Things are moving so slowly in On Home Ground that even one of its own characters seemed to collapse into a coma with the stagnancy of it all. Last Sunday night, Cathal (Gary Lydon) was found in a heap in the garden by his wife. He had been threatening to nod off from the start, squinting repeatedly, acting irritable and rubbing his eyes so much you feared he was going to wear away his head like a rubber-tipped pencil. About 35 minutes in, the whole thing became too much for him and the man keeled over. He didn't miss anything while he was asleep.
Of course, Cathal wasn't really nodding off for that reason. He had actually lulled into a diabetic coma. In On Home Ground, if the actors stumble upon a storyline of any substance they have to milk it for all it's worth for fear of waiting years for another one to come along. Hence, Cathal's symptoms being acted out in big letters. If you don't ham it up in On Home Ground, there's the fear that your storyline will just get lost in the slow-moving stream and be carried away for good.
The thing is, you could go anywhere you wanted and return to find that you have missed very little. Even the on-the-field sequences carry little suspense. This is an eight-part series about football. You don't need to be a genius to figure out that it would be a pretty useless series about football if there was no football left to play. There are only so many last-gasp victories you can put up with. So far there have been two. There has also been one draw. Like the GAA, On Home Ground knows that there are significant benefits to be had from replays. Sky One's utterly trashy but oddly compelling soap about a soccer team, Dream Team, quickly realised that the match sequences needed spicing up, so they once devised a plot in which a sniper tried to assassinate a player from the roof of Wembley stadium during the FA Cup Final. If there's one thing this country isn't short of it's unemployed snipers.
GAA hot topics are treated with doses of symbolism heavy enough to crush the script completely. The previous week, coach Fergal Collins's brother arrived home from England, where he is a player with a Premiership team. He wears nice clothes. He earns more money in a week that most of Kildoran earns in a year. Even though he earns all this money, he travelled home on the car ferry. This was so he could be seen driving his sports car around the town. While home he enticed a decent young footballer with the promise of a trial with an English team. If the actor, Karl Shiels, had been dressed up as a giant soccer ball and told to roll about the town enveloping young children, it may have added an air of subtlety to proceedings.
On Home Ground also features a musical water torture of a score. Piano, strings and synthesiser come together with such insipidity that it seems to act as a kind of quicksand in which everything else becomes stuck. The camera moves slowly, continually panning across or gently creeping in. The dialogue often zips along with all the urgency of a continental landmass. There is a real fear the actors will age quicker than the plots. The budding teenage romance between Cora and John may not be resolved until they are both well into their 70s.
Cora, coach Collins's daughter, is played by the radiant Dominique McElligott, a young actress who sparks in her every scene, even when given a damp storyline. This week she fought on behalf of the girls' team to be treated on a level playing pitch with the boys. (Think "heavy symbolism", remember.) She was aided in her struggle by the local all-ambition, no-skill journalist, Sharon. Like all television journalists, Sharon sees the biggest scoops in only the smallest stories. All she's missing is a hat with a press card stuck in its brim and a camera with a giant flash bulb. She works in Kildoran FM, a local radio station kitted out so well that she could be broadcasting from the International Space Station.
In Kildoran, the entire town hangs on her every word. If they just turned over to Liveline they might just cheer themselves up a bit. There is so little humour among the characters that if it does rain you fear it may tip the entire population of the town over the edge. Like its most obvious reference point, Ballykissangel, the sun is almost always shining on Kildoran. The summer is the type only experienced by towns found on Sunday evening prime-time television. But unlike Ballykissangel, the charm seems to be wherever the winter is.
There's no doubting that On Home Ground is shot with great professionalism. But it looks far better than it tastes. It would appear that the attempt to fashion an easy-going, undemanding but engaging Sunday evening drama in the vein of those so successful on UK television for the past decade has led only to a series blanched of all personality. It is a recipe followed to the last gram, but without any of the cook's own individuality. RT╔ has reportedly commissioned another series of On Home Ground. The problem is we're still waiting on the opening credits to roll on this one.
If you do want Sunday evening drama of the highest quality, try the BBC's exquisite adaptation of Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now, which comes to a close tomorrow night. Andrew Davies' treatment of this pot-boiler of old versus new money, of society and corruption, has been gripping and lavish, and has hinged on a wonderful performance from David Suchet, buying his way into English society as the devious, almost vampire-like foreigner, Augustus Melmotte. It has proved to be something of a rebirth for an actor too often constrained by the mac and murder plots of police dramas and Poirot mysteries. His Melmotte is all vulgarity and irresistible charm, quickly growing fat on the greed and naivety of those buying stocks in his spurious plans for a railroad through South America. He is a tic who will not stop sucking on the blood until it all explodes very nastily indeed. The Way We Live Now was written in 1872. It is not strange at all that it should feel so contemporary.
The Prime Time two-part report on the systematic sexual abuse of boys in orphanages run by Christian Brothers in Australia and Canada made for chastening retelling. For the Australian boys, it began with another historical tragedy. Born in the UK, they were rounded up and sent to Australia as part of the forced migration policy put in place to boost the white population after the second World War. They travelled to the continent under the promise of a new life, but ended up in a place where opportunities were plentiful only for the paedophile. A House of Commons Select Committee later described the orphanages as a "paedophile's dream". That same report decided that the term "sexual abuse" was an impotent description for the "exceptional depravity" of the Australian orphanages.
The word depravity was also used a lot in the Australian Senate's investigation. It described the "systematic criminal assault" of the boys in the brothers' care. In the Prime Time report, the descriptions of the abuse were graphic. The rape of seven-year-olds. Boys waking up in blood-soaked beds and turning the sheets to avoid getting further beatings. As we have since learnt, the order knew of the abuse. Secret reports were delivered to its Dublin headquarters on a regular basis. In 1993, the Christian Brothers eventually issued an apology, but compensation was less forthcoming. The order spent more on lawyers than it did on the victims. Of the 14 brothers named in the senate report, only one has been tried and convicted. In order to settle out of court, the victims were asked to sign a document saying the Christian Brothers had not done anything wrong, as if the stroke of a pen would deliver instant clemency. "Everyone's got to meet Him up there. Their maker," said one victim. "That's when they'll get their justice."
How much sweeter it would be to see it delivered in this life first.
tvreview@irish-times.ie
