TV REVIEW/Shane Hegarty: The war is long over, but television is still replaying it from different angles. This week, Channel 4 beat the rest to the punch and brought us the first mini-season of documentaries on the war in Iraq.
Virgin Soldiers Channel 4, Monday
Al Jazeera: Exclusive! BBC2, Sunday
Plan B RTÉ1, Thursday
Eireville TG4, Sunday
DJ: The Story RTÉ1, Tuesday
Fair City RTÉ1, Monday to Thursday
It included Virgin Soldiers, in which we met the men of 2nd Squad, 1st Platoon, India Company of the US Marine Corps. They were 11 soldiers heading into combat for the first time. They had names like Muniz, Diaz and Velasquez, and were going to war because that's what they were paid to do. Cynicism came in narrow degrees. "Everyone's got a right to an opinion," said one lance corporal. "But it does you no good in the military."
They had come to Iraq to liberate interesting people. At their last briefing before invasion, someone asked the sergeant for the rules of engagement.
"Kill, kill, kill 'em all," suggested a voice off camera.
They had to find 'em first. India Company's first objective was a military complex just inside the border. They became engaged in a heavy firefight with an empty building. They pounded it, but the building refused to fight back.
When it was all over, the soldiers were exhausted from the effort and slightly deflated by not having been shot at in return. None of them was keen to die, but a battle without an enemy doesn't make such a good story for the grandkids.
The marines of India Company moved quickly into the desert, but the Iraqi army ran away quicker. They stormed a military complex that the boys in intelligence said contained a garrison of 1,000 to 3,000 troops, but that was deserted too. They rolled onwards into Baghdad, sleeping an average of three hours a day inside windowless armoured personnel carriers. They arrived in Baghdad, and the only bodies they saw wore sweaters and suit trousers. The looters were especially welcoming.
They fought another fierce battle with some determined rubble at the Fedayeen militia HQ. Lance Corporal Muniz spelled it out: "Hollywood's really messed us up. They should make war movies six hours long with 15 minutes of fighting. That's what war is."
Muniz must have forgotten that Terrence Malick did just that with The Thin Red Line and people walked out in disgust.
After 20 days of war, the soldiers were still virgins, like teenage boys hanging around a street corner unable to attract the attention of a prostitute.
Lance Corporal Diaz proved to have a canny understanding of US foreign policy. "Now I know how Rome became an empire," he said. "They beat up on countries that sucked. If we keep doing this, we'll rule the world!"
As Al Jazeera discovered, it is fine for the US and British governments to pay the likes of Diaz and Muniz to fight and die on their behalf, as long as the public isn't faced with the natural fulfilment of that contract. BBC2's Al Jazeera: Exclusive! was a behind-the-scenes look at the Arab station during the war that caused some fuss last week for replaying the station's footage of dead Allied servicemen. The BBC blurred the faces, just as it did with all the victims shown. Nobody complained about the footage of the dead children.
It was an echo of the original furore, when Al Jazeera broadcast pictures of US prisoners of war, causing it to become the focus of anger for the Allied military and its media. Al Jazeera was accused of violating the Geneva Convention, its journalists were barred from the New York Stock Exchange, and patriotic hackers targeted its website. The station, however, was unconcerned about US criticism.
"What can they do to Al Jazeera?" asked the news editor. "The only thing they can do is to bomb our office."
Which is exactly what occurred, although he refused to allow himself to believe it was deliberate. Al Jazeera, as it happens, lost more men in the war than did the India Company of the US Marine Corps.
Cork restaurant, Les Gourmandises, turned up on the telly this week, just as it had appeared in this newspaper's restaurant review last week. In Plan B, its owners are among four groups we are following as they set up in business. The others include a crèche and a publishing company. There is also an inventor who has come up with a device to make bricklaying easier, but who's finding it tough to convince people that it's worth reinventing the wall.
Anyway, Les Gourmandises received a positive notice in this paper last week, meaning that we may have reached the end of that story far quicker than we will in the programme. Plan B suffers from the same narrative- debilitating virus that infects Househunters. Rather than giving us one story per week, it jumps back and forth between several, disrupting the flow and disengaging the interest. It is like reading four books in the same sitting. In order to corral these stories together before they overflow, an invasive and irritating voiceover is employed. If this is Plan B, maybe we should have another look at Plan A.
Eireville, a short film by James Finlan, was a smart, if ultimately superficial, pastiche of Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville. In this black-and-white dystopia the time is always 19:16 and the year is always 1916. The score in the All-Eireville final is always 1-9 to 1-6. All cars are licensed GPO 1916. Everybody speaks in the past tense and is controlled by a computer hardwired to the brain of a Patrick Von Pearsemann. If you can't play the bodhrán you are executed.
Michael O'Sullivan played Lemmy Curamach, a private dick sent to destroy the brain. When he did so, the clocks started running again, the sun came up, people spoke in the present tense. He and his gal drove off into the future, but will likely turn back once they see the price of property and taste the cold stout.
Having watched DJ: The Story, there might be a move to hardwire us all into the brain of D.J. Carey. The film had some fun with that vexing question of whether he is the greatest player of his generation or the greatest player of all time, but otherwise just immersed itself in the man's genius. The footage of the young Carey showed a small kid leaving bigger opponents punching the ground in despair and team photos in which the camera had to pan down to find the boy in the midst of the men.
Brian Whelehan, of Offaly, remembered leaving the pitch after a minor final and asking. "Have I another 10 years of chasing this guy?"
Carey revealed that he most enjoys playing with his club, Young Irelands, because it means stepping out on the field with old schoolfriends and neighbours. It made you think that there are some things about Eireville that can make a person quite proud.
In Fair City, Heather introduced her ma to her mum. Heather is Renée's long-lost daughter. She had tracked Renée down in Carrigstown, but not before she had got herself into a relationship with her half-brother Floyd. Floyd and Heather have tried to forget the episode, but he is at the mercy of writers intent on bringing incest in through the back door and currently he wears the aggrieved expression of a freshly neutered basset hound.
In advance of meeting Renée and her husband, Christy, Heather's adoptive mum, Nora, was concerned that they might be the sort of people who would want to meet in a pub.
"They're not that sort of people," insisted Heather, who has yet to realise that the population of Carrigstown has an alcohol habit that impacts on the national average.
On Wednesday, Heather's two families finally met. Nora, by the way, is very posh.
"Howiya," said Christy.
"How do you do," said Nora.
Her family, we learned, read books.
Meanwhile, Mondo and Ciara, the pregnant Junior Cert student, have run away from home. They seem to be living in a Barna shed and Mondo spends his evenings wrapped in a lagging jacket. Somewhere, a dog barks. The two have become engaged, and Ciara has a sparkling bronze washer on her finger to prove it. He made her beans on toast for dinner, and lit a candle, but then was worried that she might think he was "a bit gay".
Mondo's da, Ray, is proving a good source of bad advice, just as much as Fair City is proving the only source of comedy on RTÉ. Mondo needs a second job, but Ray told his son to sign on instead. Mondo is not very worldly. But I have a job, he protested. Ray looked at his son with incredulity and told him to cop on. The social welfare office refused to give Mondo the dole, telling him that he was too young. Ray told his son to lie about his age, but Mondo had already tried and it didn't work. "Bleedin' system," snorted Ray. "I don't know why I pay me taxes."