Shane Hegarty's encyclopaedia of moden Ireland
You've got to hand it to the people behind Winning Streak. They know their audience. They've come up with a gameshow format that manages to give away holidays, cars and millions of euro without ever worrying the hearts of the people watching. Blood pressure is untroubled. Pacemakers go unjolted. Winning Streak is a show you can watch while taking heart medication without fear of falling asleep at the remote control.
And what an audience it gets. Hundreds of thousands tune in every week. And hundreds of thousands go to great pains to avoid it. Because the dividing line in modern Ireland is no longer between rural and urban. Nor is it along the old Civil War split. Instead we are divided between those who get Winning Streak and those who don't. Between those who see it as a highlight of their week and the rest, who see it as a lowlight of our culture. Between those who see Derek Mooney as a surrogate son and those who want to send him on a one-way trip to the sun.
The National Lottery has delivered some deliberately unsophisticated television. For a time Telly Bingo was presented by a grown man wearing a schoolgirl's uniform. You'd turn it on. Then turn it off. Then on again. You'd rub your eyes. And check your glasses. But still he was there, calling the balls with deadpan sincerity. Shirley Temple-Bar's appearance can be seen to have represented either the shifting psychocultural landscape of Celtic tiger Ireland or someone in RTÉ really screwing up.
Winning Streak and its summer cousin, Fame and Fortune, may have bucked the logic of television, but they confirm that we are not a race of people comfortable in front of a television camera. The liveliness of the contestants seems to be in inverse proportion to the rowdiness of their banner-waving support in the audience. During the endless opening banter, the contestants have a habit of shrivelling under the low wattage of RTÉ celebrity. And even when they win unimagined riches they greet it with all the enthusiasm of someone handed a nice biscuit to go with their cup of tea.
As for the games, they require only that the contestant mumble occasionally in order to win a car, a world cruise and a small fortune. And it has some of the most incredibly convoluted games ever devised. Robots flying over Ireland. Lo Options and No Options. Doublers and Diamond Dilemmas. A few years back there was a game incorporating some sort of space adventure, leading to the sight of a blue-rinse granny, who has never so much as changed her TV channel from RTÉ1, navigating the galaxy like the Last Starfighter. If it had been French, we'd have hailed it as a surrealist masterpiece. But it's Irish. So it's not.