The scenery of the crime

Gualainn le GualainnTnaG, Wednesday Single-HandedRTÉ1, Sunday Downton AbbeyUTV, Sunday Bright Young Things: Growing Up Gifted, RTÉ1, Tuesday Fade StreetRTÉ2, Thursday

TV REVIEW:A HISTORY OF the ultimate garrison game as Gaeilge: it's a curious mix, although the fascinating new series Gualainn le Gualainn(or Shoulder to Shoulder for those of us with Leaving Cert Irish) makes a strong case for the sheer Irishness of rugby. In 1854 the world's second rugby club was established at Trinity College; Charles Barrington from Limerick laid down the rules of the game; Blackrock boy Éamon de Valera had hopes of playing for Munster and was so enamoured with it he thought "all our young men" should play; and some claim that William Webb Ellis, rugby's inventor, was born in Clonmel – though that's a bit of a stretch.

The interviewees read like a who’s who: Jack Kyle, Willie John McBride, the late Moss Keane, Tony Ward, Brian O’Driscoll – the list is so long it’s going to be difficult for future film-makers to make a more comprehensive history. Andrew Gallimore, its director, unearthed some extraordinary footage, including film of the Ireland v France games in 1912 and 1914, as well as pictures of the earliest players, stern-looking men with extravagant moustaches, wearing stripey woollen jerseys and long shorts. It was, though, for several decades, an undeniably Protestant, upper-class, unionist game (except in Limerick), and Section 27, which prohibited GAA players from even watching the game, laid a deep line in the sand separating the two tribes.

The day after the first World War was declared, a meeting of players at Lansdowne Road resulted in a mass sign-up, and the Great War claimed nine of the Irish team.

IT NEEDS Aheck of a plot to compete with the utterly distracting and magnificent scenery of Connemara; in the first episode of Single-Handedthere were many picture-postcard shots of empty winding roads, rock-strewn hills and glistening lakes. But every time the scenery looked like overwhelming the dramatic scenes, the plot – or some tense bit of business between the characters – pulled it back. It's the fourth outing of the police drama; as I haven't seen any previous episodes, there was some catching up to do. It wasn't difficult, because the scriptwriter deftly dropped in all the necessary backstory without hitting the viewer over the head with it – a skill in itself.

Easy on the eye in his brand-new regulation blouson, Sgt Jack O’Driscoll (Owen McDonnell) is back home to man the local Garda station. His colleague Finbar, a garda of the cute-hoor variety, is still on paternity leave, though he has time to drive a taxi and moonlight as a roadside repair man, while Jack’s predecessor, the shifty Costello (Sean McGinley), now runs the local pub. The murder (or is it? This is a crime thriller after all) takes place off-screen at the beginning with an escapee from the local young-offender centre seen running from the body of an elderly recluse.

Parallel with this standard police procedural plot was a more interesting one involving the picking away at a scab of secrets that had grown over a family wound. Jack’s cousin arrives from England to find out about his father (Stephen Rea), whom, in the Irish way of deep-seated family secrets, Jack had never heard of. Searching through old arrest ledgers, Jack discovers that his uncle had been sent to an industrial school at the age of 10 for stealing a chocolate bar and that his own father, then the local Garda sergeant, had been deeply involved. It had enough tension and loose ends to drive the action well into tomorrow’s closing episode.

SO, WITH THEannouncement of "we are at war with Germany" somewhat spoiling the mood of the quite perfect Edwardian garden party, Downton Abbeyended what has been a phenomenal first series. With an average rating of 9.4 million viewers, the period drama has been the surprise hit of the year, although there has been carping on the sidelines from some clever types spotting TV aerials on cottages in the village and picking apart the many etiquette faux pas (in real life the lady of the house would rather snog a hedgehog than hug a housemaid). And if I read one more blog from some smarty-pants pointing out that the flower-show scene in episode 5 was a direct copy from Mrs Miniver,I'll have an attack of the vapours. Yes, of course Julian Fellowes may have, ahem, recycled some of his cast-off scripts from Gosford Park; the character types are reminiscent of the good folk in Upstairs Downstairs;and Maggie Smith turned in a performance she had prepared – and well used – earlier. But so what? As a well-made, beautifully acted and stunning-looking drama it was perfect escapist Sunday-night viewing. But although a second eight-part series has been commissioned, we'll have to wait at least a year for another visit to Downton.

EARLIER THIS MONTHChannel 4's Child Geniuscaught up with the super-smart young kids it first featured five years ago and introduced some more. There was a 12-year-old sitting A-level physics and applied maths and getting As, a 10-year-old artist who has been called a mini-Monet and sells his paintings for up to £20,000, and kids who had been in Mensa since before they started primary school. That sort of jaw-dropping thing. The compelling hour-long programme featured about 12 kids, so the action moved along swiftly and we saw just enough of the children – some sweet, some mind- bendingly precocious – that we didn't lose interest.

A homemade version, Bright Young Things: Growing Up Gifted, promised to do pretty much the same, except it didn't. There were three kids, Leah, Jack and Gavin, plus a family of three pre-teens, the Nadeems, whose mum gets them up at 6am for a two-hour game of Scrabble before school.

They all seemed like nice, clever kids, but even though the dreary voiceover kept reminding us of their high IQs, they didn’t jump off the screen as being super-smart or particularly gifted. Or maybe – and I’m pretty confident this is case – the poor direction and editing didn’t really get under the skins of these kids. And an hour was too long to feature just four children (the family of three was presented as a group, and they blended into each other) – the material felt stretched and ultimately not particularly engaging.

One thing that did come across, though, is that all felt it was the weaker kids who were given extra attention and help in the education system, and above-average kids were pretty much ignored by their teachers. Unfortunately, they weren’t ignored by the other kids. Jack, aged 12, couldn’t keep track of the names his classmates called him because they came up with a new one every day.

The Nadeems, incidentally, were so fed up with our educational system they moved to Canada.

tvreview@irishtimes.com

Removed from reality: Irish wannabes stick to the script in a banal game of fame and fortune

If somehow you were clinging to the delusion that reality shows are spontaneous fly-on-the-wall efforts, where real life is dished up for the entertainment of slobbed-out sofa hogs, well, tune in – if you can bear the mindless boredom of it – to Fade Street. It's Ireland's answer to MTV's T he Hills,which followed the lives of four fame wannabes in LA. And OMG it worked for them. They are now fodder for US gossip columns – result, I suppose.

In the RTÉ version the twentysomethings, Bridget, Maureen, Teresa and Mary – duh, no, of course not: they are Vogue, Cici, Dani and Louise, and they are, like, interns in the magazine and music industries while living on Fade Street in Dublin.

The nine o’clock news feels less scripted. The set-ups and stilted conversations are more laboured than a night in the Rotunda. The first episode centred mostly on Louise (who sounds like the missing Jedward triplet) settling into an apartment with room-mate Dani. “I was worried, but you’re actually, like, gorgeous,” says Louise after they first meet, because, hey, who wants a roomie who’s fallen out of the ugly tree?

"Shut up! That's awesome," said someone at some stage, and that was an adult Irish person talking. That's all you need to know, really.