TV Review/Shane Hegarty: Reviewed this week: Would You Believe: Men in Aprons; Faking It; Life Begins; and Republic of Ireland v Brazil
Would You Believe: Men in Aprons
RTÉ1, Thursday
Faking It
Channel 4, Tuesday
Life Begins
ITV, Monday
Republic of Ireland v Brazil
Sky Sports 1, Wednesday
Men in Aprons was a short documentary on the Freemasons. They grow old . . . They grow old . . . They shall wear the bottoms of their trousers rolled.
There are no girls allowed. They dress up and re-enact the stories of ancient knights. Their initiation ceremonies embrace the pathetic patter of boyhood gangs, as if lifted at random from a page of Just William. Chest half-naked, trouser leg rolled up, blindfold on and noose around the neck, they must utter a sacred oath to protect secrets, "binding myself under no less a penalty than that of having my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by its roots, and buried in the rough sand of the sea at low water mark where the tide ebbs and flows twice in 24 hours". Or worse: they'll give you a Chinese burn.
They adopt grandiose titles. The programme interviewed Eric Waller who, being one of only eight to have reached the 32nd degree, is Right Worshipful Grandmaster of the Grand Lodge of Ireland of the Ancient and Accepted Right of Freemasonry. By the 32nd degree, apparently, most incredible knowledge has been passed on to you. The programme didn't divulge the precise details, but it must be very important. How to open resealable rasher packets, perhaps. The 33rd degree is the highest level; at which point, you learn why exactly you joined the Freemasons in the first place.
They have secret words; the meanings of which are divulged with each level. Apparently, a key word is Jabulon. I understand that the J might be silent. Anyway, utter it next time you're standing at the golf club bar and see whose trouser leg twitches.
It is the use of such words (which critics claim hold quasi-religious meaning) and the accompanying rituals that have convinced some that Freemasonry is anti-Christian or Satanic. The Vatican likes to excommunicate members and most churches oppose it publicly. In Men in Aprons, members, who included a Church of Ireland minister, dismissed this accusation; although it struck you that these fellows seem too wrapped up in the childish manifestations of their self-regard to be a serious threat to the world's major religions.
Of course, it's easy to mock. The programme title was itself a jibe at their uniform; tasselled aprons, over-sized decorated cuffs, chains and medals.
The Irish branch had opened the door a crack in order to dispel a few myths, only to simultaneously confirm a few stereotypes.
It would have been nice to get a few answers too. The cameras were limited in what they could film and the programme's conclusions were vague. Former RTÉ newsreader Vere Wynne-Jones, who has settled at the third degree, spoke of fraternity and the organisation's charitable works as his motivation.
There have to be other reasons, though: perhaps relating to outdated notions of business community and patriarchy; or of an increasingly flaky social ladder; or the old-fashioned fun to be had in belonging to a secret gang.
"We're not a secret society. We're a society with secrets," explained a member. Either way, it is a shrinking organisation, struggling to attract a new generation of men who have decided that there are some secrets that are just not worth knowing.
In this week's Faking It, we met men dancing with dogs. This was not a Kevin Costner role, but a sport a level up from the old Crufts standards of "walkies" and "sit", in which adults dress as cheap souvenir dolls before engaging in complex choreography with their mutts. One entrant donned toreador garb and performed a mock bullfight in which the dog ultimately triumphed. Another woman, with horns on her head, performed "a Viking epic to Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King". Everyone agreed that it was outstanding.
Into this arena came Rob, who had never trained nor owned an animal before, and had a month to coach Bobby, a dog with four left feet. He was mentored by a couple of experienced dog handlers, the kind of women who have sofa cushions embroidered with such axioms as 'My goal in life is to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am'. He was advised that being a dog trainer is a time-consuming business. "You eat, sleep and drink them. Literally." Not literally, of course. Unless your dog thinks you're a Korean chef.
Faking It has lost much of its allure this season. Its novelty has palled, but somewhere along the way it has also lost much of its ingenuity. Its transformations previously revelled in a simple symmetry. It turned a chip-van cook into a top chef, a Cambridge toff into an East End bouncer, a punk into a classical conductor. An episode in which the drama comes from watching a management consultant train a dog suggests that it is no longer so deliberate over whom it waves its wand. If they had tracked down a Korean chef, that would have made a programme.
Life Begins is a new series starring Caroline Quentin as a 39-year-old woman whose husband (Alexander Armstrong) suddenly decides to leave her. Perhaps it is because he had spotted the impending mid-life crisis signalled by how their marriage was increasingly interrupted by downbeat musical montages.
Anyway, he was gone after only five minutes, with his character's personal torment faithfully reflected through a succession of distracted pauses, so that most of his lines consisted of him raising his eyebrows and asking "sorry, what was it you were saying?" Armstrong is a comedian by trade and in straight roles he has never been able to wash off the faint whiff of deadpan parody.
As for Quentin - also a fine comedy actress - she confines herself to simmering gloom punctuated by tears over the kitchen sink and predictable moments of small triumph. For the sake of her two children, she must get a job, but the world has no room for ancient 39-year-olds. Meanwhile, her mother, Anne Reid, is slyly unsympathetic and tempered only by husband Frank Finlay, who made only a fleeting appearance, and hardly had time to rev up the chokey engine that is his larynx.
Life Begins has all the plotting of a chick-lit dust cover. My guess is that her husband will come crawling back in the final episode, but by then she'll have rediscovered herself and won't need him anymore. However, I'm going to have to rely on someone else to tell me if I'm right.
Sky Sports carried live coverage of Ireland v Brazil. "Fiesta time," announced the presenter, Paul Dempsey, "not that they need an excuse in this town".
It is Sky Sports that needs no excuse. This was the goalless draw that was heard around the world. Dempsey, as is the practice for Sky Sports presenters, spoke at a tremulous pitch, his patter bubbling with adrenaline. He grabbed a theme and wouldn't let go. Flushed with the nostalgia of Liam Brady's goal in the 1987 fixture, he was intent on drawing a comparison to the golden age of Irish soccer that followed. Is this a new era? Could this kick start a new golden age? Is this the beginning of something special? Ray Houghton and Frank Stapleton talked him down from his high, using the time-honoured technique of banality.
John Giles was spotted at half-time, receiving an award on the pitch, and it sent a twinge of longing up the stretched belly of your replica shirt. "We're building for the future," Dempsey said. "It's a marvellous occasion for us." He kept talking about "us" and referring to "we". It took a while to realise that the "we" and the "us" were actually we and us. He is Irish-born, but he is Sky Sports-reared. In that organisation "we" is a flexible concept. Any one of them can be turned into a plastic Paddy if it means you'll take the plastic from your wallet.
Touchingly, while commentating on the game, Niall Quinn wore an Ireland scarf. You get the impression that, if he were broadcasting to the Brazilians, Dempsey would have painted himself banana yellow and worn a bikini.
Anyway, he'd enjoyed the big occasion. "Thanks to Sky Sports, we saw them live." And thanks to FAI, lots of us didn't.