Oasis - Right Here Right Now (BBC 1, Wednesday) The Artist Formerly Known As Captain Beefheart (BBC 2, Tuesday) Hungerford: 10 Years On (BBC 2, Tuesday) Island Of Dreams: Romance In The Sun (Channel 4, Tuesday) One Foot In The Past (BBC 2, Wednesday)
To the strains of Thin Lizzy's The Boys Are Back In Town, the lads of Oasis clambered into that traditional symbol of youthful revolution and proletarian solidarity: a private jet. Regular blokes, eh? "We're like the majority of people in this country. We know about football and the pub and getting nicked. Most people like my band because we're like most people," said Noel Gallagher, "and we're still outspoken and we still don't give a shit." Now you know.
Oasis - Right Here Right Now was screened on the eve of the release of the band's third album, Be Here Now. Pretending to be a documentary, it was, in fact, a full-blown promo which could, more truthfully have been titled "Oasis Plugged". Still, for all the orchestration and control, stray notes of reality inevitably slipped through. As regular as a pop song's refrain, Liam Gallagher's boorishness recurred so often that it was defining. He has a fine voice for rock 'n' roll. Pity he scarcely uses it to talk. But then, that's PR for you.
The general message of this promo was that these bad boys of British pop are not quite as bad as the tabloids insist. This is almost certainly true. But the old trick of presenting somebody, who, according to the tabloids, is a gruff lout, as, on the contrary, a tortured, sensitive artist, is just too tired and simplistic. It will, of course, gain added sympathy among his fans for the misunderstood hero. Perhaps it's an inevitable function of being old and, of course, sad, but this was, to me, a dull programme.
Oh, the music - and not just the Thin Lizzy opener - wasn't bad at all. Oasis can make sweeping, high-energy, guitar sounds (bit sweet and sentimental - too much unearned nostalgia - for a sad old git, mind). But there was a lack of originality in too much of what the band members had to say. In fairness, Noel, who is clearly sharper and more mature than his brother, tried, at times, to be at least meaningful, if not eloquent. But even he was choked by the tyranny and - given his fame and wealth - impossibility of having to be extraordinarily ordinary.
Driving, or rather, being chauffeured around their old Manchester neighbourhood, Noel offered a guided tour: "That co-op is where I first got caught shoplifting . . . that chipper was opened by Eddie Yates off Coronation Street." This was a better bit of the film than the consciously rock-band-atwork-and-play stuff, which looked dated and artificial. (Yes, I know Oasis are into Beatles vibes and 1960s references but, by the mid 1960s, likely lads larking on camera had become embarrassingly ersatz and too puny to make even parody of it worth the bother.)
Visiting Manchester City's Maine Road ground, the lads recalled being brought there in the mid-1980s. Neither of the Gallagher brothers was born when City last won the English Championship (1968) and it was quite sad that this film felt it necessary to show a Mike Summerbee goal against Spurs - from August 1971! Football, as if you couldn't guess, would have been Noel's alternative career choice. Fair enough. And there you had it . . . well, almost.
The real purpose of this film was couched in among all the ladishness. "This is the most important album of our career. It's the one that will send us to U2 levels or see us back on the dole," said Noel. Really? It's unfair to blame any of the Oasis lads for taking the chance to promote themselves. But the BBC team of director Mike Connolly and producer Mark Cooper might have used colder cameras in the interest of the viewers.
It's not as though a hard-hitting, myth-busting, polemical documentary was needed. Not at all. But this was just too soft - not quite The Monkees - but, you know, when you watch these things, it's reasonable to expect answers to basic questions like What's The Story? Instead, the one-part realism, one-part parody, one-part pastiche and seven-parts promo was too carefully aimed at fans. The three songs from the new album - especially It's Gettin' Better (Man!!) - were better by far than this ad for them.
Older rockers may have tuned in - it did require a hell of a lot of tuning - to The Artist Formerly Known As Captain Beefheart. The captain's real name was Don Van Vliet (actually, he added the "Van" himself), a Californian, who, according to DJ John Peel, was "the most important figure to have emerged from the rock era of the 1960s and 1970s". Indeed, Peel went even further, calling Beefheart "possibly rock's only genius".
Perhaps he was. But he was more than that. With his Magic Band, he mixed blues, rock, jazz and, apparently, Dada. The results were beyond far out, man. "Captain Beefheart fans were even rejected by the hippies. They were too weird, too far out, even for the hippies," said Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons. Indeed, so avant-garde was Beefheart, that three decades later, he still seems out on his own.
Thoughtful contributions from former Magic Band member Ry Cooder and Beefheart's childhood friend, the late Frank Zappa (demonstrating that it's not compulsory for rock musicians to act oafishly, Liam) painted a picture of a man who was "either too smart or too dumb" to court commercial success. Certainly, Beefheart's music - the 1969 album Trout Mask Replica was his "most ambitious and complicated work" - is not the most immediately accessible.
But, in a week when Oasis - the Beatles of the 1990s - released their new album, it was engaging to sense again, albeit through old footage on TV, the atmosphere of 1960s hedonism. Far more people engage in a sex 'n' drugs 'n' rock 'n' roll lifestyle nowadays. But most of them regulate it, fit it in around work. Back then, it seemed, for those into it, to be more of a life than a mere lifestyle.
Van Vliet, who has long since - and quite successfully - taken up abstract painting (hence the programme's title) and is now reclusive and quite ill, was authentic alright. "Frank (Zappa) was good, but Beefheart was the real thing. . . . the most avant garde imaginable," said the former Magic Band drummer, an elderly man, who, with hair down to his waist, didn't look excessively suburban himself.
It was a decade ago this week that Michael Ryan ran amok in Hungerford, Berkshire, shooting dead 16 people and wounding 18 more. Up until then, small town and suburban Britain had been synonymous with boredom. Now, with Dunblane added, there is a darker side to such places and to the British psyche. This commemorative film - Hungerford: 10 Years On - was suggested by Tony Hill, whose 22-year-old daughter Sandra was one of Ryan's victims.
Appropriately, Lucy Jago's documentary was elegaic, punctuated by respectful silences and by the rest of the grammar of this genre. But it wasn't just routine. There was more to it than that. You could feel the pain of some of those who contributed. Time has, perhaps, dulled it somewhat . . . but when the Hills spoke about their murdered daughter, their anguish seemed to seep through the screen. You could only hope that grieving so publicly will give them some relief.
The inability to incorporate mourning seems, not uniquely, but especially, British. The stress on dignity and on stiff upper lips and on fortitude has, of course, some merits. But it has drawbacks too. Certainly, the Hills and policeman Trevor Wainwright, whose father was shot dead, and the family of Susan Godfrey, Ryan's first victim, seemed like people whose grief ducts were cruelly constricted by societal demands. The wonder is they weren't more angry.
Such commemorative films risk tokenism - a sense that the occasion has been dutifully, if often awkwardly, marked. But this one avoided that sort of predictability. It wasn't all solemn either. Kath Wainwright, whose husband had been killed (she was wounded herself) has remarried. In one scene we saw her dancing with her new husband. Though it lacked the power of the Hills' grieving, it was, in itself, something of an ode to hope. It also gave this elegy a richer, but no less human, mix than usual.
Probably the most enjoyable - a sprinkling of schanenfreude and all that - programme of the week was the repeat showing of Island Of Dreams: Romance In The Sun. This first of a three-parter about women who have swapped Britain for Greece, after finding love on a Greek holiday, was compelling on a number of fronts. The scenery was excellent - especially the sunsets; the unfolding stories held attention and we again encountered one of our most fascinating types of TV codger: the Latin lover.
"A Greek man can't exist without a woman. He loves women," said one gesticulating sleazeball, adding a hypocritical gloss to perfectly natural lechery. Some women love this guff, though. "They treat you like a princess and it's not all bullshit . . . not all of it," said Englishwoman Dia, sounding as though she was really struggling to convince herself. "It was all new to me, having men run after me with such vigour and such passion. They make you feel incredibly feminine after London," said Suzy.
Suzy has married Demis Vitsos and now works as a tour guide and farmer's wife. Fine. But now that the vigour and passion have worn a bit thin, Suzy realises that, really, she just comes fourth in the eyes of the great romantic, Demis. His mother (an industrial-strength matriarch), his shooting and his dogs are higher up his list of priorities. Still, Suzy stands by her man - though, in public, he often insists that she sit and stay seated. It was sort of sad because Suzy was clearly a bright, competent, strong woman.
Finally, from an island of dreams to an island of nostalgia: Sorcha Cusack revisited Dalkey Island for One Foot In The Past. As ever, there wasn't really very much to do on the island - look at the goats, climb the Martello Tower, step inside the ruined church. But this programme, right from its opening sequences, wallows in wistfulness and Sorcha Cusack hit the correct note with her personal reminiscences.
In a week when (some fine acting on Fair City aside) RTE showed a glut of repeats, a little magazine programme like this one, would be seasonally appropriate. This year's summer programming has been, as ever, grim. The earned nostalgia of ordinary people, packaged with a presenter, a few guests and a few outdoor locations could hardly break the budget. There are so many Irelands in the heads of ordinary people - not Bord Failte or traditional Catholic or Celtic Tiger Irelands - that will slip away. Some of them are on cine-camera or video. But they could be on TV too.