Seeing the funny side

TV REVIEW: GleeChannel 4, Friday; The PDs: From BoomTo Bust RTÉ1, Monday; The FrontlineRTÉ1, Monday; Tiger Woods: The Rise and FallChannel 4, Thursday; The Clown DoctorsBBC1, Monday; Fair CityRTÉ1, Tuesday and Wednesday

IN THE SEASON finale of Glee, the magnificent Sue Sylvester and Will Schuster were having one of their verbal spats. His impassioned plea for his students was met with a blank stare. "Nope, can't hear a word you're sayin'," snaps Sue, explaining that she's too distracted by his hideous big hair. Later, when they reach an agreement, he puts out his hand. "I won't shake your hand, Will, because I've seen the car you drive, and I don't want to catch poor."

That scene flashed before my eyes during The PDs: From Boom to Bust, the first of the two-part documentary charting the rise and fall of the Progressive Democrats. So much hair! Even Michael McDowell had a lot back in the 1980s, when the party was founded. Dessie O'Malley had a wayward thatch, Mary Harney a windswept Purdy number.

And these people were never the sort that would “catch poor” – whatever about anyone else. Think that’s too personal a comment? This documentary was all about the personalities who founded the PDs, and that editorial approach was the main reason why the programme was so unsatisfactory.

There was scarce exploration of ideology – a passing mention of “monetarism” from the voiceover was clarified when Ruairí Quinn explained it as “Thatcherism” – little analysis of policy and sketchy social context. It was more a chronological sequence of events intercut with interviews with the main protagonists – who came across as being weighed down by personal grudges.

Pat Rabbitte described the PDs as like “a barrel of badgers”. Unless he saw some nature documentary that revealed badgers to have egos the size of small African countries while being entirely focused on power, he’ll be hearing from the badgers’ union.

At one point Liz O’Donnell even used the word “Mugabe-esque” to describe McDowell, her former colleague. He seemed to get more screen time than anyone else to put his side of the story across, or maybe he’s such a large presence it just seemed that way.

The trouble with concentrating on personal recollections and individual perspectives is that, in the end, the viewer doesn’t know whom to believe. It’s like hearing from the two sides in a bitter marriage break-up: you’re never going to believe either fully.

And why no political analysts who might have given a professional, balanced and informed outsider’s view? Why was Bertie Ahern given so much air time? Is he the new sage through which the history of the boom will be filtered? “No one gave a damn about the economy,” was one of his more bizarre nothing-to-do-with-me pronouncements.

Charlie McCreevy, from his well-upholstered perch in Europe, was like a schoolboy who lets off a stink bomb in assembly and scarpers, laughing at the poor eejits he’s left behind gagging.

The journalist Sam Smyth, who did the voiceover, was credited as “reporter” in the end titles, suggesting he shaped the editorial, which at times took some very puzzling detours. There was the bit about light-touch regulation that seemed to have wandered in from another documentary and unexplored references to Mary Harney’s recruiting strategy for candidates – illustrated with shots of the Trocadero restaurant in Dublin, a well-known hangout among the theatrical set, as if Harney was in the habit of swooping in of an evening to nab a luvvie or two. As it happened the timing of the screening underlined the destiny of the PDs as footnotes in Irish political history: the political conversation has moved on so much from them.

On Monday it was all about Fine Gael and waiting to see what Richard Bruton and Enda Kenny would do next. Directly after the PD documentary Bruton was a guest on The Frontline– his first major media outing since the story blew up – and Pat Kenny was in his element. But was Bruton? An often-mentioned reason for the heave against Enda is his lack of ability as a modern media performer, but, on Monday's performance, Bruton is no better. Any time we've seen him on TV in the past he has been behind a desk in his capacity as finance spokesman, talking mostly about economic policy. But this was a chat-show format, albeit a serious, current-affairs one, on an open chair, with no desk to hide behind or put your elbows on.

Sure, his face moves a bit more than Enda’s, and his body language is more fluid, but charisma? There was no sign of it under Pat Kenny’s sure-footed questioning. Bruton was hesitant, evasive and downbeat without that sparkle in the eye that makes a person shine before a camera. And he has that same tight, precise way of talking that is so off-putting in Enda. It’s a live show, but Bruton didn’t address the audience or even acknowledge they were there – not once – a missed chance to show an open, accessible side.

This time last year if you'd spotted a documentary about Tiger Woods in the listings you'd know it'd be about either golf or sponsorship. These days it could only be about one thing. The film maker Jacques Peretti introduced Tiger Woods: The Rise and Fallby saying he'd been following the story since it broke, in November last year, in an attempt to unravel the sequence of events and get to the reason why the greatest sportsperson on the planet self-destructed so comprehensively.

The predictably sordid details about the multiple affairs and sleezy shenanigans in Las Vegas weren’t the most interesting part of the story, although the interview with Jocyln, a pole dancer who claims to have had a three-year affair with Woods, and who now strips wearing a replica of the green jacket he so famously won in at the Masters, had its moments.

The really interesting parts were the explorations of racism in golf – Woods won in Augusta only seven years after blacks were permitted to play in the Country Club, and there was a clip of him aged 15 talking about what it was like for him as a young black man to go into any golf club: “You always feel it; they’re saying why are you here; you’re not supposed to be here.”

Peretti teased out his relationship with his father, Earl Woods, and with his “corporate dad”, IMG, the management agency that controls his business interests. Earl, according to Peretti, set out to use the military techniques learned in Vietnam, including hypnosis, to turn his son into a golf machine; then IMG turned him into a micro-managed “billboard you could paste anything on”. But Woods, “the fabrication with the swoosh attached”, with the GDP of a small country in his swing, was doomed from the start, according to Peretti, because, in creating the machine, the serially unfaithful Earl passed on “the infidelity chip” to his son. A corny conclusion to a fascinating documentary – even if it was hard not to feel slightly grubby after watching it.

Anyone who has ever had a child in hospital knows how grim an experience it is, with the days blending into each other in a dispiriting, seamless way. To break the monotony in children's hospitals in Northern Ireland a brilliant organisation called the Clown Doctors provides entertainers. They dress as doctors because it removes the fear of the white coat, and they wear what inspirational founder Jan Branch described as "the smallest masks in the world" – red noses. The Clown Doctors, a two-part documentary, follows six would-be entertainers as they train for the task – it takes 10 weeks, because knowing how to juggle is one thing but learning how to relate to seriously ill or life-limited children is another.

What has come over Fair City? The plot Blooms on a Joycean walk

It's as if the writers of Fair Cityare determined to prove that Soapland isn't the natural home of dumbed-down TV, because to mark the week that's in it they came over all Joycean. The last time I tuned in it was wall to wall with characters in trackies calling each other scumbags, a lesbian couple deciding what to do with an unwanted baby and Leo, the taxi driver, acting with his hands. Leo is still waving his arms about every time he opens his mouth, but Carol has taken to reading Ulysses. "Maybe I'm just thick," she says, "but yer man Stephen is a bit of an eijit. He's full of himself, but that Bloom is a decent man."

The cast went on a Joycean walk for Bloomsday in Carrigstown, with Charlie buying a bar of lemon soap in the corner shop, a place where no one seems to ever buy anything except the newspaper. The ever-feisty Carol (Aisling O’Neill), dressed like an extra at the Moulin Rouge, agreed to play Molly. “She’s a bit slutty – no, more sensuous,” she explained to the gormless Christy, who asked her to marry him (left). What does she say? Yes, of course.