How the other half gives - it's philanthropy without the flash

TV REVIEW:RTÉ'S VERSION of the hit Channel 4 series The Secret Millionairecould just as easily have been called The Lovely Millionaireor The Decent, Unassuming Millionaire, but, while it was true of the first episode of The Secret Millionaire(RTÉ1, Monday), it probably isn't allowed under the syndication contract.

The format will already be familiar to many viewers, as the UK version has been going for six years. A millionaire leaves his (it has been mostly men) comfortable life and true identity behind and lives for a week in a deprived community, seeing first-hand – and maybe for the first time – serious deprivation, and meeting locals who are trying to make things better. The ruse is that the millionaire pretends to be part of a documentary about voluntary work, and at the end he reveals his true identity and hands out cheques to the people or community initiative he judges to be the most worthy. It’s never less than a full-blown three-hanky job.

This Irish series (there are only three episodes – are there only three millionaires left?) began with the Galway entrepreneur John Concannon – he’s big in plastics – landing in an estate in west Dublin. And it was a case of landing: he may as well have been sent to the moon, so far was his new environment from his day-to-day experience.

The area ticked all the boxes for deprivation: high unemployment, a huge drug problem, anti-social behaviour, rubbish everywhere, older people living in fear and the obligatory horse roaming on the green. He checked out the local carers’ group, the suicide-prevention organisation Pieta House and the football team run by two dedicated women who are, as one said, “swimming against the tide” but are trying to give the kids something to do to keep them out of trouble.

Concannon gave money to all three, in a way that typified his caring, unassuming approach to the exercise. Breaking away from the Channel 4 format, he didn’t declare, “I’m a millionaire,” and ostentatiously write the cheque. He just quietly said who he is and that he has been successful in business as he handed over a folded cheque to the recipients, who were astonished and thrilled.

There wasn’t a whiff of noblesse oblige about it, and there was nothing financial in it for Concannon, though, judging by his honest, emotional reactions, it’s obvious he got a lot from the experience. He clearly wasn’t looking for fame or acknowledgment, and the programme did shine a light on some good people and their impressive voluntary endeavours.

DOCUMENTARIES ARE rarely as bang up to date as this week's Dispatches: Gypsy Eviction – The Fight for Dale Farm(Channel 4, Monday). Filmed throughout the summer, it saw reporter Deborah Davies exploring the lead-up to what was to be a mass eviction on Monday of the Irish Travellers and English Gypsies encamped illegally on Dale Farm, a plot of land in Basildon, Essex. They own the land but it is designated green belt, so they have no planning permission to live on it. The programmemakers probably hoped to end with the drama of that eviction, but it didn't go ahead; instead the documentary ended with the midafternoon announcement from the court steps that the Travellers had won another injunction.

“They use the law but won’t abide by the law,” said a local on Basildon high street. Few of the Dale Farm residents spoke in front of the camera, no male Travellers were interviewed, and those who did speak didn’t inspire much sympathy, mostly displaying an aggressive attitude and a sense of entitlement, and demanding in no uncertain terms that the council give them alternative accommodation to facilitate their nomadic way of life. If they are moved from Dale Farm, said Mary, an Irish Traveller, “We’ll be off to the Tesco car park or any place that’s open.”

Tony Ball, the leader of Basildon Council, explained in a quiet, rational way that “green-belt law had to be upheld”. The Travellers’ representative, Candy Sheridan, was equally rational and impressive, asking a seemingly unanswerable question: where, in the absence of a large enough official halting site, are the Travellers supposed to go?

On the day of the eviction one of the Travellers interviewed rejected an offer from the council for a four-bedroom house in the locality – “it’s against our culture” – and the council rejected the Travellers’ offer to sell it the land. The price they were looking for was, according to Davies, £6 million; the council values the property at £120,000. The problem, an academic suggested, is that “Travellers are isolated from the mainstream, living separately from the community, and that leads to mutual mistrust”. A good background exploration of a live news story.

DESPITE ITS misleading title, My Forced Unwanted Wedding(BBC3 Monday) was a serious, superbly researched and vivid exploration of another practice defended in the name of culture: forced marriages between young British girls from Bangladeshi families and their often much older distant cousins in Bangladesh. It followed two teenagers, Alia, who had had been forced into such a marriage, and Jessie, a 17-year-old who was brought to Pakistan to marry her 38-year-old distant cousin. Not to go through with the marriage would, she said, bring shame on her family and – this is where culture can meet a world of hard-bitten criminality – it would deny her cousin British citizenship. The teenagers are in effect just pawns in an immigration scam.

Held prisoner in rural Bangladesh, she managed to contact the British consul, who rescued her (one girl a week is rescued), flying her back to Britain, where she found herself quite alone, ostracised by her family. Ten months later the cameras caught up with her again: she was lonely but doing fine. The other teenager, sounding like any other Bradford teen, had been persuaded to go to Pakistan to visit her husband’s family for what she believed was just a few weeks. Ten months later she had not returned.

This documentary about forced marriage – or rape, as one policeman succinctly put it – is bound to find its way to BBC2 at some stage, where it won't suffer an unfortunate juxtaposition with Don't Tell the Brideand Snog, Marry Avoid?, and maybe get a wider, much-deserved audience.

Also worth a look for its stunning underwater photography is Farraigí na hÉireann(TG4, Tuesday) a six-part documentary, directed by Ken O'Sullivan, exploring the marine life around our coasts. It looks superb, with dreamy shots of astonishingly beautiful jellyfish, giant basking sharks and hundreds of dolphins. It too deserves a much bigger audience than it's likely to get.

tvreview@irishtimes.com

Get stuck into . . .

It's a well-worn rags-to-riches story, but Shirley(BBC2, Thursday) is worth watching to see Ruth Negga become Shirley Bassey, the diva from Tiger Bay.