TV Review: 'The road to Luxembourg starts here!" Back in the days of yore, before crucifixes were a fashion accessory studded with diamanté, the boys and girls of this soggy island rocked and rolled around parish halls from here to Ballyhaunis and back, with their beehives and double gussets.
They were secure in the knowledge that, no matter how the winds of change might ruffle their hemlines, Ireland would most certainly qualify for the Eurovision Song Contest. The second offering of Showbands, the warmly nostalgic drama that follows the hazardously unpredictable career of showband manager and ballroom owner Tony Golden (Liam Cunningham) - who has "the biggest bus in show business", apparently - and his protégé, Denise (Kerry Katona), made a welcome return this week.
The two-part drama focused on Tony's efforts to secure Denise a place in Europe, efforts that were temporarily scuppered when his rival, Alan Rendell (Denis Conway), found a gum-chewing chanteuse, Bella (the fantastically leggy Amy Huberman), squirming in her fishnets for a chance to elevate herself from backing vocalist to Eurovision contestant. Denise was then offered a gig in LA with a creamy-suited crooner called Mervyn Mooney (so smooth he was awarded the freedom of Tuam).
In truth, the plot was as flimsy as a hastily donned mantilla, but that really didn't matter; the characters that populate Showbands were so sweetly observed that you'd sit back and watch them read the phone book. Particularly touching was the milk-guzzling, agoraphobic rock'n'roller, Ricky (Tomás Ó Súilleabháin), with the improbable hair colour and equally unconventional relationship with his manager, Frank (Don Wycherly), a man burning with mad love and repression under the one Stetson.
Showbands was a terrific New Year opener for RTÉ's drama strand, and goes to show what can be achieved when you give a bunch of intelligent Irish actors a good script and a bit of latitude. Oh yeah, and bring back the National Song Contest - surely Ricky's Hucklebuck would blow away the cobwebs of defeat. "Squidgy over there," as Frank would say, "and tickle me with your lip hair."
The advent of January saw dramas bursting forth like early crocuses. The new series of Shameless splashed (literally) onto our screens, with the feckless Frank Gallagher (David Threlfall) urinating all over the camera lens. It was New Year's Eve and the residents of the Chatsworth Estate were in multifarious states of disarray.
Created by Paul Abbott and now written by Danny Boyle, Shameless is just kind of brilliant, and the tableau of drink- and drug-induced hedonism, with half the bar shagging in the toilets as midnight approached, was as mind-altering as the contents of Frank's pockets (which unfortunately for him included some horse tranquillisers).
The series may, however, be becoming a little stretched, as the Gallagher children, who are getting older, battle to convince us they are still struggling to keep a lid on the mayhem of their family life and to remain independent of social services. What really work are the brilliantly written vignettes that surround the family, such as the story of the barman who joins a literacy class at the behest of his strippergram girlfriend and is singled out for special attention by a voraciously sexual teacher who teaches him grammar with her tongue hanging out and her cleavage pulsing.
Shameless is, by turns, side-splittingly funny and deeply depressing. An emaciated, bearded Threlfall, flailing about in the Gethsemane of the wind-blown Chatsworth Estate like a drugged-up, benefit-receiving Jesus, rages against God and the tortuous drip-drip-drip of pain that must be endured by mere mortals, pitching drought, famine and tsunami against faith. Five-year-old Liam, meanwhile, shocks his fellow thespians in the school nativity play by telling them with certainty that God does not exist.
The hint of freeze-dried redemption that was eventually offered to the Gallaghers after Frank was discharged from hospital (horse pills overdose) was soon dispelled. When Frank, presiding over a last supper with his family before moving back in with his girlfriend, offered his children forgiveness for their deceit and told them (more Faginesquely than biblically) that they would be there for him in his dotage serving his every need, the gloom on their assembled faces obliterated any trace of sentimentality one might feel watching this unambiguously dysfunctional family unite.
Not all the flowers in the garden of January delights came up so impressively foul-smelling. Ian Rankin's detective, John Rebus, who prowls the dignified streets of Edinburgh with a fag in his mouth and a palatable amount of melancholy, re-emerged in the capable hands of Ken Stott. Rebus promised a lot - good writer, good actor, great location and a captive audience of poleaxed post-Christmas punters - but one of the many problems with the opening episode was that the mystery the laconic Scot had to solve was about as obtuse as a Christmas cracker (ah, pull it - so that's the trick!)
Someone should have told Rebus that when you have a frosty blonde called Philippa quivering with barely controlled malevolence, who is also a war games expert and says things such as "take big risks, confuse the enemy and always have a plan B" through violently pursed lips, it's time to stop looking for your killer and go for a ploughman's lunch - especially when she keeps a miniature Napoleon in her pocket.
Anyway, all the usual prime-time detective artefacts were in the pot: miniature effigies of smiling babies in coffins; ripped Bible pages containing extracts from Genesis; the ubiquitous brittle, chain-smoking woman leaving her DNA all over the ashtray; oh, and of course a bit of Sodom and Gomorrah. And then, lastly, the most facile of all: the independent, humorous woman, 20 years the detective inspector's junior, who runs an art gallery and who somehow just can't resist the pasty old cop, and willingly kicks off her stilettos while he puts on the jazz.
Guess what? Philippa did it, by proxy (don't go there), because she was the illegitimate daughter of her sister (I told you not to go there). There was one good line though, from an elderly midwife, who was flicking through a photograph album of babies. "Spinsterhood's only plus," she ruefully told Rebus, "is a well-sprung pelvic floor."
It's my solemn duty to warn you that Celebrity Big Brother is on the loose. And what a deeply uncomfortable and alarming line-up of faded grandeur and raw ambition the show has managed to pull together this time. I assume the Botox is on tap in the BB house, or else three weeks of abstinence is going to see a lot of deflated lip-lines.
First into the isolation tank was Chantelle, a plucky Essex girl whose hair extensions were longer than her frou-frou skirt, the only "non-celeb" of the bunch, who gets to stay if she can convince her housemates that she is in the celeb pantheon.
Then there was the pick of the crop, Michael Barrymore, who hasn't graced our sets since the tabloid feast that followed the discovery of a young man's body floating in his swimming pool. A pale, thin and shook-looking Barrymore received a rapturous response from the rent-a-crowd as he rode the catwalk to his comeback. After mustering some pizzazz in response, he got through the doors of the house and started chain-smoking - he knows he is the bait to net the punters.
After him, there were lots of surgically enhanced girls and boys who all looked the same, including transvestite former singer Pete Burns, who lost his back catalogue when he had to pay for his reconstructive surgery bill, and ex-BayWatch babe Traci Bingham, who explained that plastic surgery is "daring to be who you are; I love me". What?
A glamorous-looking Rula Lenska turned up too, also looking as if her face was stapled to her ears. Having been christened "Ruler" by her younger housemates, who obviously haven't thefoggiest notion who she is, she at least was candid enough to admit that Celebrity Big Brother was the only way she could get on the telly these days.
Last but far from least was the most unexpected guest at this fascinatingly gruesome party, the teetotal George Galloway ("gorgeous George"), kicked out of the British Labour party for his opposition to the war in Iraq. Galloway explained that he wanted to win Celebrity Big Brother to show the nation "a more civilised way of living your life". "Politics," he added, "is showbusiness for ugly people." Let's hope his proselytising nature keeps him off the Botox.
