SEEN & HEARD: In One Year And Out The Other (RTÉ1, New Year's Eve); Meet The People - The Reunion (RTÉ1, New Year's Day); The Big 4.0 (RTÉ1, New Year's Day); and Shackleton (Channel 4, Wednesday, Thursday) are reviewed by Shane Hegarty
Let's be honest about this. We are not a race of television naturals. Stick a camera in our faces, and the Irish become nation of wavers, of nudgers, of either screamers or mutes. Put a camera on an individual, and the reaction is a mixture of rigid self-awareness, bedazzlement and a slight suspicion that this box thing might steal away the soul. The most loquacious man in the world he might be when in the pub on a Sunday afternoon, but stick him in front of presenter Derek Mooney on Winning Streak, and the chin hits the chest, the eyes roll like a compass at the Pole and answers come in a single syllable grunts. Point the camera at a crowd, though, and they'll wave banners and shout crazily until they've finally been spotted in the pub back home.
Watching George Lee standing in front of the queue for euro notes at the Central Bank on Tuesday only added to an argument that crowd shots should be banned from Irish television. There she was. The woman who has to wave, who can't stop herself, who will burst if she doesn't. Not a big, "how's-it-going" wave, but a small, sly wave. Where the arm stays straight by the side while the hand gets flapping. Like a seal with a twitchy flipper.
There's always one. There's usually more. On the Wednesday evening news, a live interview from Galway attracted people in packs. Only their flippers had mobile phones attached, and about four men wandered around in the background while their mothers or partners no doubt tried to find a tape to record it on. They'll be showing that every Christmas from now until the video breaks.
I became hyper-sensitive to it this week, mainly because Ireland watched this New Year roll in with Mike Murphy and a woman who wasn't supposed to be there at all, on In One Year And Out The Other. Murphy counted down the seconds, the streamers streamed, the crackers cracked, and through the shredded paper and falling balloons, a woman gate-crashed the turn of the year. She was like a streaker who had decided to do it while wearing her best rig-out, or a woman bearing a grudge after years of failure to get Late Late audience tickets. Several verses into Auld Lang Syne, Murphy realised she was there and made sure she got a big kiss before gently encouraging her to return to her seat, although by this time she had been joined by a man - who didn't get a kiss.
Murphy deals well in these situations, but that's thanks to years of presenting Winning Streak, a show that is a Mecca for this sort of behaviour. If people don't yell and wave vigorously every time the camera is pointed at the audience, they get ejected from the studio. He dealt with it with the same professionalism as he dealt with a night's variety extravaganza that had all the sparkle of a rusty glitter ball. It featured a €uroquiz filled with all the excitement the name suggests. The contributions of the guests (self-professed psychic Sandra Ramdhanie and Hot Press journalist Liam Mackey) were so weak that it mightn't have hurt if the gate-crashing woman had stayed for a chat. Only the comedic buoyancy of Rosaleen Linehan and Des Keogh kept the thing afloat. That and Mike Murphy's boundless enthusiasm, which comes from a career of propping up creaky formats and coaxing grunts from petrified quiz contestants.
RTÉ has always acted as a sort of large local newspaper in the matter of putting as many of us on the screen as possible, knowing that some people watch the Late Late Show only to see if they know somebody in the audience. On Tuesday night it presented an evening of programmes to celebrate its own 40th birthday that showed how the Irish have been awkward on the telly for four decades now. It was a night as much about the people who watch RTÉ as those who make it. Which made for very dull watching indeed. There were times when it seemed to be marking its anniversary with a schedule designed to mimic the actual sensation of watching 40 years of television.
It began with a straightforward if predictable look back at the first night of RTÉ broadcasting, a documentary that would have been a solid starting point if it hadn't turned out to be the highlight of RTÉ1's entire coverage that evening. It was followed by Meet The People - The Reunion, a reunion of the three presenters (Kathleen Watkins, Nuala Donnelly and Maire O'Sullivan) of the country-wide show which went out during those early days, bringing RTÉ to parishes in which there was only one set. It featured long, tedious clips from the show, shots of the three women being presented to the local mayor, or of archive interviews in which nothing was said, and very slowly. In between, the three women discussed things such as who their favourite cameramen were and the time they had to take the horse and trap. Wonderful memories for those involved, I'm sure, but the viewer became a bored kid made to sit quietly while the mammy and her friends had coffee and a long, long natter.
The Big 4.0, presented by Sean Moncrieff followed, but was a solid idea that was stretched and flattened and pummelled so thin you could read the RTÉ Guide through it. The idea was to have an audience of people who had also turned 40 this year, many of whom had appeared in some shaggy-haired form or other on RTÉ over the years. Straddling the schedules for an hour and a half, it delivered a show that was a little This Is Your Life: light social history, a big chunk of all those nostalgia programmes and a cabaret night. It quickly became like watching someone else's home videos, only with the odd musical interlude. The live music - an air from a member of the audience and a rock song from Paul Cleary - was unnecessary in the context, but RTÉ can't go five minutes, it seems, without a little light music. At 40 years of age, RTÉ still suckles on "variety" like an old security blanket it just won't let go of.
As much as anything, the Big 4.0 was very badly edited, with applause drifting in and out and clips cut off mid-point. Worse, it didn't even bother with the last decade at all. After crawling like an injured sloth through the first 30 years, it dispensed with the last decade in a sloppy brushstroke. The nostalgia, it seems, runs dry once you leave your 20s. The 30s? Let's not go there. Messy separations. Flabby stomach. Job trouble. Low self-esteem. The children growing up and turning away. And as for the licence fee increase, don't even ask.
It is such a shame that, after 40 years, these were the best moments they could come up with. A birthday is always a good excuse for a little light entertainment and back-slapping, but it would have been a good time for some self-analysis too. Here was a wonderful opportunity not only to celebrate, but also honestly to examine the real place of RTÉ - then and now - beyond the usual sepia nostalgia and memories from exhumed presenters. RTÉ, though, has never been one for introspection, a 40-year-old afraid to look in the mirror for fear of seeing just how old it has got.
Shackleton arrived with so much advance publicity that there is little more to be said about it after its broadcast that wasn't said before it. It was as good as the publicity suggested it would be, and even managed to surprise a little. While all the pictures indicated a shoot that attempted to rival the original expedition in its wildness, it did not succumb to the temptation to go straight for the epic cinematography of the ice but steadily built up the motivations and determined, naïve optimism which fed Shackleton's folly. Kenneth Branagh played the explorer pitch-perfectly, shading him with subtlety, convincing as a leader who could retain trust from his men long after things had gone so badly wrong.
The trials and difficulties of the actual production were rewarded with television of beautiful - and, yes, epic - simplicity. The thunder of the bow moving through the pack ice, the vastness of the landscape and the insignificance of their presence in it. The re-creation of the Endurance itself added enormously to the faithfulness of the drama. Shackleton proved to be a marvellous work, breathtaking in its ambition, expert in its execution, precise in detail and cemented by solid acting all round. Not a bad way at all to start the year's television.
tvreview@irish-times.ie