Too much blather and bladder, not enough drama

RadioReview:Yes, I know the expression "that's way too much information" has gone out of fashion, but really, Derek Mooney telling us that one of his studio guests, Paul G, has gone to the toilet, goes straight to the top of list of things that I absolutely did not need to know this week (Mooney, RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday).

At least it's consistent with the rest of the programme. What on earth is the point of this profoundly silly, fluffball of a programme that hogs way too much space every weekday afternoon? It begs the old question of why there has to be music at all in the afternoon on RTÉ Radio 1 - isn't that what 2FM and Lyric are for? - never mind all the lite entertainment that Mooney and his never-less-than-upbeat reporter Brenda Donohue deliver.

On Tuesday, changing station to listen to Mooney was a swift dumb-down from the excellent and inspiring afternoon play The Waiting Room (BBC Radio 4, Tuesday). It was created out of the diaries of writer Julie Darling, who detailed her battle with cancer on the web, from her diagnosis in 2002 to shortly before her death three years later.

Hmm, let's see. An update on Paul G's bladder or a thought-provoking, well-made play. Would that all decisions were so easy.

Most talk radio fans are keen on some sort of radio drama - whether it's full-scale plays (from classics to new comedy), series or dramatised versions of books or short stories. So I can't understand why RTÉ doesn't seem pushed about coming up with the goods. Why isn't there some sort of good quality drama on every day? It can't be that difficult a thing to pull together, and it's not as though we're short of actors and writers or, for that matter, a solid theatrical tradition.

Looked at in an another way, it could be just another example of the way RTE Radio 1's commitment to the arts is slipping. To be fair, looked at over a year, there are bursts of drama content, but it's not consistent and it's not enough.

This week the only radio drama on offer on the station was Macbeth in Monaghan (Sunday) and for masochistic nighthawks who managed to stay awake through Páraic Breathnach and his The Eleventh Hour there was, as usual, the Book at Bedtime. There used to be a Tuesday Play slot, but no sign of it this week (or last), and in the dim and distant past there was a decent tradition of daily soaps on RTÉ. That was fleetingly revived a couple of summers ago with a light-hearted daily soap. There's a warm, cheese sandwich-shaped place in my heart for Harbour Hotel, which I heard every day when I came home for lunch from school.

But what is there now? Far too little. Macbeth in Monaghan is aimed squarely at Leaving Cert students and it is probably helpful for them, but I don't see what's in it for general listeners. In the first two programmes (it's a mammoth four-parter) Alan Stanford gave long lectures on the Scottish play, interspersed with various contributors (David McWilliams, Mark Patrick Hederman) giving their tuppence-ha'penny worth, while students take on the roles of the various characters in the play. It was like a very elaborate grind. Macbeth in Monaghan follows last year's Lear in Longford - the station's drama department, which is rather fond of a bit of county alliteration, will be rightly banjaxed if Hamlet is the big play on next year's syllabus.

To mark the passing of Seán Mac Réamoinn, one of Radio Éireann's most famous voices, Vincent Browne pulled out of the archives an excerpt from one of his programmes broadcast to celebrate Mac Reamoinn's 75th birthday 10 years ago (Tonight With Vincent Browne, RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday). He was a rare thing in Irish society, a sort of Renaissance man with influence in many spheres, particularly through his work in establishing RTÉ radio's outside broadcast.

But it was his devilish wit that was fully celebrated in the programme. Maeve Binchy talked of his ability to make a pun - not normally something to be proud of, she said, but in reply to a waiter in a horrible, posh hotel who asked how his breakfast had been, Mac Reamoinn was critical of the "pedestrian croissant".

My own favourite witticism from the programme was his reply to a woman at a party who remarked that "inside every thin woman there's a fat woman trying to get out. To which Mac Réamoinn replied "outside every thin woman is a fat man trying to get in."