Sir, - Your TV Correspondent Eddie Holt has added his voice to the torrent of criticism here of the BBC Eastenders programmes this week (The Irish Times, September 24th). He complains that "presenting the series' principal Oirish characters as a drunken, debauched father and a mercilessly martyred mother is evidence of, at worst, malice, and, at best, ignorance". I wonder if Mr Holt would also accuse Roddy Doyle of malice or ignorance for writing The Snap- per, a mainly Irish-made film, a few years ago. I can recall a drunken, layabout father, a mercilessly martyred mother, a young woman who was called a "slut" by everybody in her community merely because she found herself pregnant out of wedlock, a young man who felt he had to beat up the man who brought "shame" on his sister, pub fights, a woman about to give birth drinking too much and then laughing as she puked into her handbag and, of course, the horses and bonfires without which no Irish film of recent years would be complete.
I watched Eastenders on Tuesday because of the uproar the Monday night episode had caused and have to say I didn't find it any more bleak or stereotypical a portrayal of Irish life than I found The Snapper to be. Neither would I have given it a cringe factor as high as home-produced classics such as Upwardly Mobile or the all-time great, Leave It To Mrs O'Brien.
I don't recall Mr Holt accusing Roddy Doyle or Jim Sheridan (who couldn't find it in himself to depict one sympathetic non-traveller Irish character in Into The West) of "the dangerously resilient Punch-style bigotry which continues to thrive in Britain". I suspect the reality is that Mr Holt has no problem with works that show a "pig-in-the-parlour" Ireland as long as they're not made by English people. - Yours, etc.,
Glasnevin, Dublin 9.