IT was the annual blessing of the scooters which was most revealing. De Valera kissing cardinals rings 70,000 people (twice as many as nowadays) climbing Croagh Patrick; Trinity graduates, who all looked like Ian Carmichael - all this we have seen many times before. But the blessing of the scooters was, at least for me, a revelation wannabe Hells Angels seeking heavenly insurance.
Young men with motorised two wheel transport were a kind of urban avant garde in the late 1950s and early 60s. They be spoke freedom and adventure. They went to see The Wild One. They made Marlon Brando their alter egos. Then they went - well, 400 of them anyway - to the Franciscans (their altar egos?) to have their bikes blessed. It was a cusp time, where mediaeval Europe met contemporary Hollywood. Louis Marcus's The Years of Change captured it vividly.
Based entirely on the Gael Linn cinema ,newsreel, Amharc Eireann, this is a six part series, which looks at the years from 1956 to 1964. Thursday's opening episode was titled Faith And Fatherland so, not surprisingly, its themes were Catholicism and nationalism. But it wasn't the grand public displays of power and piety which were riveting. It was the more intimate moments of events largely forgotten which were especially worth the watching.
Aer Lingus had an annual blessing of the planes at Dublin airport. From its founding in 1936, until some unspecified year in the 1970s, as many of the company's fleet as could be assembled on any one day were ceremoniously doused with holy water. Being a State company and, considering the ethos of the State during that period, this was, perhaps, less surprising than the blessing of the scooters. But it was telling nonetheless.
For really strapping Catholicism, however, you couldn't beat Dundalk at Easter. A 1959 Passion play in the town looked as though it had been directed by Sam Peckinpah. It was tough, gory, mercilessly morbid and the Christ of the piece looked like he had actually been flogged and crucified. The audience (or congregation?) stared in silent rapture. A man in the John Wayne centurion role put a vinegar doused sponge on a spear and rubbed it across Christ's parched mouth. Christ's head slumped to one side. John Wayne grinned.
The series had opened with shots of the Irish Independent, Irish Press and Irish Times buildings. Eamonn Lawlor's voiceover said that most of what we would see came from a time before Irish television. This was crucial. Footage of the North - marching Orangemen, new motorways, rifle club B Specials at play revealed. a place of unionist prosperity and nationalist discontent. An anti unemployment march by Newry Catholics in 1961 showed that civil rights demonstrations had begun earlier than is generally acknowledged.
But, it was the growing power of television which would fuel the explosion which was to follow. Scenes of black, civil rights marchers in the US with their songs and their banners and their dignity were copied in the North. Without television, the slide to conflict and the path to a less unequal society would have been slower. It is difficult to imagine that Amharc Eireann, for all its merits, could have ignited a revolution.
Oh, it marked Irish revolutions, all right. We saw a 1964 Wolfe Tone commemoration ceremony at Bodenstown; the Asgard returning to Howth; remembrance at Arbour Hill; UCD students marching to Mountjoy to honour Kevin Barry. But it all seemed safe, set in a cocooned period of history which believed it had closed the lid on a longer, more awful history. Amharc - Eireann, like all newsreels, was characterised by jaunty propaganda. Even if its cam,eras didn't lie, they didn't attempt to tell the whole story either.
Still, for people old enough to remember the times, the combination of nostalgia and jolting disbelief, give this one a kind of tragicomic appeal. For people too young - well, if your generation's greatest revolutionary act has been to win the freedom to go shopping on Good Friday, a documentary series in 30 or 40 years time should provide great laughs. Sure, there has been valuable progress in recent decades. But, if we have replaced sanctimoniousness with smugness and called it sophistication, perhaps we should think again. Marcus's documentary will help in the re examination.
STARDOM got a thorough re examination on Before They Were Famous, a wicked little mick taker presented by Angus Deayton. In an attempt to defuse his own preening self regard, Deayton first took the mick out of himself by showing us his thespian talents in an ad for a breakfast cereal.
Next up, however, were Clint Eastwood, Gene Wilder and Dustin Hoffman and it is difficult to think, of anything more self regarding than his placing of himself in such, company.
Still, when it worked, it was delicious. We saw Kate Adie, war corr heroine and jolly hokey sticks role model, play a busty wench in a major TV news story about some local codology known as Randy Day. Mind you, intrepid as ever, Ms Adie effected the blousy bravado which characterised her Gulf War reporting. But, stripped of gravitas,by the subject matter, the pompous technique just added to the hilarity.
Jeremy Irons, who usually attempts to, beguile with a contradictory mix of urbanity and soulfulness, featured on the children's show Playaway. Funnily enough, Jeremy seemed happy acting the maggot while surrounded by primary colours. Likewise, Emma Thompson, bikini-ed and gushing in, an ad from 1980. Generally cast to epitomise English middle classness Ms Thompson revealed a Spice Girl ditzyness, which, for all its awfulness, somehow seemed more human than her usual characterisations.
Naomi Campbell appeared as a dancer with Orville, the green duck thing from hell. Spice Girl Geri Halliwell was a lounging on a sofa, game show girl on Turkish TV and Anna Ford did a gig as a wannabe, soulful Joan Baez in 1968. Anna had the guitar, the hair, the mini skirt. Only for the sound, she could have gone far in the music business.
Musicians Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, David Bowie, Bono and Sting got the treatment too. Jagger was a schoolboy hiker in 1959 and Bowie a concerned, talking mod in the early 1960s. But Bono, appearing on RTE in the late 1970s, was like a man possessed: a stare that would pierce steel; jerky, strobe light like movements without a strobe light, a fresh, innocent face on its way to millions. Only Hughie Green, dancing hack in the 1930s, looked more insane.
Like the Amharc Eireann newsreels, Before They Were Famous invites us to litter. The show's script is by Deayton and the foul mouthed Danny Baker, lad of lads (Il laddo de tutti laddi). It is funny because it observes the first rule of comedy to reduce to the absurd. Deayton is characteristially superior as presenter self referential nods, winks, raised eyebrows are not necessary here. We don't need to be told when to laugh. Better if he just let the stars be the stars.
THE same reservation applies to sportswriter Hugh McIlvanney, who scripted and presented Arena's three episode special, Busby, Stein And Shankly - The Football Men. Too often, McIlvanney reminded us of his shared Scottish origins with the legendary managers of Manchester United, Celtic and Liverpool. It was reasonable - to stake his credentials - to mention the matter. But repetition inevitably left the residual feeling that the greatness being extolled was like the accidents of birth, also to be shared.
Since Sky nabbed almost all the football, other channels have been forced to be ore inventive. Given the game's current cultural cachet, it is no longer a surprise that a heavyweight series, such as Arena, felt compelled to get in on the act. But McIlvanney, in attempting to combine sociology, politics and history with an authored, personalised documentary, pitched too obviously for gravitas,
His delivery was too ponderous It is true, that, coming, as they did, from the west of Scotland coalfield, Busby, Stein and Shankly shared certain working class characteristics: the native socialism of miners, penny pinching thrift, toughness and an awareness of sectarian poison. But there comes a point where coincidence is only that and attempts, in hindsight, to show a discernible pattern get caught offside.
The best parts of the series were, of course, the football itself and then, the grainy, old, black and white film of industrial Britain in the 1930s. Manchester, in particular, with its belching smokestacks, emitted a Lowryesque spirit which seemed, even grimmer than the spirit of the paintings. As history, with slices of sociology and politics, it was instructive. However, as biography, desperate for its subjects to fit a context, it was as strained as Ireland's chances of reaching the next World Cup finals.
AMONG the drama series debuting on Network 2 this week, The Cape an adventure series set in the NASA space centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida - was as strained as they come. Corbin Bernsen plays the leader of a group of space shuttle astronauts who specialise in space rescues. Made on location - to add authenticity - they needn't have bothered, since the whole shebang is overacted. Close ups of faces, doing more dramatic antics than Michael Flatley's ,feet or Angus Deayton's eyebrows, reduce it to caricature.
Anyway when a nuclear powered Russian satellite spins out of orbit, threatening to crash to Earth, Bernsen becomes torn between professional duty and family obligations. Being a ,spacer, he chooses professional duty. But it's hard to empathise with this sort of character. He's, just too Hollywood all American, too driven, too macho, too wise in his foolishness to be believable. Beam them back up, Scotty - we've enough hokum on TV already.
FINALLY, Start Me Up. Well, perhaps better not - at least not on this series. It's earnest and serious and it extols enterprise. Well, fair enough. Good luck to the people who are working hard, caving commercial success and "growing jobs" like people once grew tomatoes. But, even with a Rolling Stones theme tune and Niall Quinn, as presenter, this is rather dubious entertainment. The blessing of the scooters with holy water might be quaint. But the blessing of the businesses with TV's attention seems utterly charmless. Viewers used to watch TV to get away from work.