RTE's God slot programme would be unusual among religion programmes in general if it is not thought to be among broadcasters - slightly unglamorous, slightly non cutting edge, slightly dutiful. You don't usually get the most dynamic media innovators working in the religion department. And if you did, management wouldn't give them the kind of resources they'd ask for. It is very rare to feel the vitality of real commitment behind any programme that goes out in northern Europe around 7 p.m. on a Sunday. Songs of Praise, for instance, has about as much to do with the New Testament as the nearest sagging three piece suite.
The Franciscans down on Merchants Quay in Dublin are still radical - still living the Gospel their founder lived. In these times what they want is "to bring good news to the poor" - Their part of the city has pockets of extreme deprivation - what Father Sean Cassin in the programme called "social pain" - There are 800 people, for instance, living in hostel accommodation in the area. A lot of these would have problems with alcohol. There is an epidemic of heroin addiction. There is poverty of every kind, to which the monks reply with food, clothes, shelter, advice, therapy, prayer. Their work is beyond praise.
That doesn't automatically make an account of it good television. Work that involves opening up to damaged and chaotic and desperate people must be extremely exacting - sometimes dramatic, sometimes grindingly repetitive. It must involve a certain political consciousness. It must involve a degree of conflict within individuals and between them. It must involve conflict - this was mentioned, but immediately smoothed over - between the more orthodox worshippers in the church of Adam and Eve's, and the new people in their space. It must be gritty, fast moving human, full of voices.
But the programme was achingly stiff and genteel. And culpably uncritical. Father Cassin said 60 per cent of the drug users who use the Merchants Quay centre use hard drugs on much the same basis as most people use alcohol. Yes, but there are all kinds of other implications, are there not, while drugs remain so expensive, and while getting hold of them remains a criminal act. Similarly, a gentle episode of acupuncture was all we saw of what must be a horribly difficult rehabilitation process. And what is the success rate of rehabilitation and how is it measured?
Faith In The City was so untrue to reality as to be hardly worth making. It was stuck in that mode of bland reverence that gets religious programmes bottom of the range viewing figures. Brother Sebastian, who works with the homeless people who come to Merchants Quay, was easily the most lovable man on the box in a week of viewing. But just being introduced to good people isn't enough to make good television.
BAD people make better television. Not that either Fergie or Ruby Wax is really bad - indeed, Fergie quoted St Francis's Prayer as a prelude to one of her many pitifully defensive claims: "I'm a very humble person, really. Funnily enough." Humility has certainly been beat into her by her advisers, and she knows the words of various contemporary self abasement mantras. But the bewildered, silly, brave woman wasn't able to keep up the humility. In a swirl of fast camerawork from two cameras - such as Would You Believe would have been well employed to use to cover the actuality of Merchants Quay (not that RTE seems to go in for anything hand held or speedy, no matter what the subject, which is one of the reasons it is so staid) - Ms Wax scooped the duchess up, peeked into her fridge, talked at us behind her back, talked across her, responded warmly to her, analysed her, bullied her, and was affectionately rude to her. When Fergie's Dalmatian knocked over everything to get at a bagel, "See why you get in trouble?" Ruby hectored the Duchess. "Even your dog has no control
Fergie tried to cope with the whirlwind Wax by waving her big arms around a lot, and apologising for herself. She came out of it well. Her insecurity and confusion were highlighted by the brazen confidence and polish of Ms Wax.
Two vignettes of chilling family awfulness escaped such control as Fergie could muster in the face of being love strafed by Ruby. The day the toe sucking photos appeared, she had to go in to lunch with the family in Buckingham Palace. She told Ruby that she told herself, "I have the Lord with me. And they are human beings And then - about the minor dwelling she was housed in at Balmoral last Christmas, set apart from the castle - she suddenly lets rip. My daughters asked - why aren't you good enough to go up there? So I said I made some mistakes, but so have other people - other people have made mistakes. Your granny wants me. But others in the family may not..."
It was a most effective and funny and touching interview and an object lesson in how to make exciting television out of one person talking to another person. The ethical content, compared to Faith In The City was minimal. "I've found my true self now," Fergie said at some point. "But you don't have a man," Ruby said. Those were the reigning values. But technically, the BBC programme was immeasurably superior.
IT was astonishing to discover that Teilifis na Gaeilge is there inside my television set. I thought I'd have to send for a child to tune it. The channel that has all the little pictures of the things that are on the other channels is the TnaG one. The sound, confusingly enough, is that of the English radio station Classic Hits FM. Bang on five o'clock - and this was a big moment in my life, I scan say with honesty - the TnaG lighthouse logo beamed at me and I was staring straight into a little boy's face, looking out of the screen at me and for some reason telling me the story of the time he was lost in a shop.
Then some fresh faced little schoolgirls did some bitching about boys. Then there was a cartoon about a circus where the baddie, MAD - Mac A Diabhal - had a very interesting cat. Then two more beautiful Irish children turned up on a hillside, but they must have been native speakers because I couldn't understand them. Then there was a fabulous laser wielding intergalactic video game type animated adventure story where the spacechick consoled the hero, who spoke Donegal Irish and was called "A Mhairtin" - Why not? Then a healthy looking young lady in Connemara gave us a crisp five minute background to the Rwanda story.
Then there was an inexplicable film sequence about water buffalo racing, introduced by two of those cool TnaG young ones who look as if they hang out in the Clarence Tea Rooms. Then a little cartoon about a man not getting his dinner. Then there was a bit of a history voice over, to charming illustrations, about things that happened On This Day. Calvin Klein was born. That kind of thing. Did you know that the first juke box was installed in a San Francisco saloon in 1889? (If I understood that, I must have been learning Irish as I went along).
Then there was the first part of that evening's Ros na Run, a soap opera set in a B&B with a heart of gold. Then there was Spanish soccer. Compostela, I now know, is "under pressure" at the bottom of its division - in other words, like any Irish national team you care to mention at the moment, it is awful. So far, as an evening's viewing goes, so post modernist.
Then there was no less than an hour of Euronews. This is a very confident and literate news bulletin, which expects a great deal of its viewers. You're supposed to know, for instance, which one in a line of Italian politicians is Prodi. But it is in English. It is not Anglocentric, but it is in English.
Then we had an amiable quiz show and then the programme that any viewer might have switched to that night - one about a sean nos song, Sail og Rua. The story of the song was rather perfunctorily dramatised. But the beauty of the different singing voices, and the excellence of the sound recording, and the unhurried, confident presentation of the whole made a rich viewing experience.
Then we had the weather fore cast. This - disappointingly - is just a graphic. Why can't we see one of the TnaG young ones?
Or why isn't it presented by some gnarled old folks on a moor?
Why isn't something made of it? Irish is so good at weather words, and weather matters so much.
Then there was a country music concert in Scots Gaelic from some Glaswegian Grand Ole Opry. Then there was a situation comedy which I think was about a man in Connemara trying to run a crematorium on wet turf. I may be quite wrong: I haven't got teletext so I can't get sub titles. I only know that in both this and in Ros na Run a character cooked a fried breakfast, which along with the themes - a disputed legacy, and death - seemed to me true to life on the western seaboard.
Then there was an outbreak of gremlinia. The news did not arrive for a while, apart from a mute shot of the young lady news presenter brushing her hair. Then Nuacht competently went to the High Court in London and then to the High Court in Dublin - the national life being run to all intents and purposes by lawyers. It was only when Cathal Mac Coille contributed his analysis that his presence and incisiveness showed up the youth and relative unease of the young news staff. Then things broke down again, and we never got to say "oiche mhaith".
Interim report: Youthful feel. Lovely ads. Lots of ideas. Wakes up one's Irish. Mostly addressed to its home audience on the night, I thought. But I will always, from now on, throw an eye over its schedule, because on any night there may well be a programme there for me.