LAST YEAR Stateside, in a first for RTE, took us on an eight part whirlwind view of the Irish in New York and Boston. It zipped through a number of profiles and news items, giving a rather hyperactive take on life there, with an emphasis on MTV style camerawork and over jazzy visuals.
If Stateside was a little rough on the eyes, however, this didn't reflect in the ratings. Its popularity impressed RTE's. Independent Production Unit so much that they commissioned a second run.
This time around, there are fewer items and an expanded terrain of operations. "After we'd finished the first series, I took a break in New Orleans for a week, and was surprised at the number of Irish there," says Daniel O'Leary, one of the show's producers. "It struck me that almost everywhere you go in the States, there is a vibrant Irish presence, and that the show could very well expand to include Irish people around the continent.
Each programme is devoted to a different city or area - San Francisco, Chicago, the Southwest, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Washington DC and the South.
"When I looked back on the first series, where we did four segments each show, I felt that we didn't always have time for the necessary depth with each one," says producer Patricia Zur. "This time around we pared it back to three, and didn't go as heavily into the news stuff, which gave us the opportunity to do more of a `people' show."
Those profiled range from several Irish lesbians and gays in San Francisco to Glenn Quinn in Los Angeles - he plays the son in law on Roseanne. In Washington, a piece on Washington Post reporter Peter Finn is complimented by a look at the Irish lobby on Capitol Hill.
Elsewhere, certain contrasts are striking, such as the difference between the ambitious lifestyle of Orlagh Daly, a high powered advertising executive in Chicago, and the zen existence of artist Lilly Stack, living in the heart of the New Mexican desert.
The show doesn't avoid cliche's but faces them head on, with interesting results. Many Irish people would cringe at the "Maureen's Memories" line of Celtic jewellery. But the woman behind it has taken on Irish America at its own game and won, in a sense epitomising the eternal emigrant dream.
Nor is the coverage universally positive. In the Philadelphia episode, a hard working couple describe slaving at two and three jobs each to save enough to establish their own business. And in Camden, New Jersey, they talked to Father Michael Doyle from Longford, who works in one of the poorest ghettos in America.
While many will watch Stateside for its (substantial) entertainment value, it is also a valuable testimony to an poet of contemporary Irish society that we are just beginning to explore.