Black Day at Blackrock - RTE 1, Monday
Leargas - RTE 1, Tuesday
Sex and the City - C4, Wednesday
Agenda - TV3, Sunday
The fictional rural village in Gerry Stembridge's Black Day at Blackrock is billboard material for Bord Failte. A rickety old newsreel opened the one-hour drama. Darling little houses lined up like pink and yellow marshmallows, sheep and cows milling carelessly through country lanes while local folk practised their square dancing in the streets. The dewy-eyed American voice-over, who may have overdosed on soda pop, asked, "Why not visit beautiful Blackrock, where lovely cailins will welcome you, small red-haired boys will pose for you and the happy locals will give you a good deal on a sheep."
Sounded dandy if you fancied two weeks in Trumpton. But the film's mischievous background music - "country twangs" meet "celtic springs" - told us there was more to Blackrock beneath the technicolor glare. The title is a wry allusion to John Sturges's sombre tale of racism and murder in a small town, Bad Day at Black Rock (1954). In this Blackrock, the lively residents were seething at the prospect of playing host to 30 asylum seekers.
And so the merry morality tale unfolded into a satirical, live-action cartoon. We were in Ireland 2001, but the 1950s were around every corner. The pink beauty parlour was full of big-haired gossips in hooped earrings. Scenes were shot through windows, framing those on the other side like characters in a postcard.
The bad guys, the two main opponents to the asylum seekers, were a slightly sinister Abbott and Costello double act. Terry (Pat Kinevane), a shaven-headed town clown with an arrogant swagger, ranted and raved in his vest: "We're a soft touch over here, on account of Live Aid and black babies." His partner in crime, Eugene (Don Wycherley), was a hypocritical, murderous villain. His corner supermarket sold some food with an ethnic flavour. Even his wife, we soon discovered, didn't like him. "No woman is going to make a fool out of me and get away with it," he said on one occasion, in pointed, pantomime fashion. Although there were many home truths here, Stembridge didn't hold a mirror up to rural (or rural/suburban) Ireland. Instead, he poked fun at it.
The good guys were led by Pauline McLynn's Grace and her level-headed son, Tom (Andrew Lovern) - perhaps Stembridge's alter ego - who shook his head in disbelief at all the racist goings-on, the way Angela Lansbury used to do in the denouement of Murder She Wrote. They did battle with a string of one-liners: "No one is going to use our town as a dumping ground", and "Why can't they find jobs like the rest of us?".
It came to a head at a heated town meeting. Tom took the floor. "People here tonight seem to be, well, afraid," he said in a schmaltzy, impassioned speech. And through the ripple of support he garnered from the mob, Tom's alter ego gave himself a round of applause.
Ennis, Co Clare, is Kansas to Blackrock's Oz. It is a grittier, greyer place. Three refugees living there spoke to Leargas. Despite their dreams for the future, Leargas reminded us, in its unnecessarily literal style, "anguish is their constant companion". Anto Cristelle Etanda fled Congo with three of her six children after spending three months in prison: "I'd say Ireland is my home, because if I stayed in my own country, I'd be dead." The three children remaining in the Congo are without a parent, as her husband was executed. "Because I didn't know if they were eating," she recalled, "I spent all of my social welfare money trying to contact them." In the meantime, she hopes to put her English, Swahili, French, Lingala and Tetela to use as an interpreter.
Her friend, Cecilia Martinez-Conway, a quantity surveyor, left Cuba in 1994 and now lives in Ireland with her Irish husband and two children. "It's like being a child lost in the woods or on the street," she said of her arrival in Ireland without English. "For me, my home will always be Cuba. That's where I was born and where I played as a child."
Joao Azoua Nkutua escaped from Angola in 1994. He doesn't know if his wife or children are dead or alive: "I was blindfolded and hung upside down with my legs dangling in the air. They beat you and throw water at you, filthy water." Unlike his two compatriots, he didn't shed a tear. But, as he explained, "I feel it's not really me who's here. I'm already buried back in my country."
The Manolo Blahnik-heeled Manhattanites of Sex and the City are a world away from Ennis and Blackrock. The series has a new arrival. Aidan (John Corbett), who used to be the hunky DJ on Northern Exposure, is the latest lover of Sarah Jessica Parker's 30-something sex columnist Carrie. Next to the diminutive Carrie, Aidan looks like a fine 6 foot 7 inches. As Mae West would say, "Forget about the six feet, let's talk about the seven inches" - and that was long before Sex and the City shook us up with its frank girl talk. Still, Carrie is concerned that they never fight. She should consider herself lucky. Calista Flockhart's Ally McBeal just got Robert Downey Jnr fresh from prison on drug-related charges. Heather Locklear, in the absence of Michael J Fox, is now making do with Charlie Sheen on Spin City. An uncomplicated, lesser-known exile from the now-cancelled Northern Exposure is starting to look pretty good.
Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Carrie's fabulous, 40-something, PR executive friend, has now been ousted from her plush Upper East Side apartment for bringing home a litany of strange - and always handsome - men. She then moved to a more expensive loft in the aptly titled meatpacking district. This week she met her new neighbour: a sleazy pick-up merchant with a pony-tail and, worse, a penchant for tacky drinks - wine spritzers, to be exact. Samantha was at an uncharacteristically low ebb, fearing she had reached menopause. Eschewing her usual good taste, she took Mr Spritzer up on his offer. But as they both discovered, her menopausal worries were unfounded. (Mr Spritzer, she quickly realised, lacked the necessary fizz.) What, one may ask, would that 1970s small screen lollapalooza, the goody-goody Mary Richards (AKA Tyler-Moore), have made of Sex and the City's lovelorn Mary Magdalene? I like to think she is smiling down on her benevolently from TV Heaven.
Another less stylish outcast, who looked remarkably like Ann-Margaret in a knock-off Chanel suit, clicked her way through the streets of 1970s Dublin to malicious whispers of "TV Sponger" in a classic RTE licence fee advertisement. "Now everybody believes we're. . . that sort," she confessed to hubby, shame flashing under her big, black eyelashes. This opening segment on Agenda had Bob Collins, Director General of RTE, smiling gingerly from ear to ear. While I'm sure the Ann-Margaret look-alike wasn't designed to lull him into a false sense of security, presenter David McWilliams soon knocked the smile off his face.
After a quick guffaw, McWilliams got down to business. "Bob, you're looking for [an extra] 50 quid a year, a big, big, hefty increase in the licence fee. What is RTE going to do with this money?" Bob, as he appears to be known in TV3, will give viewers more drama, children's shows, documentaries and news. RTE, he said, aims to be distinctively Irish, produce indigenous programmes and provide a window on the world.
On cue, McWilliams flicked nimbly through that day's listings in the RTE Guide, citing The Dukes of Hazard, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Friends and The Simpsons. "This is not indigenous programming!" he said, hands aloft with Evita Peron-esque indignation.
"It's a little trite to take an extract from the RTE Guide and recite it," Collins responded, telling him that RTE also supplies programmes to TG4, news and radio. But because of RTE's lack of transparency, McWilliams explained, people are understandably suspicious about where their licence money is going. "Line them up," Collins replied. By now, McWilliams was nailing Collins to the crossword in the RTE Guide. I, meanwhile, wanted to nail McWilliams's flailing hands to the desk. (He could pass the marks off as stigmata, adding divine credibility to his prophet-like predictions on the Irish economy.)
But back to RTE's lack of indigenous drama serials. "My tax is going to RTE, to bid for Vera Duckworth," McWilliams exclaimed with mock surprise, his hands bouncing across the screen like the ball on a karaoke machine. Playing the dual role of innocent licence fee payer one minute and hot-to-trot needle probe the next, McWilliams was obviously enjoying himself. Collins, who was becoming increasingly vexed, shot back, "David, don't be over-dramatic and don't misrepresent what is a clear situation." Clear? Has Glenroe not just been axed in time to import Eastenders?
In any event, Agenda managed to clarify one thing. RTE did bid for plucky Vera Duckworth - but ended up with dreary Pauline Fowler. And, be honest. Who would you rather have living next door?