Leargas, RTE 1, Tuesday
The Turner Prize, Channel 4, Tuesday
News at 5.30, Six One News, RTE 1
Channel 4 News, Channel 4
One of the objectives of revisionism is to de-mystify the language of history, to call a spade a spade especially if it's heading towards a landlord's skull. Of course, the revisionists themselves have been as guilty of distortions, jocularly referring to the Famine as a "demographic upheaval" or the War of Independence as "a first Civil War" since, technically, most of its early antagonists were Irish.
However, no danger of this with the Leargas inquiry into the Kilmichael ambush of 1920. The RTE press release was, literally, like a blast from the past, breathlessly describing "the first engagement between the IRA and the previously invincible British Auxiliary Force". Well, it would hardly have been the French. "Shaken to the core, the British establishment could not comprehend how 18 battle-hardened officers fell in combat against what they previously dismissed as low level civilian rabble." The phrasing was pseudo-history of the old sort, but Leargas was going to have it both ways and "explore" what really happened on that "desolate west Cork roadside", as if the desolation was part of it.
With its fast-moving graphics, zoom shots of maps and bursts of plaintive music, the programme itself was like an ambush and looked like it was put together under fire. We were straight into the incident, without any political context or explanation for the surrounding war. The main controversy, trumpeted with excitement worthy of the discovery a second, even a third sniper in Dallas in November 1963, was whether, after the Auxiliaries had been ambushed Tom Barry ordered the rest of them killed because they tried a sneaky false surrender, or whether he did so because there was a nasty war on and he didn't want them hanging about. . . The latter seems much more likely and, given the culture of reprisal and counter-reprisal, does it really matter?
In old footage, Barry reminisced about the incident. "We threw them their money and their brandy hip flasks," he said, derisively, but in an oddly pompous voice. The autopilot delivery suggested it was a story he had told many times, a rhetorical tradition that constituted the height of excitement in the grim 1940s and 1950s, hearing for the hundredth time, the tales of "flying columns" and fellows in hedges. In a stagey piece de camera, historian Peter Hart voiced his scepticism, but he had hardly spoken before we were back to clunking harpsichord music and shots of ivy-strewn graveyards. The famous ballad of Kilmichael was played by two musicians sitting in an old study, one of whom, Peadar O Riada, stayed on, with accordion in hand, to gruffly dismiss any sceptics. Peadar was identified as "Sean's son", as in Sean O Riada, the composer, this presumably being his qualification for the debate. There was an air of "if you came from round here, you'd understand". Cue more shots of the "desolate" but "beautiful" countryside, described in the press release as "the Republican strongholds of Inchigeela and Cuil Aodha". God, that's news to me. Does Peter Mandelson know about this?
Cork nationalism was about to rear its paranoid head and we even had old trooper, John A. Murphy telling us "'Twas the boys of Cork that won it" (i.e. independence). Yarra, don't forget the Leesiders.
The best part of the programme were the archives, such as those from The Dawn, or a full-haired Brian Farrell in 1964. Farrell's description brought clarity and context to Kilmichael. As ever with such material it showed how well RTE used to do these things compared with today. It's a bit like the At Last TV series where young trendies laugh at RTE footage of old. But no, guys, the point is, look how good it was compared to your sneering efforts. Leargas can make excellent programmes. Last year, they revisited the Curragh internment camp and interviewed old comrades, Proinsias De Rossa, Tomas Mac Giolla, and Ruairi O Bradaigh. But it got little attention, compared with this effort, which combines history as rock and roll video with almost aggressive sentimentality. "This might offend the politically correct" intones narrator, Pat Butler, and no wonder, given his loose use of phrases such as "the IRA", not the "Old IRA", and "doing a spectacular", a description more commonly used for recent bombings in London. At the end, Bishop Buckley, a "local man", said that The Boys of Kilmichael was a great song: "I'd sing it for you, only I've no great voice." No Bishop, please don't. I'm sure you've got other things to be doing.
Channel 4 showed us all that was wrong with contemporary visual art with The Turner Prize. Not the artists themselves, they were interesting enough. No, it was the attitude of the programme to them. "Nothing shocking this year," said the presenter, Matthew Collings. "It's so boring it's almost shocking." And, in this, he speaks for much of the elitist art world, unwittingly captured here, at the awards dinner, in all their anti-art, black-clad finery. Collings, himself in a designer suit and open-necked purple shirt, has strongly pushed the Brit Art fad - and so "shock art" - over the past few years. Now it has run its course, he seems disappointed, strolling through the shortlist with a mixture of droll quizzicality and barely concealed contempt. "Or it could be something else altogether," he concluded with airy dismissal.
Channel 4 used to bring in a panel of critics on Turner night, as they did for the Booker Prize. But now it's all playfulness and endless irony. The only critic interviewed, Brian Sewell, was as clipped and disdainful as Collings, leaving the rest of show as a personal vehicle for the presenter to mug for the camera and stroke a cat. In this context, the artists themselves were refreshing. The interviews with Dutch artist Micheal Raedecker and German-born winner, Wolfgang Tillmans, suggested an open-minded integrity, quite at odds with the contemptuous sushi-eaters surrounding them.
What a different array of News programmes we have in the evening. With its permatanned, sharply dressed presenters and snappy tops from Karen Millen, TV3 News at 5.30 is definitely the News of the New Ireland (let's drop that Tiger). And what about those hairstyles; henna-ed like red setters or hanging down like perfectly sculpted, shining claws. "Some taxi-men have been attacking the media" an outside reporter was telling his well-groomed colleagues in the studio. "They seem very resentful." Well, of course they are, when they see those designer spectacles and buttoned-up Italian jackets.
The highlight of the TV3 news is the entertainment report. The headlines may include strikes, famine and war but in a few moments (faces brightening) Lorraine Keane will be giving us the entertainment. "Yes that right, guys, Leonardo DiCaprio broke a toenail and Britney Spears couldn't find the right conditioner in Rome." Lorraine gets as excited over her delivery as crumply Bob Friend does, over on Sky News, when a showbiz item pops up. The saucier the better for old Bob. Was it my imagination or did they take him off during the Kosovo war? (Or "engagement" as Leargas might have called it). There are moments when Bob suddenly checks himself and goes "oh, dear this is actually quite serious".
By contrast, RTE's Six One is a safe pair of hands. They can try all sorts of combinations but you can't beat Bryan Dobson and Una O'Hagan. Especially when Bryan has decided to deliver the news from some foreign place. Everything is placid and controlled, except for the moments of disproportionate excitement from Charlie Bird, for whom every news story constitutes "Godzilla is arriving in Mullingar!". Last week's taxi protests had the drama of the D-day landings for Charlie, but there are also the quieter, "got-him-in-a-corner" interrogations more reminiscent of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire: "Taoiseach, can I ask you a question?" Long Pause. "Taoiseach, are you absolutely sure. . ?" Oh get on with it. "Charlie, can I phone a friend?"
And what of Channel 4 News for London hipness. Is there no end to their snappy ad break titles - "Czech this out" - and abstract, multicoloured neck-ties. At one stage, last week, we had Jon Snow in an orange and pink tie and Krishnan, his colleague, in a pink shirt and lime green tie, with swimming purples on the backdrop behind. They are equally adventurous with time, as with the coverage of the death of writer Malcolm Bradbury. (Not an item, oddly, which appeared on the TV3 entertainment slot.) On the big split screen, novelists David Lodge and Ian McEwan were reminiscing about the old boy. Lodge was windswept, outside somewhere, and fiddling with an earpiece. "I had long face-to-face sessions with him," McEwan went on, "usually in the pub. He told me that there was no higher calling. . ." Snow nodded indulgently, tapping his Mark Rothko tie, as if to say "We have all the time in the world, don't you worry about an earthquake breaking in."
"He was part of how writers have become public figures," continued McEwan, at length. "I think [mild laughter] he was on the Rolodex on every news desk."
"Yes, indeed," said Snow, firmly fixing his tie to the left. "But was there a chance that he was too much on our screens and not enough of a writer?"
McEwan and Lodge looked down silently from the split screen. Lodge was still fiddling with his earpiece. "Ehh, yes . . . perhaps," conceded McEwan, possibly thinking he should be at home right now polishing up Chapter 5.
"Well, it's a problem we all face," chortled Snow, as if he just remembered he was reading the news. "Now back to Krishnan for the rest of the day's headlines."