For quality and imagination in factual programming, TG4 is stealing the limelight from RTÉ - and on a low budget. The secret lies in daring to be different, writes Ian Kilroy
One of the great creative insights in modern Irish literature came when Patrick Kavanagh realised that to be local didn't necessarily mean the same thing as being parochial. In Epic, he wrote of how Homer made the Iliad from "a local row". It's a lesson that TG4 has learned well. In recent years, the Connemara-based station has been consistently out-matching RTÉ in the quality and imagination of its factual programming, mainly by concentrating on local, personal stories.
The Mná na hÉireann series is a case in point. It's a simple idea. Take 15 Irish women of various backgrounds, point a camera at them and get them to speak intimately about what being a woman in 2002 Ireland is like. What results may have an unsuitably cold studio setting for an intimate conversation, the interviewing style may force a structure on the conversation rather than let the talk develop naturally, but still, as an audience we're getting the kind of television that we haven't seen on RTÉ since Hanly's People. And as the survival of The Late Late Show proves, Irish audiences love the chat.
The producer of Mná na hÉireann, Clíona Ní Bhuachalla, of Icebox Productions, says TG4's open-door policy is the secret to the success of its factual programming. "That they give people a chance is very important," she says. "That's the main difference. There's an enthusiasm in their programming." Brenda Ní Shuilleabhain, one of the researchers on the series, says the enthusiasm at TG4 persists despite what she calls "miniscule" budgets. "We made the whole 15-part series for less than an hour-long BBC documentary.
Head of programming at TG4, Cilian Fennell, is aware of the budgetary constraints, but argues that the station is playing "to its strengths and weaknesses". In other words, what TG4 can do well - and at the same time do cheaply - is the kind of programming the station concentrates on. That rules out too much expensive drama, too much studio-based programming and leaves factual programming, such as documentaries: exactly what TG4 excels at and maybe should be more loudly blowing its own trumpet about.
Its success is reflected in the many awards TG4-commissioned work has been picking up. Take, for example, I gCillín an Bháis, a documentary on the men imprisoned in Long Kesh prison during the Hunger Strikes of the early 1980s. Not only did the piece manage to appear largely without an agenda, but its quality was recognised with a UNESCO Award for "world contribution to human rights" in 1998. Then there's Michael Hartnett - Muince Dreoilín, a biography of the recently deceased Limerick poet that picked up a bronze award at the Houston Worldfest in 1999. Mad Dog Coll, a documentary on a Donegal gangster that made it big in the US during Prohibition, landed the award for best documentary in Irish at the Irish Film and Television Awards in 2000. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
TG4 has been broadcasting superior travel programmes to RTÉ, most notably with John Murray, whose recent Siberia - An Bealach ó Thuaidh was up to the standard of anything on BBC 2. Manchán Magan's Manchán sa Mhéan Oirthir is another that comes to mind, his offbeat take on travelling the desert landscapes of the Middle East left No Frontiers lagging behind in the dust. As for the inimitable Hector Ó hEochagáin, presenter of the travel series Amú, his star status was recently acknowledged by a Late, Late appearance.
Such successes provoke the question, what has TG4 got right? With a far smaller annual budget for television production than RTÉ (in or around €22 million to RTÉ's €152 million) the station is managing to more than compete.
According to Cilian Fennell, the key is that the station doesn't attempt to duplicate what other stations do. "There's no point in us doing a No Frontiers information-based travel show," says Fennell. "That's done well elsewhere. What we need to do is stop aping British or US television forms and start developing indigenous Irish television genres and ways of doing things. 'Súil Eile' is not a joke. It's our motto."
Fennell says TG4 tries to commission personal rather than issue-based stories. Many of the documentaries may be one-off, one-hour pieces, made by someone who has never made anything for television before, but who has, nevertheless, a good story to tell. "These stories are not being made by crews coming in from elsewhere," says Fennell, "but by people from the locality themselves."
Mick Óg McGee and business partner Beartla Ó Flatharta prove the point. They have set up a burgeoning production company,Na Luaidraimánaí Lofa. Both men and the company are Gaeltacht-based. "What's good about TG4 work is that it lets people come through," says McGee. "You see the person on their own terms, not packaged by the documentary-maker who usually dictates everything." While not constituting community access TV proper, the access element of community television has proved a winning formula for TG4.
Technological developments have also been important. The advent of accessible digital technology has meant that one man and his brother - as is the case with the Manchán sa Mhéan Oirthir series - can now travel the world and make a documentary series with minimal costs and equipment. Sara Corcoran, director of the Dublin-based Doclands Documentary Film Festival, says the development of new technology has encouraged more and more people to get involved in making documentaries.
"It's easy to just go and buy a camera now. You don't need to have a crew of 15 people behind you any more," says Corcoran.
New technology seems tailor-made for making factual and documentary programmes. A standard budget for a TG4 commission is as low as €29,000 for a half-hour broadcast. The up-side of that is that many interesting documentaries get made, the down-side, as independent producer Pat Comer sees it, is that it is very difficult to make a living as a documentary film-maker. "I'm making more money from health and safety videos than from TG4," says Comer.
James Hickey of Film Makers Ireland, the organisation that represents the independent production sector, says TG4 and independent producers have been highly innovative and cost-effective considering the funds available to them. "Minority interest channels get far more funding in the UK than TG4 gets in Ireland," he says. No doubt, many in the independent sector would like to see TG4 in a position similar to the Welsh station, S4C, which gets about £100 million sterling annually.
Anyone who considers such expenditure on a minority language channel as a waste of money might be surprised to hear that "Tay Jay Quatre" programmes are often a talking point for many Francophone Irish residents. Other immigrants also watch the station avidly, finding the subtitles which accompany most TG4 documentaries a relief from the often rapid speech found elsewhere on TV, while the content offers a unique insight into the Irish way of life.
Mná na hÉireann is on TG4 on Sunday nights at 11.20 p.m., with a repeat showing on Wednesday evenings at 7.30 p.m.
