TV Review'I might just spank a bottom," offered a tentative Anna Nolan to the shadowy figure on the inky stairwell. Well well, what a sophisticated little blob of lichen we have become. No longer do we have to resort to late-night Channel 4 for soft porn dressed up as sociology, writes Hilary Fannin, our national broadcaster has now embarked on its very own trite examination of our collective sexual psyche.
Web of Desire is a two-part documentary examining "Ireland's silent social and sexual revolution", presented by a somewhat nonplussed Nolan, occasionally (if bafflingly) bathed in sepia while gazing at her laptop in a pair of lacy tights.
Now you may well be entirely unaware, as you perambulate around this wintry, grudgingly festive island, attempting to quell a roaring mortgage or get your plaintive bleats heard by a drowning health service, that you are part of a silent social and sexual revolution. But as your pension prospects dwindle, your follicles wither and your posterior reaches for the floor, Ireland is coming of age online.
Or so this fatuous and sloppy documentary told us through a gauze of soft-focus fishnets and rambling, anecdotal conversation masquerading as analysis.
Padded out with balletic camera montages of self-conscious contributors at a minimalist cocktail party, the script (when it managed to surface above the adamantly groovy saxophone) veered, with the ardour of a Christmas drunk looking for a vol-au-vent, towards mind-numbing drivel. "Be cautious when the web becomes flesh," said someone (through one of those voice disguisers that make everyone sound like they've caught a chill at the teddy bears' picnic), as the camera offered us fuzzy shots of a bloke in a Batman mask hunched over his keypad attempting to type out his ardour through a pair of paw-like gloves.
The centrepiece of the shockumentary saw Nolan, having made e-mail contact with a bunch of polite Dublin swingers, spend a rainy evening last spring in a Christchurch apartment, where half a dozen couples were watching the results of election 2007 in their pelts. "Bloody PDs," they were heard to mutter before turning their attentions to more pressing matters. Among these enthusiastic observers of the political process was one swinger who had slipped away from the election count for some democratic sexual adventuring, during which, apparently, women set the pace while the men presumably got hot under the place where their collars used to be about Mary Harney's transfers.
"Bizarre and exhilarating," was the phrase Nolan chose to describe her experience, and we'll have to take her word for it, as none of these companionable folk chose to reveal even a pixillated self.
Meanwhile, back at the cocktail party, journalist Carol Hunt made the slightly controversial assertion that "this is the first generation of Irish men who have been able to express their sexuality in any healthy manner". One couldn't help feeling that this bald but nonetheless provocative theory would have made a more interesting premise for a documentary than the depressing chain of unchallenged trivia that decorated the soulless Web of Desire. At least it was a statement that could be interrogated; sadly, however, it was left to dangle, as unexplored as a rejected swinger.
AS THE UBIQUITOUS Gordon Ramsay comes under scrutiny in our very own leafy hollows for lending his name and reputation to a Co Wicklow restaurant charging an awful of money for what some deem awfully mediocre fare, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, his turn-around-a-restaurant show, continues to flourish.
This week saw the usually bellicose Ramsay reduced to scented frippery as he attempted to save the Fish and Anchor, an ugly little eatery in west Wales, home to pools-winning pugilist Mike and his grimly streaked wife, Caron, a woman of many earrings and much lip ("Shrek in a frock," as Ramsay so endearingly referred to her). The couple had lousy taste, couldn't cook and had the tableside manners of belching rhinoceroses. Also, their domestic disputes were local legend, which is more than can be said for their entrées, and when they weren't verbally clubbing each other into pulpy submission, they were arbitrarily tossing customers out of the joint for having the temerity to order dinner. What's more, Mike's dream was a Michelin star (unfortunately, no one had told him they don't come in the bottom of an Uncle Ben's jar).
After much mental bruising, Ramsay unearthed Mike's Italian roots from beneath a pile of rusting marriage parts and successfully managed to coax the couple and their shuddering business towards success.
"Looks like faggots, tastes like meatballs," was how members of the local rugby club described the Fish and Anchor's Italianate renaissance (this was, apparently, a compliment), and by the time Ramsay headed away to lick the cream off another franchise deal, Mike was doling out his "auntie pasties" with the fervour of Casanova and the dignity of Marcus Aurelius. (But just to be on the safe side, Ramsay had left a punchbag hanging from a tree in the couple's backyard.)
RAMSAY'S TEAPOT TSUNAMIS and blistering vocabulary are becoming increasingly humdrum, and one suspects that even he is beginning to tire of his outrage. Predictability, however, is not a problem shared by The Restaurant, a tasty little sideshow that this week invited columnist Kevin Myers to quell the "anarchy and insurrection" in a rather lovely eatery in Glassan, Co Westmeath, where he became head chef for a night. Myers's prose may be as delicate as a meat cleaver, but he showed a subtlety and artistry in the kitchen that was almost touching. Who would have thought that this veteran reporter and verbal bruiser would be the man to infuse his crème brûlée with lavender or lay down his foie gras on a pillow of brioche? "Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh come to daddy!" quivered resident food critic Paolo Tullio, transported into an enviable state of bliss as Myers's spherical oxtail and kidney pudding, encased in no-nonsense suet pastry, rolled into view.
"Blondes don't do oxtail," said a pithy Myers, observing on a screen in the kitchen a murder of obligatory blondes in LBDs perusing the menu at another table. The lobster tails and seared sea bass ("focus on the froth," the waiter advised with a gritty flourish), and scallops with a "somewhat metallic" broccoli purée, seemed to ring their elusive bells, however.
At the end of a busy and apparently stress-free night, Myers joined Tullio, Irish Times food critic Tom Doorley, and chef Kevin Thornton in the restaurant, where, to the diligent applause of his diners (which he accepted with the nonchalance of a confident culinary pussycat), he received a cool glass of his carefully chosen New World Riesling and a maximum five glittering stars from the judges.
THERE WAS A half-formed notion in Web of Desire that didn't quite make it to be a theory, which suggested that middle-class, middle-aged Irish couples may be drawn towards swinging in order to alleviate a sense of loss or boredom brought on by waking up, again, with your first love, who is now also your spouse, only to find that it's 20-something years later and that great big liberated post-Tiger universe out there, full of people sucking on lobster claws and throwing their streaks around, is passing you by. You think you've got problems? My Big Fat Moonie Wedding told the story of the 4,000 brides and grooms who gathered in New York's Madison Square Garden in July 1982 to partake in a mass marriage orchestrated by Sun Myung Moon to fulfil his mission to save mankind and populate the world with "sinless children" who would grow into super-beings. The young men and women, cult members bowing to "an exercise in faith and submission", had previously gathered to allow Moon to pair them off arbitrarily into couples, their life partners chosen at the flick of his powerful wrist.
After the mass marriage, the couples took part in a series of rituals, including presenting their posteriors to their spouses to have Satan beaten out of them with three belts of an indemnity stick and, eventually, a strictly controlled, hygiene-obsessed consummation designed to restore Adam's dominion after Eve screwed things up in the Garden of Eden.
My Big Fat Moonie Wedding traced one surviving marriage, and although it was sad to observe the lives of a couple mired in regret and trapped in the aspic of youthful naivety, you had to ask yourself: what were they doing? "Love?" asked the sagging, embittered Moonie groom a quarter of a century later, looking at his gloomy old Moonie bride. "I love my dog, I love my car. Anna is a trusted comrade. Love? That one has completely eluded me." I don't know, it's enough to make you lash down to the count centre in your pelt.