Reputations: Simon Wiesenthal (BBC 2, Wednesday) Kennedy (RTE 1, Saturday) QED: Monty Roberts (BBC 1, Wednesday) U2: A Year In Pop (BBC 1, Thursday)
"He is not a Jewish James Bond," said one analyst of Simon Wiesenthal, the world's best-known Nazi-hunter. Now, this was hardly news. Few people picture the balding, rotund, business-like Wiesenthal as a cretinously smooth babe-magnet with a yen for flash cars, even flashier gizmos and sirens with names like Pussy Galore. None the less, the point was telling because Wiesenthal was made famous by one case above all others: the capture of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust.
Eichmann, older readers will recall, was nabbed, thriller-style, by Mossad (Israeli intelligence) spooks in Buenos Aires in May 1960. As the operation involved the illegal kidnap of an Argentine citizen, Israel was keen to play down Mossad's role. Instead, they exaggerated Wiesenthal's part in what was, in truth, a beyond-Bond escapade. According to Reputations, Wiesenthal, much to Mossad's anger, was very happy to take all the credit he was unduly granted.
Perhaps he was. But, in a series, where, after a brief portrait of its subject (which characteristically accords with received opinion) you always hit an abrupt "but" or an arresting "however", the charge was less than damning. Unlike the previous week's deconstruction of John Wayne, the case against Wiesenthal was not sufficiently strong to rupture his reputation. So, he capitalised on unearned notoriety. In a world where so many are applauded for capitalising on unearned privilege, Wiesenthal's flaws seem like pretty small beer.
Certainly, there appears to be some vanity in his make-up. But it does not appear distortingly excessive. Indeed, the case can be made that the desire of the media for a single hero is, at least partly, responsible for many of the more contentious aspects of Wiesenthal's reputation. With Hollywood drafting the image in films such as The Boys From Brazil, Murderers Among Us and The Odessa File, and backed by Israel's tactical, indeed disingenuous, promotion, the myths were bound to be simplistic and durable. That said, the work of the man did seem more attractive than the man himself, a sober-approaching-dour right-winger.
There is irony here, of course. The reputation of Reputations has been built on its generally balanced scrutiny of media images. We know that media narratives, style and ideology distort the truth. We know that complex personalities become media product - cartoon characters - in contrived morality plays. But Reputations is part of the media too . . . a kind of reappraisal of telling footnotes. Its structure and techniques, though clearly less distorting than tabloid crassness, risk according undue weight to peripheral considerations.
When, for instance, one pundit suggested that Wiesenthal had, in reality, "been consumed by the Holocaust", the point was admissible. Without doubt, the Holocaust has defined and shaped his life. But consumption by concern is radically different from consumption by ovens. The superficial cleverness of the remark, while it made a reasonable point, had also to be considered in terms of its capacity to warp reality.
Outlining his modus operandi, Wiesenthal insisted that "hard documents and moderate language" are always at the core of cases he presents. He has clashed with the World Jewish Congress, whose spokesman, Elan Steinberg, seemed resentful of Wiesenthal's fame. For his part, Wiesenthal has always remained convinced that Jews must behave in an, at least, legal and preferably civilised manner, if they wish to have the support of the western world.
This position has not always endeared him to more vehement Jewish organisations. For instance, his insistence that we should remember that "gypsies, homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses" were victims of the Holocaust too, has not been shared by many more embittered Jews. Even if Wiesenthal's motivation in adopting this position is primarily to strengthen the Jewish case (and indeed, it may be more genuinely high-minded) that is hardly a catastrophic character defect.
Maybe he did cock up on bringing Josef Mengele to justice. Some Mossad agents insist that in requesting Mengele's extradition, Wiesenthal tipped off Nazi sympathisers in Buenos Aires's German embassy. They, allegedly, warned Mengele, who slipped the net. But this seems more the result of egomaniacal bungling than of anything more sinister. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that a man who survived a dozen concentration camps was also able to survive an hour of the BBC straining for impossibly perfect fairness.
Back on RTE, Johnny Giles survived Mary Kennedy's tribute programme. Mind you, given the effusiveness of Eamon Dunphy's tributes over the years, Johnny was well prepared for this one. In studio, the assembled grandees of Irish soccer appeared to enjoy themselves, regaling suitable anecdotes and generally appearing united in support of Giles.
Since its opening show a few weeks back, Kennedy (the programme and its presenter) has attempted to coat practically every item with a feel good mood. Smiling, ebullient and sunnier than the summer (though that, this year, is not saying much), Mary Kennedy appears more animated and more produced than in the past. Given the intended tenor of the show, the presenter's demeanour is hardly surprising. But, while a lightness of mood is desirable, excessive, non-stop gaiety can be ultimately depressing.
Still, with the possible exception of Johnny's closing The Way We Were duet with Dickie Rock, the Giles tribute avoided maudlin sentimentality. Perhaps the moment when Mary remarked that 1963 was "a big year" for Johnny was the most defining. "Oh yeah," said Johnny recalling that he won an FA Cup medal with Manchester United. "Oh, I was thinking about the fact that you got married," said Mary, indicating a certain lack of sensitivity to the true concerns of football people.
Though this tribute was pure showbiz, there was a welcome irony in the fact that so many of the central players came from the pre-Jack Charlton, pre-showbiz era of Irish soccer. Con Martin, Tommy Eglington and Arthur Fitzsimons - big names in their day - are scarcely known to many of the battalions of the current green army. More recent figures, such as Liam Tuohy and Noel Cantwell, are better remembered, though, here again, unlike the case for so many of their successors, their fame is probably not commensurate with their contributions.
Early in the show, as smoke billowed across the studio, it was tempting to think that either a fire had broken out or the audience was behaving like a football crowd by lighting flares. In the event, the smoke turned out to be from the stage. In all, it was a pleasant and deserved tribute. But, if it left us with one overall impression, it is that Dunphy should be reinstated beside Giles for future big match panels. Soccer seems to be like that - Toshack and Keegan; Bruce and Pallister; Sutton and Shearer - pairings which total more than the sum of their individual components.
The weirdest pairing of the week could be seen on a follow-up QED. Monty Roberts, who has done his stuff on The Late Late Show, demonstrated how to tame a wild mustang in open country. In an earlier QED episode, Monty showed how an unbroken horse could be ridden in about half an hour. Monty talks to horses, mostly in a body language, which he calls Equus. Curiously, Monty's sense of horses is directly opposed to conventional horse sense on the subject.
Most horse-breakers, it seems, are hard-bitten, macho types. Indeed, Monty's father was typical: he beat his son with a chain (hospitalising him) when the boy suggested that gentle persuasion was preferable to brute force in training horses. Monty devised his methods from observation. He used to assume - understandably, having seen Hollywood films - that the stallion was in charge. But he soon changed his mind.
"Stallions aren't in charge of anything much. They are in charge of getting the mares pregnant and stopping their mares being taken away by other stallions. But, it's the mare, it's the female, who makes the rules. She decides where we'll eat . . . the direction we'll travel . . . where we'll drink, when we'll drink. She will babysit and be a role model for the youngsters . . . tell them what's acceptable and what's wrong."
And there you had it: horses are people too! Monty learned horse language by imitating mares. But, would it work with the wildest of wild horses - the mustang? Well yes, it did. But only after a 100mile chase for a day and a night. On horseback, at 62, through a hot day, a russet sunset and pale moonlight, Monty followed the mustang. Eventually, the little wild fella stopped and Monty's mare impersonation (or imequusation?) did the rest.
Monty and his wife have raised 47 foster children, using the same cherish-or-banish techniques the mares use with foals. "Put them to work when they're negative; find the thing they can do that's positive and reward them for it," he said. Put like that, it did make a lot of horse sense. OK, so there may be something corny, homespun, too sure of itself about Monty's maxim. But its results with horses are quite astonishing. Even Dr Miller, the animal behaviour psychologist looking on, was thoroughly converted.
Finally - U2: A Year In Pop was really a promotional documentary, or PR with attitude, for "the biggest band in the world". Indeed, along with the preceding phrase, quite an amount of the description was clearly designed to emphasise scale and provoke awe: "U2's Pop Mart is the most adventurous rock show the planet has witnessed so far", "the Sergeant Pepper of rock tours", "the world's biggest television screen".
There's a mixture of truth and hype in such language. But then there's a mixture of truth and hype in much of what Bono says. "If I'm really truthful about it, I had one of the worst haircuts in the 1980s . . . it launched a million second division soccer players . . . though I thought I looked like David Bowie," he said, by way of introducing the programme. Of course, if he really wanted to be truthful about it, Bono would have to admit to at least half a dozen of the worst haircuts of the 1980s.
Still, that's all in the past now. U2 "by Bono's admission, were once the princes of naff . . . but are now looking cool". It appears that going to Miami has taught the lads what being cool is all about. Now, instead of being so deadly serious, their music is, apparently, ironic. Perhaps all of this is true. Certainly, the idea that there's much cool about Miami is a grand irony, considering that the place gave us the ultra naff "shoes with no socks and suit coats rolled up to the elbow" Miami Vice look in the 1980s.
A BBC Radio 1 DJ, Jo Whiley, did the voice-over for this one. Mixing hyperbole and pop music's characteristically sweeping "cultural" criticism, Ms Whiley adopted a punchy style of delivery. On the evidence of clips from Pop Mart, U2's latest extravaganza is certainly a visual tour de force. But there remains something very contrived about stadium rock. The scale, the gimmickry, the creation of grand illusions - it's showbiz alright. But, for all the talk of cool and culture, it's hard not to think that, at heart, it's more Barnum and Bailey than anything else. Still, for durability, you've got to hand it to the Mount Temple lads.
