Far Out (Channel 4, Sunday)
An Lasair Cheilteach (TnaG, Sunday)
John F. Kennedy Jr (Channel 4, Tuesday)
Day Trippers (TV3, Wednesday)
It's a mystery, all right. How is it that a mixed-gender group, stripping down to the buff and prancing around a midnight fire in a forest, can be considered emblematic of a search for spirituality? Surely such carry-on is the essence of corporeality. Throw in a few flagons of cider or some other mental rocket fuel and wham . . . in no time, it's jolly-rogering time. Now, if grown - or even stunted - adults want to play nude ring-a-ring-a-rosy around fires, fair enough. Rock on, folks. But clearly, such orchestrated frenzy is designed to rise more than spirits.
Far Out is a new, three-part documentary series claiming to chart "the hidden history of New Age Britain". Its opening episode, titled Forbidden Path, included old age, black and white footage of nude "spiritual seekers" dancing around a fire. Largely in silhouette. There was nothing gross or pornographic about the gig, but the claims for its purpose did seem rather disingenuous. The line, of course, was that the dancers were "getting close to nature". Perhaps they were - but hardly any closer than they'd experience thinning turnips or cleaning out a pig sty. What the dancers were really getting close to was the annihilation of inhibiting, social convention by the ritual elevation of instinct.
In societies repressed by an excessive stress on manners, thereby confusing etiquette for ethics, it is probably necessary and healthy that instinct be periodically championed. But puffing-up such activity, by automatically claiming it to be spiritual, seems no better than the dishonest advertising and propaganda of the materialistic world the nude dancers claim to despise. If materialism is frequently a block to spiritual growth - and this may well be so - then naked honesty, not naked high jinks, is surely a more potent antidote.
It's not as though the rather more restrained, Mother Teresa approach to spirituality is the only path. It, too, has had its detractors - but there has never been any suspicion that followers choose its rigours primarily for the kicks involved. Still, who is to judge? Perhaps naked prancing in the woods is motivated only by the desire for spiritual growth. Perhaps scepticism is evidence of a narrow mind, hideously bound by convention. But even in relation to spirituality, calling a spade a spade seems wise. It's true, of course, that many genuine spiritual seekers have suffered wanton prejudice and rejection down the centuries.
But just because the larger society's reactions have typically been ignorant and intolerant, doesn't mean that there haven't been bandwagonning chancers among the genuine spiritual seekers. And this, it seems, is the core of the problem. How do you separate the authentic from the bogus when it comes to spirituality? Far Out didn't really try, relying instead on a succession of interviews with ageing seekers. The fleeting suggestion that the early century boom in alternative methods of seeking spirituality was, essentially, "a flight from the filth of industrial towns and cities" was the most rational observation in the programme.
Indeed, given that such northern, clothcap English towns as Huddersfield, Halifax and Rochdale were at the top of the circuit for travelling gurus in the 1930s, the correlation seems indisputable. Followers of the Mazdazhan and other mystical cults of the period flocked to town halls. The suggestion was that the majority of the curious were proto-hippies, albeit in their Sunday best. But the suspicion was that unhappy people, living though a devastating economic depression in grim times and grim towns, were desperate for any alternative vision or even any free entertainment.
At the core of New Age belief - and in a line which runs through seances, nudism, druidism, imported Eastern mysticism, hippydom, Iron Johnism and on to today's New Age and Green movements - is a romantic view of the countryside. As a counterbalance to rampant urbanisation and its consequent problems caused by distancing from nature, this can be sane and healthy. But the rural living of centuries past was no Utopia either. Balancing science and nature would appear to be the wisest option. Balancing opinion in documentaries is usually the wisest course of action too.
And that is the greatest weakness of this new series. By all means, the dissenting voices of New Agers and other spiritual seekers should be heard. But they should be heard in the context of voices of dissent from pro-science punters. The issue, lest we forget, does not fall neatly into conventional issues of Left and Right: Hitler's SS had the same romantic vision of the countryside as the anti-Vietnam war hippies who flourished 30 years later. Far Out, without compromising its claims to be "oral history", might at least have stressed that much of what passes as a search for spirituality is really just reaction - often legitimate, often daft - to the excesses of the Industrial Revolution and unfettered capitalism.
The approach taken by An Lasair Cheilteach to documenting struggles against unfettered capitalism was more mainstream. Recalling the Dublin lockout of 1913 and Britain's general strike of 1926, trade unionists and sundry lefties saw the problems, not in terms of romantic spirituality, but in terms of class struggle and labour relations. Des Geraghty, Joe Higgins and Proinsias de Rossa manned the pickets for Jim Larkin and James Connolly. Well, no surprise in that. But in this age of the Ryanair generation, their sentiments, if not quite redundant, seem, sadly, increasingly irrelevant.
Still, splendid, grainy old footage of turn-of-the-century Dublin and Belfast provided highlights. Pictures of Larkin, in his oratorical pomp, arms raised and outstretched, indicated a passion for social justice that is little more than a memory now. In a week in which the banks have again been shown to be criminal, you have to wonder about the political consciousness of ordinary Irish people. PAYE workers haven't just been supine - this spine of the economy has been treated like a door-mat for the criminal codology, cute-hoorism and glic-boy culture which continues apace. Church, business, politics, media, law, banks - and yes, trade unions too - who, in the 1990s, believes much in the integrity of the system anymore?
This one is a six-part series, made as a co-production between TnaG and broadcasters in Scotland and Wales. Recalling that before 1914, there were more than 250 coal and iron pits in south Wales, a Welsh professor made a telling point about the failure of Britain's 1926 general strike. The middle-class response, he said, was much more aggressive and passionate than working-class determination to win. This is an unpalatable truth for those who would like to propagate the myth that the vast majority of manual workers conform to Larkinite passion. The history of this century tells a different story.
Next Tuesday, TnaG will celebrate its 1,000th day on air. It is surely an unpalatable truth for its supporters that its ratings do not do justice to its content. Given its resources, the channel has performed commendably but the broadcasting market is merciless. It's a tough one, but An Lasair Cheilteach (even if isolating a Celtic element in a century or more of class struggle is suspiciously arbitrary) and programmes like it, remain streets ahead of most of the mush that is recording high ratings. Anyway, even if the Ryanair/L'Oreal generation aren't watching, it still deserves support - because it's worth it!
The running news story of the week was, of course, the death of John Kennedy Jr. Replacing the scheduled Cybill, Channel 4 ran a eulogising elegy late on Tuesday night. It was - and given the timing and the circumstances, it could hardly but be - predictably partial. At its core was the contention that the young JFK was emerging as a credible "clean cut" prospect to succeed his father in the White House. This possibility may have been overstated but, given his iconic status since that photograph of him saluting his father's coffin in 1963, his good looks and his generally scandal-free history, he cudda bin a contenda, alright.
There was, as you might expect in what was effectively an obituary, an excess of gush about JFK Sr being "charismatic" and wife Jackie being a "charming first lady". Fair enough, these people certainly cut the mustard in their time - but typically, the descriptions seemed more received than considered. And then there was - on RTE, too - this kneejerk nonsense about the Kennedys being "America's royal family". Surely any family which produces a president of the world's most powerful country - a republic - is entitled to see itself as more exalted than any mere royals.
After all, it was the decision of the people, and not because daddy or mammy is well-connected (though that can help too), which put them in office. Then again, perhaps we should expect such contempt for democracy from brainwashed broadcasters. Not that any of that matters greatly to the Kennedys just at this time. Though Channel 4 made much of the influence of John Kennedy Jr's mother on his upbringing, it did not mention that she placed great stress to her son on her own family's alleged French ancestry. Not that it appears to have mattered greatly. JFK Jr, it seems, sported a shamrock, not a royal, fleur-de-lis tattoo.
Anyway, it is as well that the bodies of John Kennedy, his wife and his sister-in-law have been recovered. Otherwise, we could be bracing ourselves for some thoroughly mad conspiracy yarns in which the young JFK is sighted with Elvis scuba-diving off Madagascar. As it is, it is yet another tragedy for a family which seems to get it in bucketfuls equal to its bucketfuls of loot, prestige and influence. Carelessness or macho derring-do would appear to have caused this latest, avoidable death. There are other documentaries yet to be made on this sorry story.
Meanwhile, a rare Irish-produced programme from TV3. Day Trippers featured Ronnie Drew doing his professional Dub routine, journeying from the Strawberry Beds to Grafton Street, Raglan Road, Baggot Street, the Shelbourne Hotel, Sandymount Strand, the docks and on to McDaid's and The Long Hall. It was as cliched as the sort of Bord Failte stuff Aer Lingus used to show to Yanks in transit, 35,000 feet above the Atlantic. And yet, for all that, it did have moments of charm.
Ronnie's been off the drink for a decade or so now and Dublin's drinking culture - drunk writers, drunk musicians, drunk actors, drunk journalists, drunk chancers, drunk wannabees and drunk Joe Soaps - appears to have all but shrivelled. That's just as well, of course. But clearly, there remains a nostalgia for the rare aul' times of cirrhosis, the DTs and celebrity alcoholism. The great pity about this day trip was that TV3 destroyed Ronnie's rendition of Patrick Kavanagh's soulful, indeed spiritual, Raglan Road at the end. First a continuity guy started braying over Ronnie's warbling. Then they just slipped into an ad break. That's New Dublin for you.