Dangerous territory

TV REVIEW: The ViewRTÉ1, Tuesday; Blood and OilBBC2, Monday and Tuesday; Welcome to My WorldRTÉ1, Friday; Over the RainbowBBC1, Saturday; PanoramaBBC1, Monday

FOR SHOWY New York culture vultures the hot ticket this summer is a 12-hour stage production of a Dostoevsky novel, in a warehouse on an island off Manhattan, reachable after a ferry trip and a 20-minute walk. And it’s in Italian. Now,

that

’s suffering for art. Or you could watch

The View

. It’s not just that it is on so late in the evening (this week it started at 11.35pm), it’s that it’s so astonishingly boring. Which is a surprise because, as a general arts review, the potential is obvious for a lively, informative programme. There’s simply so much material to discuss.

It follows a well-tried format: informed people giving their opinions on books, films etc – tune into the BBC2's The Review Showon Fridays for a masterclass. Sometimes the guest reviewers are lacklustre, but not this week when sitting around the large and shiny table were writer/director Gerry Stembridge, playwright/journalist Fiona Looney and artist Hilary Orpen – polished commentators and people who radio listeners know to be entertaining, smart and all-round good value. It's more the material chosen and John Kelly's presenting style.

Up for discussion were two movies (why two? There are other art forms out there), one novel (though the reason for choosing this book above all others published this week was not made clear) and a new exhibition at Imma. Grimly eyeballing the camera, Kelly introduced each item in his downbeat way and then each of the guests gave their opinion, like good students performing for a difficult-to-please teacher. When they weren’t speaking, the camera panned around showing them looking bored – the camera work and lighting makes it all look painfully stagey.

Kelly, who rarely gives his own views (another strange aspect of the programme), maintains the look of a man who has far more insightful opinions than any of his guests if only he could be bothered to give them.

He doesn't encourage conversation between his reviewers, although, with the forceful personalities around the table, this surely would be lively and interesting. Good arts coverage leaves the viewer knowing what's going on, who's in and who's doing what and with some intelligent ammo with which to judge it. Ideally, as it's the only general arts show on Irish TV, The Viewwould also reflect our vibrant cultural landscape. It doesn't do it.

In fairness to the timing, The Viewwas on even later than usual this week as a Primetimespecial on Nama, property developers and the banks ran late. It was followed by Crimecallwhich didn't feature Nama, property developers and the banks, though maybe one day . . .

ENDEMIC CORRUPTION in Nigeria was the underlying theme of the drama of the week, Blood and Oil."Corruption is the heartbeat of every business deal here," a local advised a naive Westerner. Set in the dangerous oil region of the Niger delta, the well-plotted drama by Guy Hibbert began with the kidnapping of four employees of an American oil company. We quickly learn that it's such a commonplace hazard of the job – one a week – it's nothing to be worried about, as a ransom will be paid and the men released. The well-paid oil men live in manicured gated communities separate from the lawless chaos around them and travel in 4 x 4's accompanied by armed police while sharp-suited security guards hover in hotel corridors; payoffs and bribes are the accepted currency.

The ransom failed, the oil workers murdered – and their hanging bodies discovered in a harrowing scene – and sharp PR executive Alice (the exceptional Naomie Harris) is sent from London to smooth things out. She ends up helping Claire (Jodhi May), the wife of one of the kidnapped workers who, inconveniently for the company, the local police and the chap from the British foreign office, insists on finding out why her husband was killed. From there the drama spun out into an absorbing, tense thriller.

Filmed in South Africa because Nigeria was too dangerous, there was beauty amid the chaos. The dugout boats paddling through mangrove swamps gave a dangerous heart of darkness feel while the human drama of the two women hunting for the truth carried the story over two nights.

DUBLIN-BASED facilities manager Ronan and his former colleague, security guard Jerome, flew out to South Africa for the multicultural series Welcome to My World. The idea is that one of our "newcomers" – in this case Jerome who has been here nearly 10 years – takes an Irish friend back home for a visit to see where they come from. It's a clever idea (this is its second series) because of the simple human interest in seeing someone from a different part of the world with their families. Jerome, who is happily living in a new estate in Dublin with his wife and children, was once – as he showed a slightly startled and very pale-looking Ronan – a member of a gang in Johannesburg. He pulled himself out of crime through joining the army, then the police force, and along the way became a Muslim.

“How can you bear to leave this?” asked Ronan in the first few minutes of the programme as the pair stood on a beach in the tourist magnet of Cape Town with the mountains in the background shimmering in the sun and the ocean in front. But he didn’t leave that idyllic-looking place, as we were quickly shown; he left a Cape Town that isn’t usually seen by tourists, one where unemployment is rife and, as a coloured man, Jerome wasn’t white enough or black enough.

The deadline for South Africa’s successful gun amnesty (it has taken 76,000 guns off the streets) was on while the pair were there and Jerome took the opportunity to get his gun from his mother’s house and hand it in to the local police. It was his acknowledgement that he won’t be coming back to South Africa to live. “I live in Ireland. I don’t need it anymore.”

FOR PURE ESCAPISM – and this was a week when it was much needed; we're not in Kansas anymore – you can't do better than Graham Norton and Over the Rainbow.It's the fourth series in which Andrew Lloyd Webber – who looks permanently delighted and why wouldn't he – oversees a very public audition for the lead in a West End production. This year, it's The Wizard of Oz.

Last Saturday, the 20 hopefuls who made it through the public auditions (a staggering 10,000 auditioned) vied for the 11 places in tonight’s programme. The three Irish would-be Dorothys in the final 20 didn’t make the cut, but all is not lost: there’s a public vote for the 11th place so one might get through (see, I’m hooked already and it’ll run until the summer).

It’s frothy and fun, there’s a lot of mascara – which can get tricky as someone always seems to be crying in a very theatrical way – and each of the girls would, as Norton said, “sell their Aunty Em to get their ginghamy mitts on the part.”

tvreview@irishtimes.com

Mission to Dubai Following the CCTV trail as Mossad assassins execute their deadly plot

It was TV once removed, but it was all the more riveting for that. The scenes shown on Panoramawere the ones caught on CCTV in Dubai as a team of 27 suspected Mossad assassins completed their mission to murder suspected Hamas arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

There was clear footage from the airport (including one showing a Palestinian man near one of the hit squad, so it is suspected that an informer set al-Mabhouh up) and, more spookily, from hotel lobbies, lifts and corridors. The hit squad co-ordinator, who used a fake Irish passport under the name “Gail Folliard”, is seen in various disguises, while two of the hit squad, dressed in tennis garb (pictured, right), are seen following the intended target to his hotel room.

Reporter Jane Corbin examined the story like an editor taking apart a well-constructed thriller, from how some of the 27 managed to get hold of passports from five nationalities (including Ireland), to how the hit, despite being planned for eight months, went wrong. They were so readily seen on CCTV simply because they never planned on being caught. Al-Mabhouh was to be killed by an injection of a quick-acting muscle relaxant that would shut down his heart – heart medication was planted on his bedside table – but someone got nervous and smothered him with a pillow.

Rami Igra, a former high-ranking Mossad official said of the events in Dubai: “Targeted assassinations are a necessity of the modern world.”