A selection of this week's television programmes reviewed, including No Tears, Conor Cruise O'Brien: The Suspecting Glance, Enterprise, and Popstars.
No Tears finally arrived on our screens this week, loudly dragging with it a cavalcade of opinions that threatened to drown out the sound of the television drama at the head of it all. Ultimately, the opening episode of this dramatisation of the struggle of hepatitis C victims was quietly underwhelming, but better off for it. Stephen Burke's direction and Brian Phelan's script set a slow, steady pace, carrying the story from 1977, when Kitty Fogarty (Maria Doyle Kennedy) gives birth to a child, to 1993, and the moment she realised seven years of crippling fatigue were related to anti-D injections received during that pregnancy.
Kitty Fogarty isn't a real person at all, but a composite of victims. Or, she is a real person, depending on who you listen to.
Grainne McFadden (Brenda Fricker) is supposedly fictional, too, although it will have caused confusion for viewers expecting to see the story of Brigid McCole, seeing as Fricker has been quite public about how she is playing the scandal's first victim. It is an unwelcome distraction, but one apparently brought about by the legal difficulties involved. We'll need to get used to picking the characters from the names as the series unfolds. Although, any similarities to recognisable persons will be purely coincidental. Make sure to shout out Michael Noonan's name when you spot the guy you think is him.
Whatever about the fudging, it is to RTÉ's credit that it has finally tackled a modern, resonant story. It is one into which viewers have already invested so much emotion, bewilderment and curiosity, which is why it was a relief to see Fricker and Doyle Kennedy quietly and effectively give the story a necessary humanity behind the headlines. The frustration of women who didn't yet know that they were victims of anything other than nature. The all-consuming tiredness. The prescriptions of vague tonics and referrals to psychiatrists. The disbelief of those around them. The sense of utter isolation that comes with an illness not acknowledged as an illness at all.
Things were a little less encouraging when it came to the civil servants at the Department of Health, who came across as almost Bond-like villains, stone-faced and conniving, and barking things such as, "Get me the Minister. I don't care if he's busy, interrupt him!" Let's hope No Tears will be less one-dimensional when the time comes to deal more substantively with the politics of the scandal.
There is a good, balanced, intelligent documentary to be made about Conor Cruise O'Brien. There is much that has been forgotten about his early career with the UN, a lot to be dissected from his impressive writings and curiosity to be indulged in examining why an impressive intellect later gave way to regular soapbox doomsaying.
The Suspecting Glance was not that documentary. Frank Callanan and Carlo Gébler's interviews with Cruise O'Brien skipped through his time in Africa and vaulted completely over his period as editor-in-chief of the Observer. Even when dealing with O'Brien's relationship with the North, there was little put in context. There was no proper outlining, for instance, of his role in negotiating the Sunningdale Agreement.
It was frustrating to learn at the credits that the interviews took place during 1998 and 1999. They were possibly filmed to coincide with his memoirs, which were printed at that time, and you wonder what of his prophesising was subsequently cut out to avoid retrospective embarrassment. That was also around the time he resurrected his apocalyptic vision of an impending Irish civil war which would lead to the overthrowing of the Government and thousands of deaths. That, obviously, never happened, but it would have been more interesting to have had a proper assessment of what led him to such a conclusion.
He constantly referred to the moments in his career when his ideas were denounced by the loud minority, despite support from a quiet majority. He is a man who seemed to resort to outrageous pronouncement as a way of attracting attention, but instead received ridicule, just as he did in the days when he often spoke in uncomfortable truths. Other voices providing a proper examination would have helped to fill in the gaps in his reputation. Instead, The Suspecting Glance became an exercise in self-validation on the part of Cruise O'Brien, something we have had more than enough of in recent years.
I HAVE a friend who, for many years, presumed that when Captain Kirk promised "to boldly go where no man has gone before" at the beginning of each Star Trek, it meant that the Enterprise was searching for the planet "Boldygo", whatever nebula it was hidden behind. When they found Boldygo, so he presumed, it would be a place where Kirk could get into as many bar-room brawls as his heart desired, where handshakes came in the form of a Vulcan neck pinch, and that that would be the series nicely wrapped up.
Four TV series, one animated series and 10 feature films later, the crew still haven't reached the planet Boldygo. After last week's rather subdued opening episode, this Monday the crew of Enterprise finally got to head out where no man has been before, although Captain Jonathon Archer (Scott Bakula) doesn't actually utter the famous words. This is the very first crew on the very first Enterprise, heading out into the big bad universe 100 years before Kirk, on behalf of an Earth that has only recently thrown off its intergalactic nappy. The touches are nice. People have to open doors by hand, the spacesuits are similar to those of early deep sea divers and the shuttlecraft look like bathospheres. This week, the crew got a taste of what's to come when they met older, tougher aliens. The puny Earthlings' weapons bounced off their spaceship like golf balls off a tank.
Hopefully this lack of firepower will mean a return to the old Kirk ways of holding a blue alien babe in one hand while fighting off a seven-foot Nausicaan with the other. Except, there were worrying signs this week, when every time the "we come in peace, shoot to kill" security chief recommended reaching for big guns, Captain Archer told him to put them down in case he took someone's eye out. He has a square jaw, Archer. He should stick it out a little more.
There is some nice tension, though, between him and female Vulcan Subcommander T'Pol, who displays a cold logic and intellectual disdain for the Earthlings - which acts as a foil to the standard Star Trek fluffy moralising and unapologetic emotion. Not only that, but she displays her cold logic through repressed sexuality, while pouting lips bigger than Jupiter's Great Red Spot.
The actress's name is Jolene Blalock, and all over the world adolescent boys in their Starfleet pyjamas are already writing bad poetry in her honour. It's a long way from the words of Captain Christopher Pike, who helmed the ship in the pilot episode. "I still can't get used to women on the bridge," he quipped during a period of Earth's future we might want to forget.
Who the producers are trying to appeal to with the title tune, though, is anybody's guess. Unlike the stoic, pioneering tone of previous orchestral themes, they've gone for an MOR ballad of the kind that could put passing aliens off visiting us for years to come.
"And no one's gonna bend or break me/ I can reach any star/ I got faith . . . faith of the heart." Set phasers to puke.
SO there you go. I made it through a week of telly watching without either choking on a Mikado or mentioning Popstars. But I can't resist the latter any more. Everybody else has had their tuppenny's worth, so I might as well unload my wallet too.
Well, the Irish Countrywomen's Association can put an extra cake in the oven for me. The "unmasking" of Nadine was blatant exploitation by adults who gave the impression they cared less for the emotional impact national humiliation would have on a 16-year-old girl,and more for the publicity it would bring the show - and, ultimately the cash it would make the band.
The producers filmed the scene several weeks ago. Do you believe it was a coincidence that the story found its way to the front pages of the tabloids in the immediate hours before transmission, tabloids that then roundly turned on her with glee? The PR for this programme has been tightly controlled from the start, the juicy bits expertly dangled to the papers when needed.
The programme itself then dwelled on the poor girl's embarrassment, leaving her story until last - in order, it would seem, to keep the suspense up. If they were so concerned by the age rule, the producers should have asked those auditioning to bring passports along as identification. As for her parents, they did neither their daughter nor themselves any favours by allowing things get that far and then having to squirm their way through an explanation on national television.
Not a particularly proud episode for anyone involved, then. Now can we please talk about something else?
tvreview@irish-times.ie
