SCRAPING in fussy, irritating strokes, the trowel hit something matted and black. Before the digger could say anything, a frisson of revulsion, leaping from him and into viewers, registered the fact that he had unearthed the top of a human head. The trowel tipped the hair and loosened some mud. It seemed like the skull might split. The sight was unbearable and far worse was to follow. Calling a documentary "unwatchable" is not usually a compliment. But True Stories: The Grave was both unwatchable and unmissable.
Up to the point of the unearthing of the first skull, the workaday attitudes of the forensic archaeologists had seemed to suggest they might blur, sanitise, or, at least make understandable, the appalling truth of Vukovar. It was possible to admire their dedication, purpose and techniques, while realising that the exhumation of 200 bodies from a Croatian mass grave was also likely to disinter extremely uncomfortable emotions among viewers.
But imagining an emotion and experiencing it are vastly different. As the trowels scratched away, revealing shoes, boots, torsos, limbs - all horribly knotted together - it was as if a corner of hell was surfacing through the earth. You couldn't smell the putrefaction, but even imagining it was too much. What the scene must have been like in reality is, really, too horrific for most of us to contemplate. And yet, like Germans forced to witness Holocaust footage, such extreme aversion therapy, it can be argued, is ultimately in the common good.
As the trowels, scraping, scratching, screeching - like nails on a blackboard - worked away, the scene which took shape was reminiscent of scenes unearthed near Vesuvius. Only, instead of literally petrified Pompeiians, the Vukovar victims were wet and sticky with mud. The deadweight suck of rotting bodies being peeled apart - sound to add to the experienced sight and the imagined stench - was disgusting. Yet, it was not as disgusting as what was done to these unfortunate people in the first place.
Old video and news footage was intercut with the exhumation scenes. The people in the mass grave had mostly lived in Vukovar hospital. They were there either as patients, staff, or as refugees, whose homes had been destroyed in the fighting. We saw a video of a Major Sljivancanin arriving at the hospital, separating the men from the women and children, having the wounded laid out on stretchers and organising trucks and buses to transport the men to torture and execution.
"We actually knew the people who put them on the buses," said one widow, explaining why she found it so hard to believe what had happened. Even though the Yugoslav army carried out the Vukovar hospital massacre in 1991, many of the widows and mothers sustained fantasies that their husbands and sons might be alive. In that sense, the disinterring of the truth at the mass grave was also the burial of a hope. albeit a forlorn, perhaps even a dangerous, hope.
Taking the bodies from the grave to autopsy slabs, names were put to some of them. One poor ghoul of a creature was dug up, his dirt-encrusted wristwatch still ticking away. Another was screened from posthumous indignity by the archaeologists placing a paper bag marked "Bread and Circuses Whole Food Market" over his decomposing head. A bag from a shop trying to promote and cash-in on healthy living ... though it was well- meant, it just added to the obscenity by contrasting the concerns of the comfortable world with the horrors of former Yugoslavia.
Channel 4 has decided to submit The Grave as its Prix Italia entry: the United Nations scientists have done their bit in identifying the architects and victims of the Vukovar hospital atrocity. Yet they know, we know and, most crucially, the relatives of the dead know that almost all the villains will not face the law. That does not make The Grave pointless. But it does mean that, in one of the most sickening crimes imaginable, posthumous justice will not be done.
Some of the relatives can now put names on headstones. Perhaps there is comfort in this. For viewers who complain that television censors the physical awfulness of war - and it does - Belinda Giles's The Grave was as graphic as the medium has ever been. Unlike a Hollywood horror film made to excite cheap thrills, this documentary was, ultimately, a commentary - not just about some monstrously evil other, but about humanity itself. Revulsion, while watching, turned into shame when it was over. The "never again" pledges after Auschwitz had proved to be as hollow as, deep down, we always feared they would be.
BOYHOOD fan of Tottenham Hotspur, Roy Keane looks likely to be the next captain of Manchester United. Have Boots, Will Travel: Roy charted Keane's journey from schoolboy football in Cork to (since Cantona has headed off to "feel the wind" on his "shaven skull") becoming top kiddie at the top Premiership club. It was unashamedly affectionate, perhaps rather PR-ish and, though rich in detail, it avoided a few interviewees who might have had a different opinion of the player.
"He will be a great player - as good as Giles and McGrath in time," said Eamon Dunphy. Indeed, he is already in that category. But a few words from the Crystal Palace player, stomped on by Keane in an FA Cup semi-final replay, might have added some balance. It's not about digging dirt - just being at one with the facts. While Roy Keane is deservedly a hero in Ireland (even the Lansdowne Road booh-boys, who claim he is not committed to Ireland's cause, must admit he was our best player in the 1994 World Cup finals) there are legitimate questions about his aggressive style of play.
Then again, it's a familiar old story in sport: if he's on our side, he's great; if he's against us, he's an animal. Anyway, this documentary was essentially a celebration of Keane and there is much to celebrate. Some scouts considered him to be too small for the professional game (echoes of Best and Maradona) but Keane persevered. At Rockmount, the Cork schoolboy club for whom he played for nine years, he was christened "boiler man" - proof that he played then as he plays now.
After Cobh Ramblers came Nottingham Forest and a typically brusque Brian Clough anecdote. Archie Gemill was manager of the club's reserve team and was playing his son in midfield. Clough told Gemill that he wanted "to see the Irishman" playing. Five minutes passed. Clough fumed and told Gemill: "I want the Irishman on - get your son off." A rough trade, football. But Keane got his chance and the rest is history ... and geography.
Does he really want to play for Ireland? "Yes," said Roy, while admitting that Jack Charlton's by-passing midfield tactics were not to his liking. Well, why has he missed so often? Injuries? Part of the reason, it seems. Alex Ferguson, however, was left to shoulder most of the blame. This is probably true, but the documentary might have tried harder to discern Keane's complicity in whatever decisions the Manchester United manager was taking.
For his part, Keane repeated how willing he always was to travel the world for Ireland - even if he knew he wasn't going to get a game. Fair enough, but he was not a Pounds 20,000-a-week Manchester United star then. Ferguson was visibly uncomfortable talking about the matter. His defence that injuries were to blame and that he always released Denis Irwin was not convincing. The fear of injuries (because of the way Keane plays) sounds more like the manager's real reason. Irwin, on the other hand, is not nearly so injury-prone.
Anyway, apart from this (albeit less than Keane-like) confrontation with Ferguson, this was generally a soft-focus effort. The best parts were the naturalness of the men involved in Cork schoolboy football and the inadvertent humour. "'E's not the best talker in the world. 'E doesn't know how to hold conversations," said raconteur Jack Charlton. But the best bit, as ever in football, was a sideline exhortation: "Too slow, John Paul, too slow." Given the name, we knew we were watching a 17-year-old.
GIVEN the name of Network 2's new sports magazine programme, The Sporting Press Gang, it was impossible to know what to expect. The "gang" just hung there, suggesting a smug usage of the word, as in "the office gang" or in a washing powder ad with muddy brats. In the event, the gang, led by Tom McGurk with Michelle Smith maintaining a steady stroke as his co- host, was lively. But there was an unevenness to the mix of Tyson ear- biting skits and a deadly-earnest studio discussion about the equally ferocious "tackle" in Gaelic football.
Reviewing newspaper sports pages, the old controversy about "The British Lions" and "The British and Irish Lions" (why not just call them "The Lions"?) was exhumed. So too were seasonal Wimbledon knickers shots and a bizarre Sunday Independent piece about Don King. Nationalism, sex and nonsense ... there are more boring topics. But, in sport, there are more pressing ones too.
For the programme's centrepiece, a studio panel of Irish Times journalist Sean Moran, former Down star Joe Lennon, referee Tommy Sugrue, former Dublin player Tommy Carr and Noel Walsh of the GAA Development Committee was assembled. They would discuss the problem of tackling in Gaelic football. However, largely because of Lennon's refusal to confront reality (fouling often does pay in Gaelic football) the exchanges were as messy as the tackle under discussion.
Between the Wimbledon knickers shots and the messy tackle discussion, Pat Whelan was quizzed about his "new blueprint for Irish rugby". Again, this was a reasonable topic, but when interviewees refuse to play ball (by answering unasked questions) viewers experience frustration. This opening episode of The Sporting Press Gang was enthusiastic, although McGurk might pass the ball a bit more to Smith. But it is uneven. Humour is fine - but it works best if it's related to the show's central topics.
FINALLY, United Kingdom!: Under Curfew, shot last year in Belfast's lower Ormeau Road, was a fly-on-the-Saracen look at the impact of an Orange march on the local, Catholic community. It focused on community activist, Patricia Breen, who disparaged the "peelers" for Japanese TV; welcomed Gerry Adams into her house and showed us Grahams's bookies, where unionists murdered five Catholics in 1991.
As military vehicles blocked off every street, a flute band, half its members wearing Glasgow Rangers shirts, struck up. One lower Ormeau woman, whose 18-year-old son was the victim of a sectarian murder, was intensely passionate about "them" coming down the road. This short film captured genuine feeling about Orange marches not revealed by news bulletins. Next week, ,the view from a unionist perspective. Shown just 80 minutes after The Grave, the chilling echoes of Vukovar couldn't be quite silenced.