This week, the past was really something to look forward to

TV REVIEW:NO TIME this week for looking ahead and starting on those New Year resolutions, or even bingeing on all the new fat-fighter programmes. Instead it was all about looking backwards, to when Gay Byrne was in black and white and being a continuity announcer on RTÉ was the epitome of backcombed glamour. There's been so much hoopla you probably don't need reminding that our national TV station is 50 years on air, and there were several programmes – too many to mention here – to mark the event.

TV50: The Entertainers

(RTÉ1, Sunday) and

TV50: Years in the Glow

(RTÉ1, Tuesday) were much the same clip‘n’chat programme. The former included funny reminiscences from famous RTÉ frontmen, including Terry Wogan, Dara O Briain, Mike Murphy and Pat Kenny; the latter featured ordinary viewers who recalled what early RTÉ was like from the other side of the screen, from adjusting the rabbit’s ears (aerials to you youngsters), thinking that newsreader Charles Mitchel could actually see you (no shame there – I thought so too) and fancying Richard Crowley (a widespread phenomenon, apparently).

Both programmes featured plenty of archive. There were clips of gameshows, such as Murphy's Micro Quiz-M, in which a family might win £6 or a steam iron, or Quicksilver, which had 10p up for grabs if you successfully stopped the lights; farm shows, including Mart and Market, with its lists of prices for bullocks and heavy heifers; and The Late Late Showfrom 1965 (the earliest clip), where you could see just how much of a TV maverick Byrne was and why The Late Latewas so good for so many years.

Mostly the birthday celebrations have been congratulatory, nostalgia-heavy, Reeling in the Years-style programmes. No 50th-birthday-type hand-wringing about lost opportunities and future plans – but maybe that will come. There was an element of that sort of questioning on a 1982 edition of The Late Late Show(RTÉ Player) celebrating RTÉ's 20th anniversary, which included fond memories from the likes of Frank Hall and Kathleen Watkins but also robust comments from the panel about the Irish language on TV, the role of television in society (a prescient Bunny Carr advocated that TV should be taught in school) and the interference of government in RTÉ.

CHANNEL 4celebrated 30 years on screen without so much as a backward glance, not even a Brooksiderepeat. Instead it had the clever and low-key idea of showing an evening (Monday) of its regular programmes with the presenters swapped around. Funniest was Alan Carr replacing Phil Spencer as Kirstie Allsopp's sidekick for an episode of Location, Location, Location: "So, I get to rummage around people's houses and then slag them off behind their backs." He got that right.

WELL, THERE GOES my one table-quiz advantage: knowing Morse's first name, and that it wasn't "Inspector". Now everyone will know it. Endeavour(UTV, Monday) was a prequel – they're the new sequels, apparently – to the classic series featuring Chief Inspector Morse, the detective created on the page by Colin Dexter and on screen by John Thaw.

It fleshed out a thoroughly satisfying backstory for the curmudgeonly detective – his mother a dead Quaker, his father a taxi driver, himself an Oxford University dropout – and gave us a young Morse, played convincingly and almost endearingly by Shaun Evans, an already disillusioned new police recruit posted to Oxford in 1965. The period detail was meticulously recreated, the production values were stunning, and a blast of Puccini always guarantees atmosphere. In the end, almost singlehandedly and with clever sleuthing, he solved the murder of a teenager – though in truth, once the glamorous opera singer with the nice line in twin sets (a chilly but perfect Flora Montgomery) made an appearance, seasoned fans would have copped that, after she broke Morse’s little heart, she would turn out to the devious murderer.

Figuring out whodunnit early didn’t spoil the one-off drama. There were enough plot twists – including a sister who is really the victim’s mother, a bent copper and a government minister caught in a sex scandal – to fill the leisurely, and thoroughly enjoyable, two hours. And there were plenty of nods to what would become Morse’s trademarks: he lusted after a red Jag, had his first half of real ale and was mentored by an older detective, Fred Thursday (Roger Allam), just as he went on to mentor his partner Lewis.

The spooky scene at the end, where Evans looked in the car’s rearview mirror and saw John Thaw’s blue eyes looking out at him while the series’ signature tap-tap of Morse code played in the background, was a lovely touch.

Hopefully, Endeavourwill see off that other Morse spinoff, the dreadful Lewis, starring Kevin Whately.

ALSO LUSCIOUS-LOOKING, and packed with familiar faces, was the big-budget Treasure Island(Sky1, Sunday and Monday), a swashbuckling two-part adaptation that was filmed in Ireland for the chilly Blighty bits and Puerto Rico for the rest. Eddie Izzard was Long John Silver – worth tuning in for alone – and he played the galley-hand-turned-mutinous-pirate as a charismatic, clever buccaneer with a disappointingly silent parrot and a great deal of eyeliner (really, Johnny Depp has a lot to answer for).

The starry cast included Rupert Penry-Jones, Philip Glenister, Donald Sutherland and Elijah Wood, who played the marooned pirate Ben Gunn. (With his dreadlocks, arty body paint and over-the-top acting, however, Wood was more a deranged extra from Pirates of the Caribbean than anyone Robert Louis Stevenson created.)

No one expects TV adaptations to be entirely faithful to the book; they can’t be. But while it is one thing to change some of the characters (particularly Penry-Jones’s Trelawney, who here was a greedy cad) or to create a Long John Silver so beguiling that you wanted him to get the gold from the off, changing the ending to make it schmaltzy and morally upright is another.

It ruined what was otherwise a classy drama. In this version the treasure was not divvied out and brought back to England; it was ditched into the sea by Smollett because that was the right thing to do (or some such guff). And Jim Hawkins (Tony Regbo), in a straight-out-of-Disney scene, helped Long John Silver escape. Something rum about that.

tvreview@irishtimes.com

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