TVReview:When David Beckham moved to Real Madrid in 2003 and brought the pop star formerly known as Posh Spice with him, we could all enjoy the benefits of a modestly reduced exposure to the first couple of celebrity-magazine land. It seems, however, that David's lucrative move to the LA Galaxy soccer club will have the opposite effect.
Victoria is fond of the spotlight, no matter how cruel the spotlight is to her, and there has never been a shortage of spotlights in Hollywood.
A one-hour "special", Victoria Beckham: Coming to America, promised a fly-on-the-wall look at Victoria's first three weeks in LA, preparing for her husband's much-anticipated arrival. What japes might she get up to, we wondered, while she was searching for the perfect house with the perfect balcony, the perfect infinity pool, the perfect view of LA's perfectly smoggy horizon. From the moment the opening credits informed us that "Some scenes have been created for dramatic effect. The role of her assistant is played by an actress", we had every reason to be afraid of this US-targeted Simon Fuller production.
The programme began with a photoshoot outside Madrid, where the scantily clad Mr and Mrs Beckham cavorted artfully for a magazine photographer. This was, literally and figuratively, the most revealing sequence in the programme, and what it revealed was this: David might have a sweet right foot, but it's his photogenic jaw-clenching ability that has ensured his fame and fortune.
Once in California, Victoria tried unsuccessfully to send up her pouty, po-faced image with some of those promised "dramatic" scenes - getting stopped by a traffic cop, avoiding the paparazzi through inventive use of a blow-up doll, learning earthquake safety procedures and shopping. All of this was interspersed with regular sermons about how much she missed David and the kids, and repeated use of a catchphrase, "Major", that sounded as if it had been crafted by advertising executives. The gaudily conspicuous materialism and the flippant attitude to Victoria's self-starvation was probably part of the script, too.
These contrived, stage-managed scenes were about as authentic as her band's movie Spice World. If she's this bland and boring when scripted, for God's sake, just imagine how insufferably vapid she must be when the cameras are off and the director's gone home.
OF COURSE, DAVID Beckham's move to LA Galaxy also brings with it the promise of converting a nation to the joys of the Beautiful Game, but the fabled US tendency towards isolationism can have no greater manifestation than in its attitude to international team sports - they prefer to gorge themselves on statistics and time-outs rather than on goals or tries. As the stylish feature-length documentary Once in a Lifetime demonstrated, however, the messianic arrival of Beckham has a precedent. In 1971, Steve Ross, president of Warner Communications, founded the New York Cosmos, and decided to build the first team of galacticos. Back then, that meant only one name - Pelé.
Narrated by Matt Dillon, Once in a Lifetime's claim that the New York Cosmos changed soccer forever was exactly the sort of hyperbole that allowed a team to call itself the Cosmos. But the story of how Ross negotiated Pelé's move from Brazil to New York, requiring the diplomatic intervention of soccer-mad Henry Kissinger and a world-record-breaking contract, was fascinating stuff. A one-man brand, Pelé helped build a significant fanbase for the Cosmos, which became a funky adjunct to the mid-1970s New York of Studio 54 and disco.
Pelé declined to take part in the documentary but, hearing team-mate Franz Beckenbauer tell it, the Cosmos enjoyed a non-stop party when off the pitch. But just like Studio 54, the party didn't last and, after Pelé and Beckenbauer retired, the league began to lose appeal, folding in 1984. At the very least, though, it left us with this evocative documentary, which is probably more than we can hope for from Becks, unfortunately.
MIRIAM O'CALLAGHAN'S surprisingly solid rendition of Skibbereen on Saturday Night with Miriam last week wasn't exactly a musical performance of Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer proportions - she talks, she sings - but it was evidence of the peculiar kind of talent she's blessed with. When the chatshow started, sceptics insisted O'Callaghan wouldn't be able to handle the vagaries of a live broadcast, such as being browbeaten by the cast of Celebrity You're a Star into singing live on air. Needless to say, she's done better than pretty well - she has demonstrated that she can remain affably in control without appearing to be marching to a beat of pre-written questions, and it makes you realise how utterly stilted RTÉ's other chat show hosts really are. As guest Amanda Brunker pointed out after O'Callaghan finished singing, "I can't imagine Pat Kenny doing that".
O'Callaghan also got a few lines of song from the next guest, Nadine Coyle, from Girls Aloud, the manufactured girl-band it's obligatory to like. Coyle, of course, is a singer by trade, so she doesn't get any Skibb-style kudos. It was the easy, natural conversation with Mary Robinson, however, that really affirmed O'Callaghan's ability.
Robinson is always hugely impressive, of course, but her formality can make her inscrutable - no problem for O'Callaghan, though, as the former president opened up about her childhood and career. Their conversation was a joy to watch.
THE SOPRANOS HAS had more than its fair share of shocking scenes over its six seasons and eight years, yet none astonished quite as viscerally as the very final shot. In what was one of the most anticipated scenes in TV history, James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano and his family gather in a diner with Don't Stop Believin' by 1980s soft rockers Journey playing on the jukebox. Tension mounts as onion rings arrive on the table and shifty characters pose potential threats from every corner. Tony glances towards the opening door. And then . . . cut to black. Ten seconds of darkness. End credits. A loyal audience collectively feels like taking out a hit on series creator David Chase.
If The Sopranos is novelistic in its scope, as has often been said, then this felt like getting to the end of the final chapter only to find the last page was torn out.
So, was this Chase's last big joke or his creative masterstroke? Having created a world of consistent moral ambiguity, where we empathise with Tony's depression and family troubles while simultaneously abhorring his brutality, Chase managed to withhold final judgment with his non-ending ending. Whether Tony gets shot or gets to enjoy his onion rings and an impending indictment is entirely up to you - it's the Schrödinger's cat of mobster drama. If you came looking for resolution, you've been watching the wrong programme these last eight years.
The ending was critic-proof while inviting criticism - no one can get away with demanding closure from something as wilfully complex as The Sopranos, but closure is exactly what most people wanted. In addition, Chase managed to avoid choosing from the pool of clichéd mobster endings, such as Tony getting whacked in a hail of bullets or ending up in witness protection. By making viewers think their TVs broke at the very climax of the series, Chase invented a new paradigm - no film-maker will ever cut to black again without being accused of "doing a Sopranos".
The contentious merits of that scene shouldn't distract from the oddly uneven episode that preceded it. The war with Phil Leotardo that wiped out most of Tony's crew in the penultimate episode was resolved after 20 minutes with a singularly anticlimactic meeting and handshake.
After that, most scenes were played for awkward laughs, from AJ's exploding SUV to the Coen Brothers-style execution of Leotardo. The Sopranos has always embraced the blackly comic, but watching Paulie Walnuts go eyeball to eyeball with a stray cat ain't funny no matter what way you cut it.
It's that masterful final scene, however, that will surely go on to be the most analysed since the Zapruder film. The debate in the US has already been exhaustive, with the lyrics of Don't Stop Believin' subjected to the sort of close reading they were never designed to bear ("Oh, the movie never ends/It goes on and on and on and on" is admittedly fairly telling).
The quote from the first episode of this season, that "you probably don't even hear it when it happens", has been held up as evidence that the blackout is Tony's death. In any case, the rising tension and paranoia echoed the state of anxiety that Tony perpetually feels.
Above all, the abrupt, blunt, disconcerting cut to black left us, the audience, feeling like the victims - anxious, confused, powerless, bereft. In the most nihilistic conclusion to a major TV show ever, we are forced to realise that, as Tony's controlling mother Livia used to say, "It's all a big nothing."
Victoria Beckham: Coming to AmericaUTV, Tuesday
Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York CosmosBBC2, Sunday
The SopranosRTE2, Thursday
Hilary Fannin is on leave