Prime Time returned as normal again on Tuesday night. The previous Thursday, you may have noticed, things didn't go quite to plan. Those tuning in for some hard-nosed current affairs were instead greeted by the sight of four women in sportswear doing sit-ups by the sea. The young ladies were led by a fitness instructor with a body most men would kill for if they had the initial strength to get up off the sofa and grab the murder weapon.
He was a top-heavy man, getting heavier the closer you got to the top, rather like a slightly over-stuffed icing bag. "Nice and easy," he would say as they raised their legs, though patently not to point to a map of Afghanistan. "One more time," he would encourage as they reached to the sandy ground, while definitely not debating the finer points of IRA disarmament.
Eventually, somebody told us what was going on. "Tonight's Prime Time will not be shown due to technical difficulties." Maybe they couldn't get Brian Farrell into a leotard. How four women doing exercises on a beach came to replace Prime Time may forever remain a mystery.
This, though, happened to be the week in which Kate Adie is said to have accused news organisations of replacing good, experienced reporters with "bimbos" who have "cute faces and cute bottoms, and nothing else in between". Given the timing, then, the no-show by Prime Time almost looked like a post-modern statement.
TV3, of course, has so fallen for the idea of pretty young women reading the headlines that when I did stumble upon four barely-clad women doing exercises on a beach, I thought it was the TV3 news.
It's becoming a little creepy, this proliferation of young women some of whom are only an eye colour different from their queen bee, Grainne Seoige.
TV3's Stepford newsreaders also sound identical, all heavy on the sentiment, deep in the pitch. They come across like they have practised very hard to be newsreaders. You can picture them in front of the bedroom mirror at night, finding the bass in their voices, imagining themselves as Anne Doyle.
"Mr Bush promised. Another. Night. Of. Heavy. Bombing," they might intone to themselves, before shuffling their copy of Just Seventeen on the desk and practising their goodnight nod.
RT╔ has played the game a little too. When Sharon N∅ Bheolain first started reading Nuacht, both RT╔ and 50 per cent of the population realised that she had what could be termed "cross-lingual" appeal. Then, a couple of years ago there was this sudden move to sell Anne Doyle as an RT╔ "personality". Excellent, reliable newsreader as she is, part of her success may be because she is not someone who could ever be accused of bringing her personality to work with her.
Brian Farrell, though, falls way outside Kate Adie's firing line. He is resolutely old school. In the grand tradition of these sorts of programmes he wears a bow tie. Not just anybody wears a bow tie these days.
One generation looks in and acknowledges this as a token of real distinction. Another generation watches and wonders why it isn't spinning around as the polka dots light up in sequence to Auld Lang Syne.
Watching him on Tuesday night it was apparent that gravitas so weighs down his words that sentences often collapse under the weight. "Is there any escape, any safe haven?" he asked, with his intonation dropping drastically as if the words have been rolled off the edge of a cliff.
He is a presenter you can believe, someone you know has a lot between his ears because it seems to have taken a toll on his expression. When he says something is serious, you gather the family round. "Imminent disaster," he doomsayed. "Catastrophe," he catastrophised.
Sensing a theme, Michael Heney's subsequent report on the worsening plight of Afghan refugees conjured words worth a thousand pictures. "These people might be forgiven for thinking that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are on their case," he said, forgetting that the Afghans are not at all likely to be forgiven for viewing the horror of their situation in the context of Judaeo-Christian imagery.
"Truly they begin to look like the damned of the earth," he added, warming to his task. "In Christian parlance," he continued, trying to bamboozle us into thinking he hadn't gone down this linguistic road already, "these people are finding there is no room at the inn."
"You're talking nonsense," said Bush aide William Perle, although he wasn't actually talking to Michael Heney, but to Fintan O'Toole. The Irish Times columnist was making the point that when the US started dropping cluster bombs, it began targeting civilians, because this is a weapon that will bring death to the population for years to come. "Don't be absurd," snorted Perle, "I don't even know what you're talking about." O'Toole said that it was quite frightening that Perle didn't already know this. Perle, not the kind of man you'll ever find sticking flowers down the barrel of a gun, was having none of it. "You're talking blather!"
The Red Cross reports that unexploded bomblets killed 151 people in the year immediately following the Kosovan airstrikes. A UK Ministry of Defence report detailed how 60 per cent of cluster bombs dropped by British planes during that campaign either missed their intended target or remain unaccounted for. The RAF responded by saying that it was at least a better percentage than in the Gulf War. Perhaps if a young blonde lady with a cute face and a cute bottom explained it all to Richard Perle, he might understand a bit better.
In Linda Green, Lisa Tarbuck plays a commitment-phobic thirtysomething on the look-out for Mr Right. In TV land, thirtysomethings can only ever be commitment-phobic. It's a natural step from being twentysomething commitment-phobics. They'll reach fortysomething and find themselves in unhappy marriages. At fiftysomething, they'll be divorced or in a dead marriage and really sorry about it when Carla Lane turns up and gives them some kitchen sink philosophy to spout. At sixtysomething, they'll retire and moan about the twentysomethings of today while embarrassing their frustrated partner by accidentally microwaving the neighbour's poodle. And from seventysomething onwards, it'll be high jinks in Last of the Summer Wine, a programme you will have to wait another 40 years for me to review.
Anyway, like his excellent series, Clocking Off, Paul Abbott's Linda Green is episodic, giving us a different weekly plot around a central character. In Clocking Off, that central character was a factory; here all flows pleasantly around Tarbuck. In the opening episode, Abbott hit on a novel ploy, but one which may hopefully be adapted by other television drama - two Christopher Ecclestons in one programme. Eccleston is easily the most interesting actor on British television, one who squeezes himself so convincingly into every character that there is never any room left to believe it's an actor at all.
Here he played identical twins; Tom, soppy, considerate and far too nice compared with brother Neil, the nastier, conniving, two-timing side of the same genetic coin. Naturally, Neil was the one that Linda really liked, despite having already tried him out and settled for Tom instead. Nice Tom eventually turned out to be as slobbersome as a new puppy, and Linda dumped him, before discovering that it had been Bad Neil pretending to be Nice Tom all along.
It ended with Christopher Eccleston fighting Christopher Eccleston on her front lawn, as she marched off to see her mates, whom she didn't realise were involved in a foursome in her absence.
You'll have to trust me when I tell you it made far better, far simpler, far funnier television than it reads. Abbott's strength lies in how he can layer on the sub-plots without ever smothering either the chief plot or the humour.
This being the land of television, Linda has a disturbingly frank relationship with her parents. Dad is unmoved to discover that his daughter prefers Tom to Neil because he has a bigger willy. "That's never an advantage. It just means you can't buy the suit you had your eye on." He is more amused at the notion of her last two boyfriends looking exactly the same, carrying identical genetic make-ups.
"It's like Blade Runner," he suggests.
Or TV3.
tvreview@irish-times.ie
