The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name (RTE 1, Tuesday)
The People Versus (ITV, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday)
The Department (RTE 1, Thursday)
Wildlife On One (BBC 1, Sunday)
With its connotations of cheerful frivolity, "gay" has never seemed the most accurate word to describe homosexual people. At any rate, it has never seemed the most accurate word to describe the lives led by most homosexual people. In Ireland, "grim" not "gay" seems closer to the truth. Of course, attitudes are different now and few would argue that being gay in the year 2000 is as grim as being gay in, say, 1950. (Then again, the same is true - albeit less dramatically so - for "straight" people seeking sexual fulfilment.)
Of course, there were no "gays" in Ireland in 1950. There were "queers" and "homos", alright, and rumours of lesbians, though such creatures were officially considered to be as mythical as mermaids. Anyway, The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name sought to document the history of male and female homosexuality in this country. Produced and directed by Bill Hughes, it mixed archive footage and well-known talking heads. As such, it was really a Coles Notes to gay history - ironically, tipping it towards the traditionally macho "great man" school.
In fairness, it couldn't easily be done any other way. The covertness characteristic of homosexuality has ensured that the histories of ordinary gays and lesbians remain mostly secret. But the programme and many of its contributors were conscious of this and acknowledged the difficulties. Anyway, as related, the story began with Oscar Wilde. Well, fair enough, although, doubtless, there were gay famine victims (or, that being a decent example of indecent frivolity, "homosexual" famine victims) and lesbian dairy maids well before Oscar's time.
Since Oscar, there have been homosexual/bisexual luminaries such as Roger Casement, Brendan Behan, Micheal MacLiammoir and Kate O'Brien. For the lesser-known gay person though, life must have often felt like a series of persecutions. The law, the church, the society surrounding minorities, regularly led to homosexuals leaving Ireland. Indeed, David Norris, a genuine champion of gay rights, recounted being advised "to go to the south of France" to avoid the pressures of being gay in Ireland.
Mind you, given his sensitivity to, and courage in the face of, being in a discriminated-against minority here, Norris has frequently appeared less aware of the political discriminations faced by Northern nationalists. Perhaps becoming so conscious of your sexuality as a mark of identity can have a consuming effect. Heterosexuals, after all, can afford to be more blase about their sexuality even though ignorance, misguided triumphalism and bigotry remain at disturbingly high levels.
We saw a member of Youth Defence on an edition of Prime Time back in the 1980s. He railed against "buggery, bestiality and sodomy", making sure that his language packed violent emotional punch. We heard how the "queer bashers" who murdered Declan Flynn in Fairview Park almost 20 years ago, sang We Are The Champions after the attack. Even worse, we heard how a judge humiliated a young gay man for the amusement of the courtroom public, who became convulsed with laughter. No doubt, his lordship's wit was scintillating.
Still, there were some genuinely funny moments in this documentary. When the opening in the closet was merely a hairline crack, gay people often had to use sartorial signals. Red socks (can't have been easy to get in the 1950s) and/or a green tie (especially on a Friday night) were, it was suggested, the equivalent of masonic handshakes. If it wasn't quite glam rock of Elton John proportions, it was enough to the initiated to recognise a proposition.
Perhaps the most potent proposition of all however was voiced by a lesbian contributor way back in 1977. "Imagine," she said, "that homosexuality was the accepted way of life" before inviting viewers to consider what it might be like to live in a heterosexual minority. She was correctly making the point that heterosexual urges would not simply die out nor could they be sublimated indefinitely. But the "ungay" minority would be wise to expect some discrimination: the power urge is the equal of the sexual one regardless of sexual orientation.
That's why education is required. Class, gender, sexuality, race, religion, size, age, region - all such variables stack up in human perception. Most contributors agreed that life for gay people in Ireland has greatly improved. Still, being socialised in heterosexual families, "coming out" can yet, it appears, be a traumatic experience. The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name dared to celebrate a significant aspect of Irish life which, less than a generation ago, could not have been celebrated on national television. In doing so, it provided an hour of populist education, showing that, in spite of the Leaving Cert results, not all history is in decline.
Populist tinsel gravitas, as irritating as an implacable itch, characterises The People Versus, the latest quiz show from the stable which invented Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Presented by Kirsty Young, who is almost, if not quite, as annoying as Chris Tarrant, it employs similarly cheap elasticated dramatics: Hammer Horror music, a silly sci-fi set, pauses pregnant with idiotic solemnity. It looks like it will go a long way.
The central idea is that the audience gets to set the questions on topics nominated by the contestants. If a contestant chooses a question and fails to answer it correctly, the viewer who set it gets the contestant's place in the game. Well, I suppose it's novel and in tune with the current, reaction-to-the Internet fad for greater audience participation in TV. But it's risibly patronising of the punters who end up as contestants. Ostensibly there to answer questions, their real purpose is to supply opportunities for the presenter to hype the dramatics.
This is done, Tarrant-like, by repeatedly asking contestants if they are "happy?", "sure?", "certain?", "decided?", "definite?", "positive?" etc, with an answer or a decision. It really would be great to hear a contestant say at the outset that he or she would really appreciate not being prodded in this manner. Better still perhaps, would be a quizee turning the tables on the presenter. "Are you sure you want to ask me one of those questions? . . . quite positive? . . . certain? . . . you're definite about this?"
It won't happen, of course. We can't even expect contestants to get narky at the prurience-producing prodding. But it certainly would be refreshing to hear one tell Young: "Look, cut the crap. Are you deaf? I've already told you twice what I've decided to do. Take off that falsely impassive face, just ask me the question and get on with it. This is a bloody quiz show, not, despite its pretentiously jurisprudential title, a verdict in a High Court case." Unfortunately, shoddy psychological foreplay, along with the music, the set and the loot, is fundamental to these efforts.
So too, it seems, is the humiliation of a person close to a contestant. One woman was cajoled into telling millions of viewers how, during her pregnancy, her husband suffered all the symptoms of being pregnant himself. Poor bloke! You can imagine the jokes that he's going to be made the butt of. But it's ratings, not people, that count in cheapo television. For the record, some of the topics were "Freddy Mercury", "Friends" and "UK One Hit Wonders". Sad to say that Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? probably won't now be included in this final category. I can't be sure, certain, definite, positive about this but the quiz show future looks grim.
THE linguistic changes to be heard on The Department were almost as striking as those that have transformed "queers" into "gays". Nowadays, people seeking assistance from the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs are refered to as "customers". This is, in fairness, progress from the days when people signing-on were called "spongers", "dossers" and "layabouts" (while big-time spongers were running the show and being feted!). But such language of commodification in the public sector can also be ideologically appropriating.
Mind you, state-funded universities regularly refer to students as "customers" (on the New Right terrorist wing of this debasement of language, lecturers are sometimes called "information managers"). The language of commerce, like commerce itself, is commandeering everything. Anyway, this latest RTE docusoap is essentially a PR opportunity for the department. You can't blame it for making itself a customer of softfocus television. But on the evidence of its opening episode, Business As Usual, this one is little more than a promotional video.
There were, though, a couple of instructive moments. On the day that we saw the brilliant nine A1s Leaving Cert performance of one student, we also saw a young man seeking a job. Unable to read or write, he had been to secondary school for two years. A personable fella, his illiteracy points to abject failure on the part of the Department of Education. Another young male jobseeker was interested in "truck-driving or child-minding", an unlikely combo, almost in the same league as the apocryphal student of "honours Latin and pass brain surgery".
Like Hamlet with its play within the play, there was even PR within the PR in this programme. We saw the department's "customer relations manager" in Tralee, Brian Kearney, convening a "customer panel" to gather customer reaction to the services offered. In principle, this is a decent development but we never heard how the customer panel was selected. Doubtless, the service has improved in recent years. But there must be some horror stories left, even if the manhunting of blokes cleaning windows to supplement meagre signing-on payments - while real fraudsters were living it up - has been curtailed. Will such hounded customers get to tell their stories?
Finally, Wildlife On One. Subtitled Bear Crime - Caught In The Act, this was a fascinating account of the "bear crime wave" which is allegedly sweeping through parts of America. In the town of Mammoth Lakes in northern California, up to 30 black bears hit the streets most nights. They raid bins, outdoor fridges and dog trays. In Yosemite National Park, many bears have lost all fear of people. They break into cars containing food.
As ever, David Attenborough's script and his crew's camera-work were first-rate. The bears are passing on their skills to their young and the problem is sure (certain, definite, positive even) to worsen. Like many Americans, some of the worst offenders grow to more than 45 stone - about twice the normal bear in the wild - and, also like American people, recidivist bears are routinely being put down. It's a pity the same can't yet be said about the new wave of irritating quiz shows.