TV Review/Hilary Fannin:'This is politics, this is life." In a busy domestic week for the world's second-oldest profession, when our elected darlings packed their jam sandwiches into their ninja lunchboxes and resumed hostilities in Dáil Éireann, having slaved over a hot constituency all summer, and when the whiff of dodgy politics continued to permeate the brisk autumnal air, TG4, with impeccable timing and the elegance of a Buswells chandelier, gave us the truly marvellous The Running Mate.
A political drama with balls, and one not hiding behind fictitiously monickered parliamentary parties or a veneer of self-conscious cynicism, this six-part bilingual drama (complete with nice big subtitles) is funny, smart and original, with a pacy, witty script and crisply intelligent performances from a confident cast.
We are first introduced to flatulent south Kerry Fianna Fáil councillor Paudie Counihan (Eamonn Hunt), a man for whom the words "cute" and "hoor" are as bespoke as his suits. With wry indifference, Counihan sets about destabilising the Fine Gael-led government (the what?), blackmailing the Tánaiste with some compromising video footage from an eastern European "junket" which dashes the unfortunate man on the rocks of his sexual predilections (two leggy prostitutes and an intimate encounter with a battery-operated phallus). "Show them that and I guarantee they'll stop calling you a racist," proffers Counihan, with all the sincerity of a call girl on overtime.
The drama, written by Marcus Fleming from an original idea by Conor McPherson, is directed by Declan Recks and has much in common with Pure Mule, his recent drama series from Eugene O'Brien's darkly memorable script. Both series are set in small-town Ireland and both infuse their characters with a satisfying complexity. The running mate of the title refers to Counihan's heretofore affable "sweeper", Vincent Flynn (Denis Conway), the guy on the ticket whose transfers get Counihan elected, who decides to shake off his family's generations-old Fianna Fáil imprimatur and run as an independent. Utterly believable in Conway's calm, well-paced performance, Flynn is a family man with a vacillating moral compass, a beautiful wife, a pregnant daughter and a shockingly magnificent coastline to save.
If you are one of the many who still shy away from Irish-language dramas, don't - The Running Mate sings along. As Flynn's recklessly spontaneous campaign manager, Willie (the brilliant Don Wycherly), says, just "hold your balls and pray for luck".
IT WAS A waiting-all-day-for-the-bus-and-two-come-along-together sort of week; politics was also at the heart of director Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty's drama, It's a Free World. There are times when one is so mentally overloaded with the vagaries of one's own tiny world that the prospect of closing down the chakras and gritting the dentistry to cope with the signature unflinching realism of Loach's work feels daunting. And I have to admit to approaching this new piece with a smattering of unforgivable trepidation - there are times when pain is too painful and fear too fearsome. But this was an enlivening drama with superb characterisations which, rather than leaving one feeling guiltily exhausted, made one angrily alert.
We are all, it would seem, complicit in the exploitation that is at the heart of this story.
Concerning free-market insanity and the plight of illegal workers in Britain - mainly eastern European - the drama was artfully played out from the point of view of Angie (magnificent newcomer Kierston Wareing), a sexy, tough, white, English thirtysomething who has struggled with vile jobs and viler employers in the recruitment industry. Driven to set up her own agency when she is fired (having refused the sexual advances of her boss), Angie begins a Machiavellian journey fuelled by a desperation to succeed in a relentlessly tough arena where labour is cheap, where lives and limbs are expendable, and where the dispossessed and impoverished of this speedy world are little more than slaves. Loach's film, which throws a pot of moral ambiguity at the fan, clearly poses the difficult question: if everyone else seems to be doing it, why shouldn't Angie, a single mother, a working-class woman who wants the best for her son? Loach is extraordinary in his ability to keep up with the times: while one can sense his presence in the film, in the guise of Angie's father, a hard-working, principled man of the old school, where you paid your dues and were part of the union, there is a strongly contemporary feel to this work. As always, Loach's skill in drawing the best from his actors is evident, in his complex development of Angie, who, as a product of a hedonistic and disposable age, vacillates between cruelty, vulnerability and sentimentality.
Steeped in shades of grey, the film has some unforgettable and heart-rending moments: illegal immigrants crowded into muddy caravan sites in London, invisible children without access to education, men cowering like frightened dogs, Iranian booksellers, Kosovan nurses and Afghan teachers working day and night for below the minimum wage, bunk beds in damp dormitories with 24-hour occupancy.
"You make a living out of them!" says Angie's despairing father.
"We all do," Angie replies.
Provocative and shrewd, few could have handled this oppressively huge theme with Loach's startling clarity and deft persuasiveness.
SO, GOODNESS, SUCH a feast of quality! All is well in telly land, and the autumn schedule is dancing across the set with balletic purposefulness . . . er . . . no. TG4, having surpassed itself with The Running Mate, had a rather nasty little accident on the way upstairs to bed. Drunk on the success of its intoxicating new drama, it chucked up Glas Vegas all over the new carpet.
Oh holy god. Glas Vegas is a talent show . . . no, I have to rewrite that line. Glas Vegas is a talent-less show in which contestants yet to achieve proficiency in amateurism do things in front of a couple of frothy (in a strictly Styrofoam way) judges and Sen Eoghan Harris (who apparently has great respect for "town-hall-tonight" talent shows).
The inaugural show kicked off with tuneless sopranos (I use the word "sopranos" with caution, though the vase did crack), a woman who lay on a bed of nails while some fool smashed a slab of concrete on her abdomen, a desperate "comedian" (again the word is for purposes of illustration only), a murder of break-dancers . . . oh, and an angryish-looking woman under the sartorial influence of Suzi Quatro who played an air guitar upside down (at least I think it was an air guitar - she may have just been fidgeting, or maybe convulsing). Someone will get to win, in the end, apparently, and go to Las Vegas (hence the title). I have no idea why.
WE ALL HAVE to start somewhere. All our foibles, our strange habits of nail-bed submission and air-guitaring and other forms of ruinously deleterious attention-seeking, start right back at the very beginning with the particular infant instruction manual that your mother chose to saddle you with. Bringing Up Baby offers a unique experiment: half a dozen or so new parents allow cameras to move into their homes with them and their little bundles of joy, where they hang around for three months filming the fatigued and stressed parents' efforts to adhere rigorously to the principles of one of three childcare books the series is testing.
The guilty handbooks are: Frederic Truby King's 1913 tome, Feeding and Care of Baby (feed 'em fast, dispense with eye contact, wrap 'em in swaddling and stick 'em in the garden for three hours at a time - the author, by the way, qualified as a vet); Dr Spock's post-war bible, Baby and Child Care (do what you feel is right and don't worry . . . man); and Jean Liedloff's more recent The Continuum Concept (keep baby in a sling until he's about 21).
The series is cruel and objectionable; they should switch off the cameras and let everyone get on with their lives. And what's more, the Truby King method is taught by a briskly loathsome woman who gets paid £1,000 a day by parents who want their babies "trained" to sleep (they should have ditched the baby and got a bloody sheepdog).
Here's my method: subject baby to endless reruns of Glas Vegas and it'll soon be crawling up to bed on its own.