Teen Spirit (ITV, Tuesday)
Would You Believe (RTE 1, Tuesday)
@last tv (Network 2, Monday)
Prime Time (RTE 1, Wednesday)
Wild Islands (RTE 1, Sunday)
Britain's youngest mother (12); a girl who became a topless model as soon as the law allowed (15); a HIV-positive, gay male (17); a female prostitute (17); a child (13), talking about his sex-life and a group of drunken, lecherous London Lolitas were the "stars" of Teen Spirit. Claiming to be a serious examination of the lives of British teenagers today, this four-part documentary series is the latest dose of "reallife" sewer TV - a thoroughly contemptible exercise in prurience and voyeurism.
Oozing exploitation, this week's opening episode was titled "Sex and Morality". It had everything to do with sex and nothing to do with morality. The lumpen, semi-literate teenagers, clearly all abused by life, were here used by September Films. Alright, there's a place - indeed, a necessary and deserved place - in the schedules for tabloid TV. But this one was quite shocking, not for what the teenagers had to tell us, but for the fact that adults could produce such trash to make a few quid.
The kids who appeared in this travesty can hardly be blamed. Hamming it up for the cameras, they sought, as teenagers do, to shock the fuddy-duddy over-20s of the world. This was a litany of lurid stories, flashed by at a pace designed to stop viewers thinking. No sooner had we heard housebreaking Anton (13) describe his sex-life with the vocabulary of a six-year-old, than we were watching 13-year-old Jenny (she gave birth at 12) grumbling about the hassles of minding an infant.
Then there was Mandy (16), now married to John (37). Before he impregnated Mandy, John had already fathered seven children by four women/girls. He has a son of 19 and tattoos of L-O-V-E and HA-T-E on his fingers. "He robbed Mandy of her childhood," said Mandy's mother and you could see the appalling, generational repetition unfolding. On it went, one depressing tale after another. Sparing you the details, there was 17-year-old Jade, a Wolverhampton prostitute: low-life being conned by the putative high-life of television. You could, at least, make arguments that Jade might not know much better. Then there was Linsey Dawn, now 19, who posed topless for The Sport sleazepaper on her 15th birthday. Driving a Jeep and barbarously assured of her own star-quality, Linsey (look, say nothing!) shared her "philosophy" with us: "Just go for it," she said. "Just go for it."
It was the cant of Thatcherism - kids made coarse and avaricious by the pervasive notions of a society which simply exploits them. Certainly, September Films just went for it, producing in the process a documentary designed to yield titillating dismay at the state of young people. Instead, it produced despair at the state of contemporary TV. There were stories here, of course, but they were not representative of teen life.
The parents featured were mostly indifferent - some were even proud - about their children's sex lives. The only middle-class group included Ed and Charli (male and female, respectively), a pair of 17-year-olds who carry "True Love Waits" cards. We saw them in the red-light district of Amsterdam - hardly the ideal waiting room. Anyway, Charli explained their virginity deal: "If God was in a room, what would he not mind us doing?" she asked, as she cuddled up to Ed. It must be great to know the mind of God - and at 17 too!
In total contrast, Would You Believe spoke to Irish teenagers from Coolmine and Bailieborough Community Schools. Contemporaries of Teen Spirit's unfortunates, they spoke about fashion, music, drink and drugs, and God. They had nothing extraordinary to say but they were real, caught on the awkward cusp between the self-consciousness of youth and the dawning of maturity. In spite of their lack of worldly experience, they were emotionally way in advance of their exploited British counterparts. It was clear that the difference was caused by the fact that relevant adults really cared for them.
In ratings terms, of course, Teen Spirit has the necessary elements to drive it way in advance of its less lascivious, more responsible competition. The youngsters who took part in Would You Believe will wince in a few years' time when they replay the video. Teenage earnestness invariably carries a certain gormlessness - but that's OK; it's natural. Those who "starred" for September Films' teensploitation extravaganza probably can't even see that, in, say, 15 years' time, they'll be the parents of the next teen horror show. Sad, sad stuff!
MORE youth stuff on @last tv, which began its second series this week. Nomad hack and editor John Ryan (In Dublin, Sun- day Independent, Irish Independent, Magill, Sunday Times Culture mag, Magill again, by all accounts - and all in the last few years) kitted himself out in leather trousers, puffy blouse, head-band and greased torso to do a J'accuse routine on Michael Flatley. It certainly had energy and a funny, if formulaic script. But taking the mick out of Michael, Lord Of The Dance, doesn't require the most perceptive satire.
Still, steaming into "honey-glazed ham" Flatley's "gypsy rover chic" to pronounce that he had "turned Irish dancing into an international laughing stock" couldn't but raise a few laughs. In intention, this was parody with venom; in execution, it was burlesque with snazzy soundbytes. "Michael Flatley is a joke," said Ryan, "a lame, Paddy the Irishman joke." Well yes, but with an estimated £60 million for making a prat of himself, Mick the Joke can laugh too.
It was the zest of the parody, not its content, which was encouraging. However, there is such a dearth of satire in the Irish media that it's a pity to see such zest expended on cultural trivia like Michael Flatley. The true targets - and for a youth TV magazine too - ought to be the smug suits and snobs of the Celtic Tiger, the "go for it" young airheads with money. On the evidence of his assault on Flatley, Ryan can use the boot on egregious victims. The trick now will be to winkle out the shysters and dance on their ears. Let's watch.
Included also in @last tv was a dreadfully self-satisfied interview between Robbie Williams and Liz Bonin. Juvenile guff for a juvenile audience is probably fair enough. But the degree of unearned assuredness of both parties was monstrous - confidence without content. Better by far was a revisiting of TV GA- GA, the mid-1980s youf show. Yes, the programme was often ropey and sometimes pompously messianic about its mission. But it did have its moments and a lower level of smugness than contemporary youf stuff.
It is the self-satisfied tone of much of @last tv which particularly grates. In the show's attitude, the past is always boring and deserves to be ridiculed; the present is a "now" of cool Dublin and a happening, "sophisticated" (God love them!) Tiger. Sure, every generation finds it difficult to look at itself. But too many of the current crop - the consumer mugs - especially those freed from Catholic repression, unemployment, money worries and much of the idiotic cant of traditional Ireland, appear unable to see through the equally imbecilic and more pernicious, contemporary cant which they mistake for chic. A really cool youth programme ought to hold a mirror up to the present.
Away from youth, to the eh, heavyweights of the United Nations, Prime Time, which, up to this, has been commendable in its new Wednesday night offerings, slipped back into PR. Ostensibly examining the first year of Mary Robinson's performance as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, there were too many unchallenged assumptions trotted out as facts.
"The High Commissioner for Human Rights is expected to be the world's conscience," we were told at the outset. Who expects this? Yes, the job description and the UN's own publicity promotes this idea. But every clown in the street knows that the UN is a castrated puppet, unable to match the power of its dominant and domineering members. The idea of the UN and the idea of the role of its Human Rights efforts are worthy. But in practice - c'mon, is anybody surprised that Mary Robinson has been beaten in almost all her battles in the job?
So, when she spoke about "the enormity of the double-dealing" she has encountered and the fact that she has been repeatedly outmanoeuvred by diplomatic shysters, where's the news? Robinson's confidante, Bride Rosney, a spin doctor outspun, has left the fray. Without power, the UN and its officials cannot seriously expect to sort out Algeria, Cambodia, Rwanda, China, Tibet and all the rest. Mary Robinson may do her best but she is probably even more impotent in this gig than she was in her last.
Anyway, Prime Time ought to have established this as the true context of her role. Instead, it affected to suggest that the reality most thinking people understand was sheer revelation. In fairness, it concluded that little or no progress on human rights had been achieved in the last year, although it might too have spoken to Conor O'Clery or told us why he was not interviewed. More crucially, it should also have stressed that conscience cannot be appointed or made official. It is, by definition, its own minder, its repository in every person who cares to heed it. That's the nature of it.
Finally, more nature - Wild Is- lands, Eamon de Buitlear's latest wildlife series. It's splendid. This week's episode was titled "In the Shadow of the Scots Pine". Shot in the Scottish Highlands, it featured, as well as the tree of the title, ants, beetles, an eagle, crested tits, wild cats, caterpillars, squirrels and much of the rest of the teeming life with crucial relationships to the Scots Pine. In pace and in commentary, it was thoroughly engaging with a number of captivating zoom shots.
Like farmers swarming on a politician, we saw ants attack a beetle which had strayed into their home of dead pine needles. It wasn't pretty but as a demonstration of union power, there was even a political lesson in it. As trash TV advances relentlessly, this kind of programme shines brighter than ever. There is, of course, editing and camera choreography in these efforts too - in fact, they depend hugely upon such devices. But, compared with the exploited human wildlife of Teen Spirit this stuff can actually raise your spirits about television.