TV Review/Fionola Meredith:What, no flash of carefully manicured bare chest? The signature moment when Gordon Ramsay exposes his meaty torso to the camera's gaze, as he changes into his chef's whites, was strangely absent from the first episode in a new series of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.
In a show that relies for its success on Ramsay's cartoonish brand of swaggering aggression, it was always the money shot: Gordon as silverback gorilla, king of the jungle. It promised that Ramsay would whack into shape whatever pathetic, faltering restaurant was in his sights that week, by the sheer force of his brawn alone.
Either Ramsay has come over all self-conscious about the state of his torso (incipient moobs, Gordon?), or he's become so cocksure that the ego-boosting shot is now redundant. Certainly, this week's restaurateur in distress, Allan Love, was no match for Ramsay's devastating critique of his failing Brighton oyster bar, Ruby Tate's.
Fixing him with his cold blue, gannet-like eyes, Ramsay tore apart Allan's menu - "bad food at rip-off prices" - and his lazy chefs (Gordon to French chef Alex: "Your attitude stinks"; Alex to Gordon, histrionically, "Why she stinks?"), before moving on to the garish decor, which included a pair of skimpy knickers, encrusted in paint and wall-mounted.
Poor old Allan, who looked like he might be an escaped member of Gerry and the Pacemakers circa 1989, couldn't stand the heat. The "resting" actor alternated between teary despair and chippy finger waving at his would-be saviour. "He ain't God, he's Gordon Ramsay . . . screw him," he yelled, eyes out on stalks.
But in the face of Ramsay's might, Allan Love's stormy protest had all the impact of Tinkerbell squeaking from inside a jam jar. Gordon has to win, you see. He cannot be seen to fail. Allan should know that, in the inexorable logic of reality TV shows, the victim must move swiftly from initial resistance to humiliation before reaching ultimate redemption. That's the law.
In Allan's case, he had to own up to his dodgy lobsters and execrable interior design skills so that he could experience the peace of Gord that passes all understanding - that is, a shiny, revamped restaurant that was finally making him some money.
The thing is, Gordon is usually right. Behind that craggy exterior that looks like it has been carved from triple-smoked cow hide, there is a very savvy intelligence at work, and a fastidious sensitivity to food. He talks a lot of sense, if you fillet it out from all the shouting and swearing.
The show ended with Allan Love giving a wheezy rendition of My Way to the customers in his restaurant. Of course, it was all Gordon's way, really. But Love had finally worked out that you've got to give in to win.
THE "GLITTERING CONCLUSION" of RTÉ's teen talent competition Class Act, felt like a sweet - if occasionally saccharine - relief after Ramsay's bellicose ranting. This was a sticky toffee pudding of a programme, topped with a dollop of honeyed words and a generous sprinkling of sugared compliments. And how could it not be? After all, it featured a line-up of highly-gifted young people, all strutting their stuff with endearing enthusiasm. You'd have to be a particularly mean and crabbed sourpuss to have a crack at these talented youngsters.
So it would be unfair to blame the judging panel - Tony Lundon, Cora Venus Lunny and the redoubtable Twink - for heaping the young contestants with superlative upon superlative. The eulogies reached their peak with Twink's breathless praise for 14-year-old aerial artist Megan. "A balletic warmth that endears you to young and old . . . God bless you child!", she crowed, her chandelier earrings swinging.
The teatime show is pure granny-vision, and sure enough, the studio audience was packed with adoring old ladies. Some of the acts may have left them a little perplexed, it's true. You can bet that hoodie-clad breakdancer Aaron (15) with his self-choreographed "Breakbeat Mega Mix" had them conferring busily together: "what's that he's up to there, dear, lepping about and rolling on the floor? I wish that nice young man who sang like Frank Sinatra would come back on."
The deserving winners of the public vote and the €10,000 bursary - announced after several of those obligatory "suspenseful" pauses by host Aidan Power, oh just get on with it mate - were Fergal and Cathal Keaney, the Irish dancers from Co Galway.
The spaghetti-legged brothers wowed the audience with their fabulously intricate routine. And the fact that young Cathal's ears were all pink with excitement must have made a thousand mums sigh with affection.
X Factor it ain't, and is all the better for it. Our collective addiction to seeing young hopefuls crushed by a judge's scorn isn't pretty. All the same, Class Act only just stayed on the right side of cloying. One step further and - splash - we would have been bobbing about in a sea of schmaltz, with only Twink's earrings for company.
CLASS ACT OFFERED uncomplicated teatime fun and pretended to do little more. But Dispatches: How to Get Ahead in Africa was one of those rare documentaries that shine out with real integrity and insight from the increasingly dumbed-down television schedules.
Award-winning journalist Sorious Samura offered a striking portrait of corruption in Africa. According to Samura, it is not war, famine and disease strangling development, but the insidious march of corruption throughout the continent, infecting everyone from leaders to schoolchildren. The premise is simple, said Samura: as soon as you have a little power, you use it to exploit those lower than you - and the higher you go up the hierarchy of power, the bigger the spoils.
Part of the power of this documentary was that Samura is no western blow-in journalist, arriving with too many answers and not enough questions. A native of Sierra Leone, where he risked his life to film the 1999 invasion of Freetown, he has experienced the spirit-sapping effects of corruption at first hand.
He knew where to look for it: in this case, he moved into one of the largest slums in Africa, Kibera in Kenya, where, among the wet, sewage-sodden alleyways, Samura discovered how the poor must bribe simply to survive. Hospital appointments, building shacks, getting work and staying out of jail all require the palm of whichever official is in charge to be thoroughly greased; this is how those one rung up on the ladder supplement their own meagre wage. And, as fast as western aid flows in, it melts away into a thousand pockets. Almost farcically, it's claimed that even the anti-corruption commission set up by the Kenyan government - and named "Integrity" - is itself corrupt.
It was far from the worst example of corruption detailed in the show, but the moment when little Baffa, aged 9, from Sierra Leone, described how he must bring scented soap to school to bribe the teachers to mark his homework was certainly the most poignant. Yet Samura wasted no time agonising over the complicated ethics of the situation. He simply stated that it is not poverty, but corruption, that must be "made history" if Africa is to rise from its abject state. Arguably, it's a far greater challenge.
UTV'S SUNDAY NIGHT drama offering, Half Broken Things, starring Penelope Wilton as Jean, an ostensibly mousy housesitter on her final job in a picturesque country house, landed us back to telly dross with a bump. Maybe the programme-makers hoped that viewers were all slumped in a post-prandial daze on the sofa when they threw this excuse for a thriller together, or that we would all be distracted by the lovely "English country garden" setting, and not pay any attention to all the other peripheral stuff, like, you know, the plot and the characterisation. Anyway, beneath that mumsy facade, old Jean turned out to be a quite a schemer.
In brief - take a deep breath - she decided to pose as the owner of the manor and soon afterwards took in a runaway burglar and his pregnant companion, whom he met only days ago in a petrol station, where she had been slapped by her boyfriend for weeing on his passenger car seat (these expectant mums and their notoriously unreliable bladders). Still with me?
Now factor in a murdered vicar, a poisoned birthday cake and a stolen baby in any order. Oh yes, and add a bit of vacuous dialogue: "Did yew mean it when yew said I was byootiful?" Two hours later, you're there. Fin.
What shows like this really need is Gordon Ramsay to come in and shout at everybody until they pull their socks up. And you can be sure he'd have something to say about that monkshood-laced cake.
Hilary Fannin is on leave