TV REVIEW: Padre Pio: the Path to Perfection RTÉ1, Sunday More to Do RTÉ1, Tuesday The Crocodile Hunter Discovery Channel, Sunday World Leaders BBC2, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday
When Fianna Fáil needed to edify the State, they dug up Kevin Barry. The Holy See was up to similar tricks this week, this time with that star, not of stage but of car windscreen, the newly elevated Saint Padre Pio - known to generations of Irish people as that man on the sticker on many a Ford Cortina.
With the crisis of child abuse gathering pace in the church, what better time to distract with a bit of pageantry? RTÉ rose to the occasion, offering a double-bill dedicated to the Capuchin friar from San Giovanni. In the morning, it was the canonisation live from Rome. But, for me, the highlight came with a dip into the Donnybrook archives, a 1980s documentary on the stigmatised monk that must have dusted over for years on the shelf, right beside old tapes of Youngline and Quick Silver.
Padre Pio: the Path to Perfection was old-fashioned RTÉ at its best. It brought back memories of what it was like to live in the Ireland of the 1970s and 1980s. It was a time when Gerry Adams didn't speak on television and the State broadcaster poured out enough religious programming to make Iranian state TV green with envy at the height of the Islamic revolution.
The sympathetic narrator, the late Cyril Cusack, intoned the words "Jesus" and "suffering" with the kind of sensual pleasure that would nowadays get you suspected of harbouring some private S&M fetish. A man, cured by Pio, related how he was also cured of godless communism by the monk - who said saints aren't politically savvy? If Pio were around today, he might well be campaigning for Silvio Berlusconi.
But ah, wasn't it nice to indulge in nostalgia with Cyril and remember a time before we became so secular? No such luck: An Post has ordered half a million Pio stamps to mark the event. I wonder if they'll be printed in Iran?
From saints of the holy Church to saints of the Tiger economy: the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, was first in the seat for RTÉ's new series on the challenges facing the new Government. More to Do, hosted by RTÉ economics robot George Lee, employs the talking heads format of a one-to-one interview to produce television so stunningly engaging that you could almost hear the RTÉ director-general snoring in the background.
This is cheap, filler, summer season television at its most banal. RTÉ must have had some spare studio time to fill. They might have done better if they'd filled it with security footage of Eamon Dunphy out on the town, on the night before he lost his World Cup panel job.
The entire interview consisted of two shots: McCreevy, then Lee nodding, then back to McCreevy and - you guessed it - back to Lee again. It was an interview made for radio, and if there was any audience, they could simply have listened, as their eyelids grew heavy from Lee's monotonous, staccato voice, and imagined it was a radio broadcast instead.
But even as radio, the voices were less than enchanting. McCreevy's blathering, inarticulate speech of the mart, as he blustered on about inflation and competitiveness through his distinctive smile, was reminiscent of an old Kildare tractor engine, struggling up a hill, fuelled by inferior diesel. "Most countries would like to be in the happy position that Ireland is in" was discernible, however, from his marathon responses to Georgie Boy's questions. "Any of our European partners would give an arm and a leg to have the public finances of Ireland," he added later.
This was classic McCreevy. He boasted proudly that the Republic had the lowest public spend of GDP on services in Europe, and then Georgie scolded him that spending on public services was up 40 per cent in the two years before the election - a ploy for re-election. What was inconsistent was that while Lee noted that our services are appalling, he didn't make the connection that it might have something to do with the fact that they're starved of funds by the mé féin policies of this Minister for Finance. Thatcher's dictum that there is no such thing as society sprang to mind.
What was most inadequate about More To Do - a programme that in its very title signs up to the Fianna Fáil election manifesto - was that it made a mockery of the interrogative and adversarial role of the journalist. As Lee nodded, like an excited schoolboy in the presence of his mentor, it was clear that both men basically eat out of the same political trough. Ideology here was presented as economic fact rather than the imperfect science it is. McCreevy and Lee - two ideologues in basic agreement - disguised the fact that money is money, and that ideology and politics are just about the way you raise it and spend it. Wage increases are bad, the wealthy should be lightly taxed, public spending should be kept to a minimum. There's nothing more boring in television terms than to watch two people agree with each other for half an hour. Come back, Eamon Dunphy, all is forgiven!
More exciting, by far, was The Crocodile Hunter, hosted by the insane, corpulent Aussie, Steve Irwin. Part of the joy of this wildlife series is that the host may be killed at any moment. This week alone, as he strolled over the African plains, with not even a boomerang to protect him from the wild beasts, Steve was bitten by numerous snakes, charged by a hippo, attacked by the sleeping sickness- carrying tsetse fly, and in a run-in with a poisonous scorpion. This man takes so many deadly risks that the Discovery Channel must have cloned him: each time one Steve falls, another steps in to take his place. The out-takes must be gruesome.
What Irwin has done is reinvent the wildlife show. None of the mild manner of an Eamon de Buitléar for our Steve. His approach is more that of the extreme sports fanatic - "Look, I've ruptured my kidney again. Cool!"
We've all seen lions before, but what Steve does is the next best thing to putting his head in the lion's mouth. By putting his mullet-adorned head on the block, he has reinvigorated the genre.
His childlike enthusiasm for the animals is fuelled by the thrill of danger. For Steve, the quintessential Australian, snakes are "beauties", female lions are "gaaels", and the most deadly adder is his "mate". As he walks precariously close to an extremely territorial pride of lions, you almost expect him to whip out a can of Foster's, say "G'day", and invite them over to his place for a barbie. What may ultimately be on the menu, however, is Steve himself.
Just as territorial as lions are World Leaders, as we learned in an excellent new series on BBC2. This week, Jacques Chirac, George W. Bush, and Saddam Hussein were profiled, and the portraits did not inspire confidence. The best was on the Iraqi leader, by John Simpson. In a week when Bush is believed to have sanctioned the ousting of Hussein, it was appropriate viewing.
"Ruthless is too weak a word to describe him"; "He believes in violence as an instrument of the state"; "He is a man with the power of life and sudden death" - no, the contributors weren't talking about George W. Bush, the man who has more horses than books, and who has signed away the life of many a soul on death row as governor of Texas. No. It was the much more sinister figure of Saddam that was being described.
With Stalin as his hero, Hussein has got to be the most dangerous man on the planet. Simpson's portrait, drawing on archive footage, took us through Hussein's poverty-stricken childhood, his beatings at the hands of his stepfather, his murderous rise to power, and the ruthlessness and luck that has kept him there.
This is a dictator that murdered one of his own ministers and then, when his wife discovered that her husband was missing, promised that he would be returned to her. Her husband came home in numerous pieces, wrapped up in a black canvas bag.
This is a man that had his own family murder his two daughters and sons-in-law when they returned from a defection to Jordan. His is the vanity that rebuilt the ancient city of Babylon and had inscribed on every second brick: "Built in the time of Saddam Hussein."
Simpson's own role in sustaining Hussein in power is the greatest irony of all. As he reported from Baghdad during the Gulf War of 1991, little did he imagine that he might unwittingly be saving Saddam's skin. It is now thought that Hussein hid for the duration of the bombardment in a bunker close to where the media were holed up, preventing the Americans from getting a clean shot.
If George W. has his way, he'll soon have another shot at his father's old nemesis, and our televisions will be full again of virtual war and muddied truths from far-off places - coming soon to a TV set near you.
tvreview@irish-times.ie