Sown in Tears and Blood (RTE 1, Wednesday)
Cutting Edge (Channel 4, Tuesday)
Big Science (RTE 1, Monday)
Big Train (BBC 2, Monday)
Television took to the trenches this week, flooding the schedules with commemorations of the first World War. Saturday had The Real Kaiser Bill (Channel 4) and The Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance (BBC 1). On Sunday, there was Shell Shock (Channel 4) and Veterans (BBC 1). The following evening, the first of three consecutive nights of Armistice Diary (Channel 4), began. Tuesday gave us The Day the Guns Fell Silent (BBC 1), which concluded on Wednesday, the 80th anniversary of the end of the war. That evening included The Soldiers' Pilgrimage (BBC 2), Let Erin Remember (ITV) and Sown in Tears and Blood (RTE 1). Thursday's Science at War (BBC 2) examined the chemical weapons of the first World War.
By any standards, this was a major TV offensive. And yet, 80 years on, grainy, jerky footage from the battlefields in France and Belgium evokes only a sanitised version of the hellish horror. Listening to veterans recalling their experiences adds pathos and prompts imaginings - but, still, it inevitably falls short. It is a clarion irony that in terms of recreating the feel of the war, even television, the great sensationaliser, cannot really go over the top.
You can hear about the lice and the rats, the stench of putrid flesh, the industrial-scale dismemberment, the mustard gas, the cold, the heat, the rain, the mud, the excrement, the hunger, the disease, the madness, the bungling generals, the noise of shelling and all the rest. But really, the senses are spared. Like the war itself, this week's TV coverage opted for quantity - in fairness, given the inherent constraints, some of it excellent, some suspiciously agenda-driven - but the limitations of the medium were as exposed as a platoon in no-man's land.
Still, Sown in Tears and Blood, produced by RTE reporter Margaret Ward and narrated by Myles Dungan, did tackle the war's contentious memory in Ireland. There has been State-sponsored forgetfulness in the Republic and appropriation of involvement, legacy and meaning in the North. The war became history's version of the Border - as divisive as the one which geographically and politically partitioned this island.
Anyway, the documentary opened with a zoom shot of poppies fluttering in the breeze. It ended with an old soldier crying. In between, it included interviews with such ideologically disparate figures as Danny Morrisson and Kevin Myers. But it was the old soldiers - Sam Hutchinson, a Belfast nationalist; Jack Campbell, a Dubliner of no overt political convictions; Terence Poulter, another Dubliner, who had defended Trinity College during the 1916 Rising and who insisted that the Rising's leaders deserved to be executed ("for treason") - who were the front line. The old soldiers are dead now, their memories recorded about a decade ago by cameraman Michael Lee.
But the legacy in Ireland of the war continues. Given the context of the peace process and the Belfast Agreement, a programme such as Sown in Tears And Blood has become not only possible, but desirable. In allowing contending voices to speak about poppy partition, it was undeniably pluralist and for that, we ought to be grateful. It's not that any TV programme can be the documentary to end all documentaries in relation to the first World War.
But, for Ireland, this was a fine start, even though, from the relative material comfort of our own age, with its media-sponsored, ideological vacuousness, it's impossible not to feel rather pampered and voyeuristic in the face of footage from the front. It was good this week then, that veterans were not so quiet on the subject of the Western Front. There are few of them left now and the war they fought is receding beyond living memory. Some commentators object to the word "imperialist" being applied to the first World War. But a "to-hell-with-the-human-cost" scrap between a king and a kaiser was just that.
Anyway, political designations aside, it was an anecdote which was most strikingly memorable from all this barrage of commemoration. It came in BBC 1's Veterans: the Last Survivors of the Great War. An officer dispatched to bury corpses near the end of the four-month Somme slaughter noticed hair still growing on the face of a man killed on the first day. When he touched the body, rats ran out. There is no footage of this incident.
THERE is, however, a great deal of footage of the type of people typically featured in Hello!, the fawning celebrity magazine. Cutting Edge screened an edition titled Hello! Hello!, which was, at times, absolutely hilarious even though it skimped on putting in proportion the perniciousness of the thing. An advertising copywriter told us that readers turn to the mag for "news, information, current affairs - a style guide for the whole of Britain". News, information and current affairs? Hello, hello . . . anybody in?
The frightening aspect of this was that the ad-woman appeared to believe it. Maybe she was just a competent actress but, even so, that sort of guff is unpardonable. The magazine is a glossy PR pamphlet, its economic viability based upon a generous chequebook and a sycophantic interviewing style. Its editor is Maggie Koumi. Maggie is well-groomed and well-dressed but suffering from severe irony-deficiency. When interviewer/director Riete Oord put it to Maggie that surely, staff worked with their tongues in their cheeks, Maggie was nonplussed. How could staff possibly see working on Hello! as ironic?
How indeed? What's ironic about news, information and current affairs? Just because excessively elaborate homes and gardens are higher in the news agenda than say, the Middle East peace process doesn't mean that Hello! is not a serious piece of work. After all, people who live in huge country houses, with legions of servants and horses and a couple of Rolls Royces are "a reasonable and sane and straightforward representation of the way people live in Britain today" as the adwoman pointed out. And so it went.
It was clear that the best way to extract maximum self-condemnation from the producers of Hello! was just to play it straight. For the most part, Cutting Edge did just that, although it did indulge in its own hypocrisy when it came to a photo-shoot of Emma Noble, girlfriend of John Major's young lad. From being condescending and superior towards the news and current affairs magazine, the documentary allowed its own cameras to linger on and pan across the bikini-clad Noble.
Anyway, some of the more amusing if less salacious moments dwelt on the circulation war between Hello! and the rival, upstart OK! According to the editor of OK!, the Spain-based Hello! concentrates too much on relatively unknown Euro-royals. OK! insisted that in getting "the society wedding of the year" (you know, the Dent-Brocklehurst gig?) it is showing that it can eclipse its 10-year-old rival. Sarah Ferguson, now a Hello! journalist, and a character called the Marquessa De Varela, a celebrity fixer, also featured.
The marquessa seemed formidable, or, at any rate, seemed to believe she's formidable. Her job, it transpired, is to do deals with punters to be featured in the news, information and current affairs coverage of Hello! The irony-deficiency of the marquessa's editor is perhaps compensated for in this arrangement. Strident and confident in that rather loud, aristocratic manner, De Varela assures the people she pays that coverage of them will be thoroughly simpering. It's rather like having Naseem Hamed give an evening course in how to win friends and influence people.
Back on RTE, Big Science, a four-part documentary series, screened its opening episode this week. Whatever about big science, it's clearly got a big budget, flitting between Dublin, New York and San Francisco like Horizon on speed. Still, it's a welcome development - science journalism is certain to grow in the next century - although the term Big Science is generally understood to refer to such subjects as particle physics experiments, the space programme and major projects in biotechnology.
Perhaps forensic science fits the description, although it does appear rather specialised. Whatever - this first episode focused on genetic fingerprinting, and its computer graphics to explain the double-helix structure of DNA were splendid. The work of the "Innocence Project" in the US, which has achieved exonerations for 55 people convicted of violent crimes, pointed up the usefulness of DNA testing. The project was established by Peter Neufield and O.J. Simpson lawyer Barry Scheck, which perhaps tarnishes its gloss somewhat.
Certainly, there is a sense of seriousness about Big Science, rather different from Kevin O'Kelly's legendary demonstrations with scale models during the first moon-landing in 1969. Clearly, there has been money spent on these programmes and the globe-hopping and graphics add to their appeal. But the real test will not be in either critical or popular appraisal. The crucial thing is whether or not these programmes manage to make science relevant to ordinary people. With crime (which, along with sex, is a huge draw on television) it's hard to go wrong. Future programmes will deal with comets, food and the expanding cyber generation. Best to defer judgment.
After the contentiously-named Big Science, the pointlessly named Big Train. This is a sketch series by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews, the writers of Father Ted. It has a 1970s feel, in particular that of Monty Python, a much more uneven series than the legends would have us believe. Big Train, too, is uneven, sometimes very funny, sometimes flat - not surreally flat, just flat.
A running sketch featured the world stare-out championship, with appropriately laddish and adulatory commentary: "Just look at that for staring, Jim. Sheer class . . . " and so forth. But it also included a sketch in which showjumpers save people from fires and annoy firemen by getting in the way. Yes, in all surrealism there are going to be arbitrary conjunctions. But this particular sketch seemed too long, too predictable after the first half-minute, and too sure of its own cleverness. Just like Monty Python, which, I suppose, isn't a bad recommendation.
This week, even leaving aside the first World War commemoration-fest, was the richest on television this year. On Side (BBC 1, Monday) featured a fascinating if unnerving interview between John Inverdale and Will Carling. The Young Per- son's Guide to Becoming a Rock Star (Channel 4, Tuesday) was a cross between Trainspotting and The Commitments. Home Truths: Too Late for Names (BBC 1, Wednesday) was a genuinely moving story about stillborn babies. And Prime Time continued its rehabilitation with a first-rate account of the dangers of an acne drug. Indeed, there were so many worthwhile programmes in the past seven days that, like the story of the first World War, some of the best were inevitably buried in the maelstrom. The rats anecdote was the one to lodge in memory though.