it is vaguely endearing that a bunch of programme-makers have been trailing various litter wardens for a year to increase our understanding of the forces at work behind prodigal trolleys. I just want to turn the crisis into a drama. I want to know what goes on behind the doors of the neglected flats, and just who are the ubiquitous white-van men whose small ads litter the free sheets. And given that this recession is driving so many businesses underground, I’d just love to know how we intend to keep the lid on our rubbish.
I had a strange, mind-warping experience the other evening, viewing the first instalment of comedian Alan Carr's new chat-show, Alan Carr: Chatty Man. Carr, who was once hailed as Britain's best new stand-up comedy personality (or some such glittering accolade), apparently signed a £3 million deal with Channel 4 to present his new programme – but the channel might as well have saved itself a fortune by employing Paul O'Grady instead. Carr's metamorphosis from cutting edge to dull blade has been so complete that he, like O'Grady, might consider the benefits of a career in afternoon television.
The show, a nervy homage to television campdom, bristles with blandness: wit is replaced by funny walks, conversation is passed over in favour of the screened career highlights of Carr’s guests, and the entire flimsy charade is anchored to an ugly, fussy set. Someone, somewhere, behind the smoke and mirrors of presenter selection, is trying to hew Graham Norton out of a packet of leftover fairy lights and a couple of washing-up bottles.
Carr’s first guests included the octogenarian Bruce Forsyth, who remembered all his lines and turned in a snazzy shoe shuffle, appearing, in the light of Carr’s increasingly corny persona, pretty racy.
The finale of the show’s lingeringly dull debut involved Carr and actor Ross Kemp recreating Kemp’s advertisement for a breakfast cereal sometime in the last millennium, when television’s favourite hard man was advocating the health benefits of apples, hazelnuts, bananas, raisins, coconuts and sultanas, wearing a rather fetching sun visor. Goodness, that was worth waiting for.
On The Costas: From Heaven to Hell
If you're packing your bags for Spain's Costa Blanca, a word of warning. UTV ran a pretty scary documentary this week, titled Spain: Paradise Lost, which illuminated a roll-call of disasters for British and Irish investors who bought into the dream of "heaven on earth" (as the estate agents so poetically put it) in one of the countless new urbanisations, made up of innumerable mustard-coloured haciendas, that have for years been spreading like mould along the Spanish coastline.
“There are hundreds of thousands of empty properties with no one to fill them,” said one doleful English estate agent trying to make a buck by doggedly auctioning her clients’ cut-price properties. The expat dream of a sun-baked retirement under the bougainvillea has degenerated since Spain’s building industry went bust, while, for a particularly unfortunate few, it has turned into a stomach-churning battle with a plastic broom and thoroughfares swarming with faeces.
Wally, with his souvenir “God Made the Irish” plate hanging sheepishly over his Spanish front door, described living in a very specific hell that was sold to him as nirvana.
Having been promised golf greens and bell-boys, peace and tranquility, he now lives in an unfinished estate with electrical cables dragging across flooded streets, swimming pools of stagnant water, mosquitoes, rodents and, every time it rains, the accumulated waste of his broken neighbourhood swimming by his front door.
A river of excrement runs down Wally’s street and into the golden sands to which the tourists flock. They clean up the beaches, sometimes in a matter of hours, and the tourists, here for their two weeks of sun and sangria, haven’t a clue what they are basking in! Bon voyage.
