The Beggar Bride - BBC 1, Sunday and Monday
Osmond Family Values - BBC 1, Sunday
Classic Albums - BBC 1, Monday
The Rose of Tralee - RTE 1, Tuesday and Thursday
Mixing Cinderella, Pygmalion, Indecent Proposal, Rebecca and Cluedo, The Beggar Bride beggared belief. Advertised as a "two-part drama", it was, more accurately, a fairy-tale. Not that fairy-tales haven't got their place. But most of us expect contemporary television drama, unless we are told otherwise, to be closer to grim reality than to the Brothers Grimm.
The plot was quite straightforward: Ange (Keeley Hawes) is withering in a dismal, slumland flat, with her jobless husband Billy, and sickly toddler Jake. So, she decides that bigamy is just the ticket. After a flick through Who's Who, Opera Today and an etiquette guide book, she'll seduce media celebrity and millionaire businessman Sir Fabian Ormerod, marry him and skin him with a lucrative divorce settlement. Ah, the things resolute women do for their families.
There are a few potential pitfalls, of course. In order to gain access to Sir Fab, Ange (now Angela) has to get and hone the accent, haircut, fawning eyes, clothes and all-round confidence of the parasite-aristo class. Cue a suspension of disbelief which would buckle the stanchions of the Golden Gate Bridge - like when our heroine goes shopping in Mayfair with no money. She just nicks the clobber from plush restaurants and hotel lobbies. And yes, yes . . . of course, the Gucci and the Dior jobs fit perfectly, darling.
Presently (you don't, believe me, need the methodology details) Angela is seated in Fab's box at the opera. Fab's daughter, Honesty (honestly!), however, is not impressed. Sniffing a threat, Honesty shows jealousy and we can see that Ange has made a significant enemy. Still, Fab is fooled and soon Ange has her way with him. With perfect timing, she has just become pregnant by Billy (smouldering with a more understandable jealousy than Honesty) so she'll be able to convince Fab that the babby is his.
And there you have it - no proper class war, really, just a series of implausible, lightweight, class skirmishes. When, for instance, Fab invites Angela to his pile in Devon, she plays a blinder until it comes to the time to pour the tea. Horror of horrors - Ange(la) pours the milk before the tea. "The only other person I've ever seen do that is the window cleaner," says the woman who reared Fab, an elderly creature known as Nanny Ba Ba.
Well, that really was the breaking point. Tolerance is not only a kind, but a useful virtue. But enough is enough: calling a character Nanny Ba Ba in any post-noon television programme is unforgivable. After that, I'm afraid, even the notion of the suspension of disbelief became, for me, impossible. Oh, there were other complications - Honesty kidnapped the new baby; Nanny Ba Ba (look, I'm not being gratuitous about using this name again) turned out to be a sleuth and Ange and Fab, despite the emergence of the truth remained, at least, friends.
It was all a pity, really. The Beggar Bride had started with the promise of a bit of bite but ended up as a Mills and Boon yarn. The subjects of sex, class, marriage and bigamy (and fraud as a means to address contemptible inequality) deserve better. And yet, it was sporadically entertaining. Certainly, Keeley Hawes produced a strong central performance and in common with the BBC's much praised contemporary drama This Life, none of the characters were appealing. However, unlike This Life, none of the characters had any substance either.
Oh, the Rebecca bits: the second wife of Sir Fab (who, like the much-fostered Ange, turned out to be an adopted child) was done in and it was all quite mysterious. We were meant to worry that maybe Ange would get the treatment too. When the police were called to investigate the kidnapping of the child, they were also keen to crack the earlier crime. They interviewed most of the main characters. "And what's your name?" asked an inspector. "Nanny Ba Ba," said the interviewee. Surely there were grounds there for an arrest, whatever about legally justifying a shoot-to-kill.
IN contrast, Osmond Family Values began with all the bite of a cuddly toy and ended on a serious, even mildly shocking note. Their heyday was 20 to 25 years ago, so the majority of their fans are probably now late thirtysomethings. Surely few of life's misplaced affections can be more embarrassing than the revelation that, once upon a time, you were an Osmond fan. Even the Bay City Rollers, because they knew they were chancers on a winning streak, were not nearly as naff as the Osmonds.
Old footage from The Andy Williams Show revealed the horror in gestation. At first, there were just the four older brothers - Alan, Wayne, Jay and Merrill - doing their thing as a cutesy barbershop quartet. All crew-cuts, middle-American freckles and clumpy blazers, the four were later joined (in jumpsuits!) by baby brothers Donny and Jimmy, and "for Christmas specials and stuff" by sister Marie. Donny, of course, became the star turn, thrilling pubescent girls to aqueous hysteria with his hit single Puppy Love.
One girl, allegedly, used a fire-axe to smash through a hotel door. But, when (axeless!) she was allowed within touching distance of Donny, she fainted. Maybe she was zapped by the gleam from his teeth - for the Osmonds had teeth that would hold their own in Jurassic Park. Devout Mormons, the Osmonds were, really, white America's answer to the Jackson Five. The fact that their success as a rock band is almost certainly the most out of proportion (to talent) in history, says much about the music industry's ability to profit from incipient racism.
In truth, the Osmonds couldn't cut it any way. Not only is their Crazy Horses easily the most hideous song in existence, there was nothing remotely like a walk on the wild side recounted here: no yarns of drink, drugs or sexual excesses. And yes, of course all that old rock rubbish is tedious . . . but at least, in the absence of talent, it's something. There were hints that the band members had some tiffs and that normal, dark, family emotions surfaced occasionally. But nothing was made explicit.
What was clear, however, is that the suppression of any individuality these children might have had was ruthless. They were off a production line and Mammy Osmond and Daddy Osmond would tolerate no deviation. It was rather shocking to hear that at least three of the older brothers - surely all still under 50? - are seriously ill. Perhaps it's just a coincidence; perhaps growing up not quite far enough away from nuclear bomb tests is to blame. But it was hard not to think that family values were connected in there somewhere.
THE group dynamics within Fleetwood Mac were rather more . . . well, dynamic. The final programme in the Classic Albums series focused on the making of the group's 1977 megahit Rumours. Almost all the yarns in this one concerned drink, drugs and/or sexual excesses. "It was the end of the 1970s and we were really out of it," said guitarist John McVie. With a faraway gaze in his eyes and a dodgy wrap on his head, he looked as if, now, at the end of the 1990s, he still hadn't rowed all the way back in.
"We were all writing songs about each other although we were unaware of it," said Christine McVie. She and John and the band's newly arrived couple, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, were breaking up. Drummer Mick Fleetwood's wife was having an affair with his best friend. These were emotionally incestuous family values - a full soap-opera confined to a recording studio. The band members felt that their real-life pain had seeped into the music, giving it a virulent authenticity. Perhaps. But cold, calculated, sophisticated arranging mustn't be lightly discounted in any assessment of reasons for its success.
AND so to the annual end-of-summer fairy tale that is The Rose of Tralee. The 39th edition of this jamboree of ersatz Celtic wholesomeness - Kerry's answer to Osmond family values - had, at least, a new presenter, Marty Whelan. Given the gig and what was expected of him, Whelan did fine. But The Rose continues to wither and, at this stage, very serious pruning is required.
The opening night was held in The Dome which, face it, looks more like a shed. No doubt it's good sport for the contestants and their supporters. But allocating almost six hours of TV to what is, in effect, a local festival, is highly questionable. As ever, the Roses danced jigs in ballgowns, recited poems and monologues, sang songs, played the piano and generally sought to exude contrived colleen coyness. As it all bears such scant relationship to the real Ireland any of us experience, it has increasingly become more cult than culture.
That is its appeal now: RTE will always defend it on the grounds of popularity and, to be fair, in television terms, ratings are invariably a formidable justification for practically anything. But it's not just Dublin carping and sniping to point out that the hypocrisy of this carnival of naffness has become unacceptable. The young women who take part - and good luck to them - can't all have 1950s sensibilities in the late 1990s. But, in the netherworld of Rosedom, honesty can kill a contestant's chances.
In that sense, The Rose Of Tralee festival is streaked with cute hoordom. Marty Whelan, as Derek Davis before him, knows that the fabricated prudishness of the whole thing is just too sanctimonious and phoney. In one sense, it's a tribute to a presenter's professionalism that he can do the gig to the required specifications. But, in another, it means prolonging the life of an institution which, if it doesn't change soon, will become a cringe-inducing national embarrassment as it withers into oblivion.
Even the elements - as they do in many of the best fairy tales - gave a strong hint this year. High winds saw the show's second half, which was scheduled for Wednesday, moved to Thursday and brought into the Mount Brandon Hotel. In the long run, the first contestant, Sinead Lonergan, representing France, won. But it is a very tired old show. The average age of its viewers can't be decreasing either. You'd wonder what they thought of RTE's decision to screen Batman to fill the hole created by Wednesday night's cancellation. Batman filling in for The Rose Of Tralee? I'm sorry. It's just too weird.