TV Review: Bob Geldof's new series, Geldof in Africa, is a personal journey, an attempt to go behind the familiar images of war, suffering and oppression and to develop an understanding of Africa through its people, their terrain, and the forces that shape and change their lives. "The herds of walking skeletons, the tribes, the clans, the warlords - these are all partially true, but there are other Africas," he said.
"It is quite simply the most extraordinary, beautiful and luminous place on our planet," he continued, describing a continent of "geographical extremes": equatorial, desert, tropical, savannah and coastal. As he traipsed across an empty desert, a vast sea of sand, the hirsute and shimmering Geldof, wrapped in cotton, described it as "like walking across the surface of the sun".
In the first of this week's two episodes, Africa's most potent and unassailable forces - its geography and climate - were the backdrop to a string of almost painterly images, from a woman in a red sarong roaming the charred remains of a war-shattered village to Somaliland elders administering local democracy from under the shade of an acacia tree. There were also the elegant, seemingly imperturbable Masai, a people whose traditional agricultural lifestyle is a conscious choice, according to Geldof, even given their proximity to modernity - when they go into town, he told us, the Masai leave their Stone Age knives and hatchets with the hat-check girl.
Geldof traced the path of our ancient ancestors, following the footsteps of the 50 people who left the cradle of civilisation in the Great Rift Valley and set out to walk across the world. We are all, he said with his unshakable certainty, directly descended from these intrepid travellers.
His self-penned narrative can at times feel overly poetic, even self-consciously lyrical, and by the time "the sun ambushes the night" you start missing the former Boomtown Rat's signature bluntness. Geldof's passion for his subject is, however, infectious. His examination of how tradition and modernity can co-exist is essentially optimistic: like the Somali doctor who successfully replaced a broken femur with a camel's bone and then treated the patient with traditional herbs and antibiotics, Geldof feels the prognosis for Africa is good. "Dawn could already be here for Africa - and it's going to be a glorious day."
IT'S ONE HELL of a journey from the Rift Valley to the Centre Court, and if you're not too confident with your liathróidí, from there to TG4 is perhaps a bridge too far. If you want traditional stereotypes, the BBC commentators provide it in bucketloads. Yes, it's Wimbledon again (or "Wmbdn", as Clive James used to call it, mimicking Harry Carpenter's enunciation). And yes, once again, Britain's hopes are pinned on the pleasant, talented and elegantly repressed "Tim" (though, by the time you read this, he'll probably be holidaying in Bundoran). His opening match was predictably nerve-wracking, and you didn't need to know your love from your advantage to appreciate the drama. Henman (that's "Hnmn" to you) was soon two sets down to an energetic Finn with one too many consonants in his moniker and a fistful of charms on his neck chain. Nieminen (let's just call him "Nmnn") was actually on his honeymoon and Mrs Nmnn, in the box where they keep the wives and mothers, looked mildly irritated by her new husband's commitment to remaining in the tournament. She clearly had other plans - Madame Tussaud's maybe, which was where the real Tim Henman was; the waxwork version, due to diabolical trickery, was on court.
"There's no emotion," complained stereotypical Yank John McEnroe in the commentary box. "Can't he just stick his fist in the air and say 'come on?'" "You just don't understand, do you?" said the tight-lipped stereotypical Brit next to him. "That's just not Tim." We already know that, we're shouting from the armchair, the real Tim is in a museum on Baker Street. And then we notice that Tim's parents have also been replaced, the two of them sitting there ramrod straight, never moving a facial muscle. Hnmn's wife, though, she's obviously the real thing: around the beginning of the third set, when McEnroe was telling us that Hnmn was winding down his career and one of the Brits was comparing him to a gentle string quartet on a sunny afternoon, Mrs Hnmn (who has stopped sulking and let her hair grow) startled the waxworks by shouting "come on, Tim". Well, we couldn't actually hear her but the lip-sync was bang on; although, come to think of it, maybe she was shouting "that's not him". Whatever it was, it broke the spell and gradually Hnmn metamorphosed into Henman and started to play tennis.
Doubtless the Nmnns are enjoying the sights.
Those Amazonian American women also stuck to their scripts, winning their matches to a guttural accompaniment that sounded like bad porn. Each shot was a thunderous operetta of grunts, groans, moans and shrieks as they shattered the nerves of their timorous opponents. Orgasmic stuff - no wonder they tried to ban it.
CAN A LAMB chop look ignorant? And how cool is your Banoffii pie? These and other questions of tremendous social importance were the subject of The Restaurant, back for another bite of the reality-TV cherry.
"Why bastardise such a beautiful meat?" (the aforementioned lamb chop) the assembled critics moaned as they dissected actor Simon Delaney's culinary efforts. Wading through the sweet chutney in a great big gastronomic beauty contest, they were moved to a frisson of cardio-vascular bitchery when confronting the deep-fried brie and creamy ravioli that constituted Delaney's starters. "Where would you place this menu? 1972?" Ooh, get down, tiger.
Delaney's menu, about as retro as the assembled camera-conscious diners, kept the punters happy; however, he scored a meagre two points out of five from the critics, and one mark was for turning up. The other was for his potatoes, terrific potatoes apparently, robust potatoes.
The biggest disappointment on the menu is the programme itself. The Restaurant is bland and unappetising. Delaney and his menu burst into the kitchen with the verve of a hard-boiled egg, and the kitchen staff, in anticipation of a swarm of punters in four hours' time, with the clatter of their high heels and dentures, set to preparing the food with the tumult of a lone frozen pea in an ice-box. This is "Hell's Kitchen: The Lithium Years" - three points for staying awake until the coffee.
ACCORDING TO THE great god of punditry, reality TV is on its way out, audience numbers are dwindling and there's hardly anybody left out there who hasn't already been on the box. The genre, however, is still pumping out the effluent.
You Are What You Eat Special, which examined in scatological detail the effects of Michelle McManus's eating habits (she doesn't evacuate often enough, and when she does it looks like "a moon crater" - glad you asked?), was a prime example of the cannibalism of reality TV. Former Pop Idol winner McManus swore she wouldn't exchange her 21-stone self for a svelte camera-friendly version; she was happy in her skin, she said - all of it. However, when dietician and food guru Gillian McKeith showed McManus 11 stone of beef fat wobbling on a trolley, McManus succumbed to the slimming temptation. After a couple of colonic irrigations, the introduction of a personal trainer, a clear-out of her food cupboards and knocking alcohol on the head, the former outsize party girl was five stone lighter and ready to fill up a bin bag for Oxfam.
McManus's determination to stay off the booze was tested by her best mate's hen party in Dublin, during which she drank water. To celebrate her strength of will, she demonstrated her weight loss by shoving her head into one of the cups of a massive scarlet bra and then went shopping.
It's great she lost the weight, which was certainly doing her no good, but are such intimate and intrusive documentaries the price we exact from our celebrities, and can we really stomach any more?
