Kingpin of the promenade

TV REVIEW: Boardwalk EmpireSky Atlantic, Tuesday
MarchlandsUTV, Thursday TriviaRTÉ1, Thursday ICA BootcampRTÉ2, Tuesday The Big CMore4, Thursday

COULD

Boardwalk Empire

look more gorgeous? The big-production drama that launched the cable channel Sky Atlantic is meticulous in its 1920s detail, from the stunning art-deco hotels and clubs that line the purpose-built boardwalk down to the copy of Vogue that’s glimpsed in one throwaway scene. It’s not quite shouting, “Hey, this is what you get when you spend close to $20 million on an opening episode, the most expensive in TV history,” but it’s letting you know all the same.

And there’s time to take it all in. The pace is slow for a TV drama; Martin Scorsese, its director, is in no hurry to introduce the characters or set up the scenes. They unfold in time to the walking pace of its central character, Enoch (Nucky) Thompson. He has a Rolls-Royce but strolls everywhere in a succession of meticulously cut suits, emphasising that Atlantic City is his town.

It opens with the arrival of Prohibition. Nucky, a political boss played with nuanced efficiency by Steve Buscemi, has called a meeting with his people, including the mayor and the police chief, to explain what a lucrative opportunity it presents to make Atlantic City the boozy playground of the east coast. It’s all about what lies beneath. The chandelier-filled speakeasy, with tuxedoed toffs quaffing cocktails, has a grotty hooch factory in its dark basement; Nucky is pristine in his suits, but, in the first act of on-screen violence, he casually smashes a man’s face to pieces. Fun has a price, and that price is the rise of the Mafia.

He has the team of underlings with their own demons and ambitions whom he has to control, or at least manage: the ghost of Tony Soprano and all those other goodfellas and godfathers are in every scene, particularly when the Chicago Mafia comes to town.

All that is very familiar; what promises to offer a more surprising narrative are the subplots, particularly that of an Irish emigrant, Margaret (the Scottish actor Kelly Macdonald, with a flawless accent), who may or may not become a significant feature in Nucky's life. For all its authenticity you don't fall into Boardwalk Empireluxuriating in the characters and the meticulously copied details the way you can in other period dramas: you observe from a distance, and maybe that's enough.

A DRAMA ONA more manageable scale is Marchlands, a clever new five-parter on UTV. It's a ghost story set simultaneously in 1968, 1987 and 2010. The action seamlessly slips between the eras, with some characters appearing in more than one. What is a constant is the setting, a rambling old house in a remote chocolate-box English village. In 1968 Ruth and her husband, Paul, who live at Marchfields with Paul's oppressive parents, are mourning the death of their eight-year-old daughter, Alice, who disappeared in a forest and was drowned. In 1987 a new family have moved in, and eight-year-old Amy has an imaginary friend named Alice, whom she is convinced lives in the house. All kinds of creepy goings-on happen; she drowns her pet kitten – never a great sign – saying Alice did it.

By 2010 the shiny pine 1980s kitchen has been replaced by a smart Ikea one, and the new owners, a local boy made good and his solicitor wife, have moved in. Throughout her pregnancy she finds mementos of a child named Alice who lived in the house – toys, a mural – and, not knowing the full, tragic story, names her own daughter Alice. As spooky dramas go it’s got all the ingredients; the time shifts are skilfully handled and add a frisson of confusion; and there are enough heavy-handed hints in the first episode that the local boy made good was a very bad boy in the past to give momentum to this well-made co-production between ITV and 20th Century Fox.

IF I HADN'Tspent last Saturday night at a pub quiz I mightn't have "got" Trivia. As it was I did, and I thought RTÉ's new comedy properly funny because I swear its central character Laurence was sitting at the next table to ours. Throughout the evening he kept his hand over his team's answer sheet – a trait last seen round about senior infants – and wouldn't trade answers, because "then you might win", and the whole team left in a huff before the winners were announced because "we know we haven't won". Laurence (David Pearse), a perfectly pitched loser who only wins at pub quizzes, spends his evenings learning likely answers, such as the collective nouns for animals – a shrewdness of apes: who knew? – lives at home with the mammy, is incapable of normal social interaction and is determined that his team will win the local pub quiz for 52 consecutive weeks. Written by Damien Owens, it has a strong cast that includes Janet Moran and Olivia Caffrey, plus Keith McErlean as the owner of the pub whom everyone fancies. Having boring Laurence work in a video store is a cliche too far, but, that quibble aside, Triviais a funny and promising home-grown comedy drama – and you can't say that too often.

THE BEST THINGabout ICA Bootcamp, the series in which a dozen pampered urban young ones were put through a series of traditional domestic tasks – plucking chickens, milking cows, cooking dinners on a budget, running up a dress – at the Irish Countrywomen's Association headquarters in Termonfeckin, was that no one told them, or the three judges, the rules of reality TV shows. Contestants are supposed to hate each other, and the judges are supposed to spend their time devising ever more cruel and insensitive put-downs. Instead – and this is what made the series so entertaining – the judges, or mentors as they were called, were patient, sensible and supremely capable older women who could run the country (if that's not being sexist – honestly, everyone's very sensitive in these tense pre-election days), as well as being lovely and kind, and the girls had huge amounts of wide-eyed enthusiasm. For most of them their only crimes were against beauty (they were a bit orange) and fashion (eight-centimetre heels are not appropriate barnyard footwear).

As the brightly lit hall filled with ICA members enjoying a glass of fizz or a nice cup of tea and a bun, Rose Henderson’s sardonic voiceover announced that the “mentors must tear themselves away from the bacchanalian madness to go and adjudicate”.

They came back with a winner, Elena from the Liberties, in Dublin. As she took to the stage to get her prize, the voiceover – which was hilarious throughout the series, lifting it from the ordinary – commented that the sash fits “like a bin liner – perfect for a newly minted domestic champion”. “OMG, thanks,” said a delighted Elena, holding up the vase. “I’ll be filling it with beer later.”

C is for comedy Laura Linney shines as a dull wife whose cancer brings her to life

With all the hype about Sky Atlantic – could the timing be any better: a quality cable channel with no election coverage? – it was easy to miss The Big C, one of the hits in the US last year and beginning on More4. Yes, it is about that, and, although it seems unlikely, it's a comedy. Laura Linney won this year's best-TV-actress Golden Globe for her portrayal of Cathy, a suburban wife, mother and high-school teacher who is diagnosed with terminal melanoma but refuses treatment so she can live out her life the way she wants. Until now she has been dull and safe. "You like to do things that people might not see as an optimal good time," explains her husband when she asks if she's boring. She kicks him out, vows to live a more colourful life and takes on her most problematic student, Andrea (Gabourey Sidibe, last seen in Precious) as an improvement project. "You can't be fat and mean. You can either be fat and jolly or a skinny bitch," says the newly plain-speaking and not-very-nice Cathy to her troublesome student.

The supporting characters are on the cardboard side: crazy neighbour, slob husband. It’s Linney, whose expressive face shows a world of emotion in the merest twitch of a muscle, who is the one to watch.