The TV Year: It was the year of makeover shows, a resurgence in British drama, and some bloke called Dunphy, writes Shane Hegarty
The year began without The Dunphy Show and it ends without The Dunphy Show and there was a war in between that just about matched it for media coverage.
It has been a year for the lifestyle make-over shows on British TV. There is nothing in your life that cannot be fixed. Your dinner parties are poor, your house is dirty, your marriage is a shambles. There is a show for everything in which a know-it-all couple watch your every move, pick up on your every flaw. The genre may finally have peaked. What Not To Wear, the original of the species, has become irritating and intrusive. When once Trinny and Susannah were the model which other presenters followed, they have now become only dislikeable caricatures.
It was also the year of the class-clash, programmes which threw the middle and working classes into gladiatorial combat in the domestic arena to enormous success. Channel 4's Wife Swap was grotesque, voyeuristic, manipulative and unmissable.
It has also been the year during which British drama emerged from a long hibernation, following a decade in which it had found fewer and fewer stories to tell and most concerned serial killers and the troubled cops trying to capture them.
This year delivered unexpected variety in serial and one-off dramas. Perhaps triggered by the success of Simon Schama's series A History of Britain and a delayed reaction to the success of the movie, Elizabeth, British television rummaged through its history books and found plenty of ready-made tales. Better, most of it has involved swishing swords and grim tortures and heads dropping into baskets.
ITV gave us Boudica and Henry VIII, while the BBC gave us the quite marvellous The Lost Prince and, more recently, Charles II: The Power and the Passion. From more recent events, Channel 4 and Stephen Frears fashioned the excellent semi-truth of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's early careers in The Deal. Ultimately, though, the best drama of the year came from the smart fiction of State of Play, in which John Simms and David Morrissey engaged in some thrilling political cat-and-mouse, garlanded with twists and tension.
Its second series is eagerly awaited and if it had already looked to 24 for inspiration it can do so again. Jack Bauer's (Kiefer Sutherland) second longest day was even more thrilling, dark, bloody and intelligent than his first. A third series is on the way, and though you groan at the conceptual gymnastics that might be needed to justify its return, the sequel turned out to be far more brilliant than could have been hoped. Meanwhile, The Sopranos, if it needs repeating, remains very good indeed.
When the war in Iraq finally broke it came only after a lengthy spell of yearning from the news channels. They wanted war. They needed war. The military gave them war, or at least a version of it. By the time the news organisations had figured out that the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch had been a masterstroke of propaganda, the near fictionalisation of the event as it happened, it was far too late. There is at least a realisation that British and Irish television struggles with its conscience, that it kicks out against the military management. Watching Fox News, as unfair and unbalanced as it claims it is fair and balanced, is to appreciate French philosopher Jean Baudrillard's contention that the 1991 Gulf War did not take place.
At home, across both RTÉ1 and Network 2, the prime-time schedules have become more and more the preserve of home-grown programmes. Prime Time and the True Lives documentary strand both continue to be vital. Fine Gael: A Family at War and The Rod Squad - following the misfortunes of Roddy Collins at Carlisle United football club - both proved highly entertaining and accomplished series.
Ultimately, of course, the year belongs to Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Brian's Chávez: Inside The Coup, a documentary about the 2002 Venezuelan coup that was of rare power and perception. It won award after award, caused political waves in a manner which television seldom can and even survived the stigma of becoming Fidel Castro's favourite programme.
Hector Ó hEochagáin finally got a transfer to RTÉ with the endearing Only Fools Buy Horses, before returning to TG4 for another series of Amú.
Meanwhile, Ryan Tubridy wobbled a little on his first night at The Rose of Tralee but steadied himself well enough to suggest that from such anachronistic television has emerged the future of RTÉ.
The Clinic proved that RTÉ has learnt the harsh lessons from the bland On Home Ground and it looks like finally providing the station with the holy grail of a reliable, Sunday night serial. Coupled with the ongoing success of Bachelors Walk, RTÉ suddenly finds itself getting the hang of drama. The Panel proved, too, that since it has rejected the sitcom and all its deeds, it really does have the ability to make very funny television.
That You're A Star, Cabin Fever and Celebrity Farm were ratings successes confirms that what a critic hates the public will often only hug even closer to its breast. There are some programmes, of course, on which everyone agrees. Just as RTÉ had put forward a strong argument for the licence fee increase along came House of Love and it made you want to ask for your money back.
The year was played out against the soundtrack of Pat Kenny and Eamon Dunphy and the circus that surrounded them. The mayfly existence of The Dunphy Show gave us all something to gawk at, but the manner in which it failed was a depressing end to an inglorious chapter. It may have been a shot of adrenaline to a supine broadcasting environment, but it leaves Irish broadcasting with an awful come down.
The TV3 Christmas party, one suspects, will be a muted affair. There will be little passion in the office flings. The tinsel will hang limp. A year of promise ends in dread. Its documentary series, Matters of Fact, did not offer a fitful alternative to RTÉ's True Lives and instead delivered a short and disappointing series of documentaries.
The Dunphy Show failed for plenty of reasons, but the station's decision to allow it go head to head with The Late Late Show always meant sending its new flagship out into treacherous waters. It may gripe about an environment weighted in favour of RTÉ, but TV3 has shown some awful misjudgment this year and it decided to take the toughest way up the mountain before blaming the mountain when it tumbled back down.
Granada-Carlton, so influential in TV3, operates in a British environment in which the weak are now dealt with mercilessly.
Granada's The Family - an anodyne London gangster drama starring Martin Kemp - leaked viewers, so it was removed from its prime-time slot and sent to the Siberian reaches of late-night scheduling. It was one of several programmes given similar treatment this year. Hugh Laurie's Fortysomething, Single, starring Michelle Collins, and the medical drama Sweet Medicine all got re-scheduled and abandoned.
There is no room for stragglers any more. If it is drowning, goes the thinking, then put your foot on its head to quicken it up. What happened to Dunphy was that the developing habits of British television asserted themselves in the Irish market.
It may point the way to a bleak future. TV3's successes - Ireland AM and Agenda - have been at the edges of the schedules. Its failures - Haunted House, The Weakest Link and now The Dunphy Show - have taken place in the full glare of prime time. That sort of thing would give anyone a complex and the concern now is that TV3 will take fright and continue along the road to becoming little but another digital channel, churning out soaps, repeats, cheap and pointless American TV movies, and balk at the cost of taking RTÉ on and losing, and instead become little but an offshoot of UK Gold, taking the scraps from the table of Granada/Carlton, showing the dramas youwatched on ITV three months previously. It has been five years since we were given an alternative to RTÉ, but real choice now seems only further away than ever. It has been a good year for RTÉ, but a bad one for the viewer.
