True Lives (RTE 1, Monday) Clear The Stage (BBC 1, Tuesday) Two Lives (RTE 1, Thursday) Against The Odds (RTE 1, Thursday)
Singing, reminiscing and bantering, Frank McCourt and his three brothers, Malachy, Michael and Alphonsus, seemed like the mid-west's answer to Dublin's Behans. Shortly before the publication of Frank's Pulitzer Prizewinning Angela's Ashes, the four brothers came together for the first time in 30 years. Malachy's son, Conor, a New York motor-bike cop, filmed the reunion and spliced it with home video footage of his grandparents, Malachy Snr and the now famous Angela.
Conor's celluloid may have lacked the grittiness of Angela's Ashes, but this True Lives episode titled The McCourts Of Limerick revealed true lives nonetheless. The perspective, of course, was mediated by the emigrant brothers' experiences of America. The Ireland - more specifically, the Limerick - they remembered was a place of endemic poverty and insidious snobbery. Sure, there were songs and laughter, but there were silences and tears too.
About a decade-and-a-half ago, the late Sean McBride caused a furore on The Late Late Show by suggesting that the view of Ireland from America provided a big-picture perspective not possible for people living here. It was the political implications of McBride's remark which most angered anti-nationalists. As ever, they insisted that Irish-Americans are characteristically crude, neanderthal Provos, with little or no understanding of the subtleties of Irish (especially Anglo-Irish) political life.
Resistance, particularly Limerick resistance, to Angela's Ashes, has largely been based not on the book's political, but on its social implications. Was life in Limerick really all that grim? Or, has the filter of American affluence painted a vengeful picture even bleaker than the reality? On the evidence of this albeit affectionate documentary, the lives of Limerick's poor are easily sentimentalised. But there was also real horror in the city's lanes: high child mortality rates, hunger, hopelessness and alcoholism.
Malachy Snr's alcoholism led to his abandonment of his wife and family. "When he was drunk, the poetry came flowing out of him," said Frank. "He regaled us with memories and speeches and the glories of dying for Ireland." By the time Conor tracked him down in Belfast, Malachy Snr was old and skeletal. Cut back to the lane in Limerick where the McCourt boys had sported and played. It seems almost desolate now but when Frank spoke of "ghosts", it was easy to envisage it teeming with urchins.
"We played all day, winter and summer. We were never bored and we never wanted to go home," he said. But the McCourts lived in a lane, not a street. In local social stratification, lane pretty well meant slum. "Laner", we learned, is (or, at least, was) a Limerick insult. The brothers derided the "snobbery" of priests, who "were very worldly and had cars" and who "never came into the lane except to collect dues or when someone was dying".
There was bitterness in some of these denunciations and as the camera panned skywards to film a church steeple overlooking the lane, it was hard not to agree that the Irish Catholic Church, at the height of its power, contributed ingloriously to the institutionalised inequality of the period. Now, with money as the new God, maybe we shouldn't forget that aggressive business types are replicating the roles of traditional, autocratic bishops.
On this sentimental journey, Frank lamented the ghosts of the lane people. They had gone to "England, America, Australia, Dublin." He recollected his own leaving, remembering his last look back as he headed for the train to Cork and the boat to America. Then he became tearful, recalling the "dignity" of the lane people. "They suffered with good humour," he said. It was a moving testimony, which risked being sloppy, slushy and schmaltzy. But it wasn't. It was true feeling for true lives, led at a time when people really had lives and not merely lifestyles.
Originally intended as a private project for the family's re-union, Conor McCourt's documentary perhaps lacked a little of the anecdotal colour of the Behan's Dubbelin. But as a record of provincial Irish lives led under the reign of Catholicism, it offered views less likely to be publicly stated by successful, non-emigrants of the times. It's ironic that, nowadays, the Catholic Church is among the most vociferous institutions reminding us that the economic boom promotes poverty as well as prosperity. This True Lives was sad and spirited in equal measure.
Another Irish writer - another Frank, too - Frank McGuinness, was the subject of Clear The Stage. Further irony in this one, perhaps, as Frank thanked Maynooth University "for giving me a job when others wouldn't", adding that the Catholic college's authorities "were always very supportive of my writing". Unlike McCourt's, McGuinness's writing is often deeply political.
Opening with McGuinness walking along a beach near Buncrana, where the Border looms large in local consciousness, we were reminded how influential place and time (or geography and history) can be on literature. Frank then told his own story against a background of appropriate, if unexciting, images. Speaking straight to camera, he recalled going to work at the University of Coleraine in the mid-1970s. It was his first time to be "among so many Protestants".
Cue David Ervine to talk about Frank's second play, Observe The Sons Of Ulster Marching Towards The Somme. Over first World War footage, Ervine said that McGuinness "can see Protestant and Catholic, North and South, English and Irish" perspectives. Given that McGuinness's roots are Border roots, this certainly contradicts Sean McBride's "big picture" thesis. Still, as a compliment to McGuinness's sensitivity and ability to empathise, this was high praise.
Excerpts from Carthaginians, McGuinness's play dealing with Bloody Sunday, were spliced with familiar footage of the day. So, we had pictures from the Somme in 1916 and Derry in 1972. As central events for Unionists and nationalists, respectively, many writers might fear that these are too charged, too volatile to be the stuff of art. But this head-on approach to the North's Troubles is Frank McGuinness's strength. "I love courage and loathe heroism," he said, ambiguously. But you could understand what he meant. It was a sentence which exiled poppies and Easter lilies alike.
Marianne Faithfull sang Mack The Knife on McGuinness's CD-player. There is a gutsiness in the mature Faithfull's voice which mirrors the gutsiness in McGuinness's writing. But when he told us that Oscar Wilde is his favourite author, another side of him was revealed. Of course, his own plays regularly feature homosexuality or homosexual characters. But the combination of Marianne Faithful and Oscar Wilde suggests a rare union between mettle and wit. Perhaps that is the secret of McGuinness's talent.
Brian Keenan, Trevor Nunn, Maureen Toal and Noel Pearson (missing from the recent documentary about Jim Sheridan) were also among the contributors. McGuinness spoke about "writing from the depths" and about "English `touchiness' about their own ignorance of Ireland", which he described, correctly, as being "understandable but not allowable". Being a tribute, Clear The Stage was never going to be excessively critical. But even with the tone and mood largely predetermined by the programme's purpose, it was impossible to begrudge McGuinness this overdue accolade.
A third Irish writer featured prominently on TV this week. After Limerick and Buncrana, we got a Dublin view of the world in Roddy Doyle's Hell For Leather, the opening drama in a new series of Two Lives. Gemma Craven and Barbara Brennan, starred as two middle-aged women, Mary and Joan, who had been enjoying regular rumpo, unknown to each other, with the same Catholic priest. We meet them as they return to Mary's house after the funeral of "Fr Brendan".
Opening with a belted out version of Bruce Springsteen's Hungry Heart, as the camera strays to a statue of the Child of Prague, this was always going to be irreverent and funny. Through the women's conversation, we learn that Fr Brendan liked to wear a leather jacket and go to Springsteen and Eagles concerts. When he reached orgasm, he would scream "Good Morning, Vietnam". Doyle's characteristic sense of high-voltage incongruity and absurdity has seldom been better.
But Hell For Leather was richer than easy vulgarity for easy laughs. The writing had a comic realism, which convincingly shifted the relationship between deserted, working-class, Catholic wife (with three children), Mary, and unmarried, middle-class, Protestant career woman, Joan. At first, they were hostile to and suspicious of each other. But gradually, they inched towards mutual respect and finally onto hilarity as they detailed the nitty-gritty of their relationships with the rogue cleric.
Mary, mind, had most of the best lines. Angered at finding out that Joan is not a Catholic, she spat: "And you still got into bed with a priest. Could you not find one of your own - a vicar or an ayatollah or whatever you are? It's like robbery." Earlier, describing Fr Brendan's first visit after her husband had left her "for a slut nearly twice his age . . . oul' chicken neck, you shoulda seen her", Mary recounted how, after they had been to bed, she said (in a suitably obsequious voice): "Thank you very much for callin', Father."
After the explorations of the social and political legacies of Irish Catholicism, Roddy Doyle's humorous perspective on its human aspects was compassionate. Though ostensibly damning of Church hypocrisy, there was a warmth - and two splendid performances - in Hell For Leather, which bridged the gap between people's roles and people's humanity. "Anyway," Mary tells Joan, "Brendan came round to comfort me. He stayed for a cup of tea and ended up riding me." Then the punchline, in a confidential voice: "I have to say, Joan, it was exactly what I needed."
Finally, Against The Odds. The first in this new series recounting stories of people overcoming difficulties to lead productive lives, was titled Small World. Focusing on 30-year-old, three foot, 10-inch Chris Burke, who suffers from achondroplasia (a form of dwarfism), it was a powerful affirmation of attitude. Rather than bemoan his condition, Chris views it as an opportunity to appear in films (including Willow and Braveheart) and pantomimes.
It might be tempting to think that Chris, who is married with four children, must be whistling past a graveyard. But he was thoroughly convincing - indeed, inspiring. "If I was tall I don't think I'd be as happy as this," he said. It was yet another affirmation of the importance of perspective, reminding us that even in a Small World there are numerous ways to access the big picture.