Fair City (RTE 1, Tuesday)
Niall O'Dowd - an Irish Voice (RTE 1, Tuesday)
John Montague - Rough Fields (RTE 1, Wednesday)
Streets of Laredo (BBC 2, Sunday & Monday)
As Celine Dion belted out the theme tune from Titanic, Helen Doyle slipped her earthly moorings. This week's episode of Fair City wasn't quite soap opera - certainly not soap in the naturalistic tradition - it was a full assault on the emotions, a tearjerker in the romantic melodrama genre of Love Story. Marriage is usually a soap's dramatic highpoint but, on Tuesday evening, Helen's death redefined the theatrics of the game.
The episode opened with Helen's partner Paul Brennan pacing anxiously in a hospital corridor. A consultant, lacing gravitas with growing resignation, explains that Helen has had a brain haemorrhage and is too unwell to withstand an operation. Cut to Doyle's corner shop, where Helen's father, Bela, is showing off a cake for Helen's coming-home party. "Welcome Home Helen" reads the inscription on the cake. You know that this is going to end in tears.
You knew anyway, because RTE's publicity for the episode was designed to maximise ratings. Here was a Helen whose death would launch a thousand press releases and, RTE hoped, would stain a thousand tissues. In fairness, the acting of all concerned - especially that of the principals - was convincing. But then there was Celine Dion in the background. Any chance of running a tight ship, of allowing naturalism to evoke the required emotions, was sunk once Ms Dion began her titanic wailing.
Cutting between images of electronic monitors, the Doyle family receiving the grim news and Paul's estranged wife, Nicola, squabbling with her (and Paul's) obnoxious business partner, the build-up to the moment of death was assuredly paced. The final dialogue between Paul and the dying Helen, peppered with mutual "I love you" whispers, was also admissable. But Helen's death-bed reconciliation towards Nicola, who, like Helen, has had a child with the busy Paul, was a plot neatness too far.
It was too neat because, meanwhile, Nicola was preparing to visit Helen, whom she believed to be recovering and likely to be discharged within a day or so. Tying up loose ends is one thing - effecting such a radical and timely transformation between two feuding women mangled character for the sake of convenience and for pumping-up the intensity of the tear-fest. Still, even that might be forgiven beside the intervention of Ms Dion.
The first faint strains (". . . I believe in the heart and my heart will go on . . . .") began to reverberate around the intensive care unit just before the ad break. It was impossible not to think of the dreadfully wholesome heroics of twerpish heart-throb Leonardo DiCaprio. If you couldn't go with the ludicrously inflated emotion, it turned a generally fine piece of dramatic acting into an embarrassment. Suspension of disbelief can only withstand so much.
And yet, the finale, which included Paul being comforted in Nicola's arms, was irresistible. It had the characteristics of a car crash - you couldn't look, yet you couldn't look away. Having locked himself in the room with the brain-dead Helen, Paul can be persuaded only by Nicola to open the door. As the life-support machine and the light are switched off, Paul holds Helen's hand and says "Forever". Cue Celine.
At full belt this time, the Titanic theme tune blasts out over retro images of Helen. We see her from episodes past - smiling mostly, of course. Finally, we see her jilting Mike at the altar to run away with Paul. A wedding (albeit a dramatically ruptured wedding), a death and Celine Dion at full tilt while Helen begins to stiffen with a single, red rose laid across her midriff . . . this is soap opera on acid. There are risks for soap in inflating its emotional content to the searing sentimentality of Mills and Boon.
No doubt, RTE had a captive audience for Helen's death. But combining this Helen with the voice that launched the big ship Titanic was, ultimately, shameless. Sure, soap opera is primarily entertainment. But it can also concern itself meaningfully with real, social issues and, in fairness to the generally admirable Fair City, it regularly does so. Periodic bouts of screaming sentimentality may deliver audiences. But if a soap's naturalism is to be sunk by the manipulated tears of melodrama, the genre could head the way of the Titanic itself.
Some pertinent documentaries on RTE this week. Sport (Paul McGrath), politics (Niall O'Dowd) and arts (John Montague) provided a wide-ranging spread for disparate interests. The McGrath programme, previewed, indeed part-reviewed, at length on this page last week, was primarily notable for its access to its notoriously shy subject. It was a eulogy but nonetheless appropriate as such.
Niall O'Dowd - an Irish Voice was similarly positive about its subject. Never having previously reviewed a documentary in which I featured (albeit very briefly), it would nonetheless be improper to ignore O'Dowd, given that he appeared, between Irish and British channels, on our screens every night this week (Monday to Friday). Frank Hand's documentary was the centrepiece of the O'Dowd-fest. Lively, informative and engagingly presented, albeit with a few minor glitches (face-to-camera shots which were sometimes too stark), its greatest strength was the research of its reporter and narrator, Mairead de Buitleir.
Opening with a U2 soundtrack in New York, where O'Dowd publishes the Irish Voice newspaper and Irish America magazine, its first one-third or so was a conventional, biographical treatment. After that, it began to tell the story of O'Dowd mustering influential Irish Americans behind the Northern peace process. In short, on the testimonies of Gary McMichael, Gerry Adams, Nancy Soderberg (former Clinton adviser in the White House), Trina Vargo (an adviser to Ted Kennedy) and various others, there would be no peace process without Niall O'Dowd.
Getting the likes of Soderberg and Vargo on the record to tell the story of how O'Dowd convinced Clinton to sponsor the peace process was fascinating. Soderberg, now an ambassador, admitted to initial scepticism about the undertaking. Vargo explained how Ted Kennedy was "no Gerry Adams lover". Still, surrounded by a few convinced US politicians and corporate titans, O'Dowd won the confidence of Kennedy and Clinton. This represents as extraordinary a political success as we have seen in years and produced a story well worth telling.
Perhaps it was loyalist leader Gary McMichael's endorsement of O'Dowd which was most significant. Portrayed by some opponents of the peace process as being lopsidedly close to Sinn Fein, O'Dowd has a firm and warm advocate in McMichael. Watching the two men in a working-class Belfast estate and contrasting that with earlier New York and Washington glitz, showed you the Realpolitik of present world politics.
McMichael and Adams, despite the deprivations suffered by many in their support bases, have been happy to receive the patronage of Washington. Successful politics invariably requires the maintenance of uneasy alliances between ideology and pragmatism. O'Dowd clearly understands this. There can be no doubt that US foreign policy regularly leaves a great deal to be desired. But if on-the-ground Belfast leaders like McMichael and Adams opt for pragmatism to build a US-sponsored peace settlement, they deserve support.
Anyway, Niall O'Dowd - an Irish Voice, being a profile, concentrated on its central character and his role in the peace process. Arguments about US foreign policy can be undertaken in other programmes. What became clear from this one and from his appearance the previous evening on Questions and Answers is that Niall O'Dowd, though nominally a publisher and lobbyist, is now as skilled a politician as Ireland has produced in quite some time. To date, his is an extraordinary achievement - if not quite as eh, extraordinary as the over-40s football we saw him playing on the hallowed ground of Home Farm.
RTE'S profile of poet John Montague was screened to coincide with its subject's appointment to the Ireland Professorship of Poetry - a post which will see him spend time at UCD, Trinity College and Queen's University. John Montague - Rough Fields, produced and directed by Michael Davitt, allowed its subject to tell his own story. Unlike the O'Dowd documentary, there were few contributions from associates of Montague.
In that sense, it was closer to being an authored documentary, with Montague musing on the life of the writer, the North, the Republic, the US (where he was born) and, most engagingly, on literary life in the stagnant Dublin of the 1950s. Between such musings, the poet read from his work - a necessary part, of course, of such a programme. It might have been better, however - at least for those of us not too familiar with the poet's work - to have used a "News for the Deaf" type scroll in synch with the readings.
The heard word and the seen word are different. The gap between them is especially significant with sophisticated poetry. It can be, for most people, just too difficult to catch the allusions and the implications of imagery on a one-off listening. Still, that is essentially a technical consideration regarding these types of documentaries. More substantially, Davitt's programme was in praise, not just of John Montague, but of contemporary Irish poetry.
Describing the admirable Theo Dorgan and his staff at Poetry Ireland as "spies of the spiritual", Montague perhaps plumped for almost irresistible alliteration at the expense of reasonable description. Not to worry. Anybody who could describe an old woman, remembered from childhood, as a: "Fanged chronicler of a whole countryside/ Reputed a witch/ All I could find/ Was her lonely need to deride" doesn't require lectures about words from this column.
Finally, Streets of Laredo. Larry McMurtry's sequel to the wonderful Lonesome Dove was spread over almost four hours on BBC 2 this week. Visually and atmospherically it was sublime, recreating a version of America's Old West which had the range of epic and the magic of myth. But it had even more - it had James Garner (Maverick; The Rock- ford Files), who, even now at 70, is, paradoxically perhaps, the warmest cool dude in TV history.
In a drama which included a psychopathic teen crackshot; a character who, for sport, burned children alive; a DIY amputation; rape; suicide by rat poison; hanging; a score of killings and woundings and a lot of dudes with seriously evil attitudes, Garner was the man. He played an ageing Texas Ranger pursuing the psycho-teen. The overall impression was brutal, depicting the West as truly barbarous. But there was a depth and resonance to the drama and appearance of this one that even a mega-amplified Celine Dion wouldn't have been able to destroy. Cool TV.