Jailbirds (BBC 1, Monday and Tuesday)
Imprint (RTE 1, Thursday)
Football Millionaires (BBC 1, Tuesday)
Reel Time (RTE 1, Sunday)
Having been nicked in the grey, concrete wastelands of northern England, the inmates of Yorkshire's all-female New Hall prison face becoming knickered in multicoloured, flowery "belly warmers". Ample and anachronistic, the flowery, prison-issue underwear evokes a bygone age when females (made of sugar and spice, remember?) were considered scarcely capable of violence. Times have changed, of course. Now Britain's female prison population is mushrooming. The legitimate psychological, social and economic freedoms won by feminism appear to have a shadow side too.
Jailbirds, a docu-soap version of Prisoner: Cell Block H, will be screened twice weekly for the next few months. In TV terms, if not those of prison, this is quite a stretch. But on the evidence of the opening week's first two episodes, Chris Terrill's series is, aptly, captivating. The opening programme was titled Through the Gates. It focused principally on 27-year-old Toni, a first-timer and Annie Lennox lookalike, given 18 months for a heroin offence and on Sue, an older hand with a troublesome habit of assaulting coppers. Offered three pairs of the flowery knickers by the checking-in screw (or screwette?), Toni smirked derisively and declined. Bubbly and smiling, she might have been booking-in to Butlins. Within two days however, Toni was experiencing severe withdrawals. She was found with a noose around her neck and moved to an isolated "suicide-watch" cell, monitored by a closed-circuit camera. It was as if she had moved emotionally from Butlins to Belsen in 48 hours. Even allowing that the presence of a BBC camera initiated its own dynamic, this was harrowing stuff.
It may have been prison PR or it may be the way things are, but most arrivals did not seem unduly upset at the check-in stage. There were the customary indignities of prison protocol - strip searches, possessions itemised, mugshots - but the reception areas seemed atmospherically suspended between the cells within New Hall (which sounds like an Oxbridge college) and the world without. Busy and reasonably cordial (for the BBC cameras?), the prison's front-of-house staff didn't adequately foreshadow the loneliness, bullying and pain they were processing inmates to enter.
Sue was more stable than Toni. This was not her first trip to jail and judging by the relish with which she recalled attacking coppers, it's unlikely to be her last. Still, if initially Toni was strutting and Sue was surly, Ivy was something else entirely. A 71-year-old great-grandmother and fraudster, Ivy was a main focus of the second episode, Doing the Rattle. "I'm afraid I have been making use of the credit cards and cheque books of other people," she said in an accent and tones more usually heard on Antiques Roadshow and arts review programmes.
In episode two we also met Melissa, a 17-year-old child with an angelic face, a heroin problem and, unless she manages big changes soon, a future from hell. Whimpering into the prison payphone, Melissa begged her mother to send her "a tenner - for baccy and stuff". But mother, it seemed, was either a heartless harridan or a woman broken from too much listening to her delinquent daughter. Meanwhile, 10 weeks after putting her head in a noose, Toni had survived withdrawals and was now fulfilling herself in a lesbian relationship.
Sporting love-bites of a severity which made you wonder if some bride of Dracula had turned gay and been locked-up in New Hall, Toni appeared much happier. She did though, seem to be playing it up a bit for the TV - practically mounting her girlfriend in the exercise yard. Repeatedly and rapidly splicing between Toni and Ivy telling their stories, it was telling to note how Ivy disapproved of younger inmates' coarseness regarding sexual matters.
If the central thrust of feminism has been to win hitherto male freedoms for women, then masculised females (as well as feminised males) is an inevitable result. In New Hall, Britain's fastest-growing female prison, many of the inmates are doing time for violent crimes, including murder, arson and rape. The underbelly of Girl Power is not pretty and it does seem to be expanding faster than the numbers of careerist power-women, beloved of advertising, "lifestyle journalism" and those with sad, Sunday supplement sensibilities.
Perhaps it's not politically astute for middle-class women to admit young women are more likely to end up in the nick than in the boardroom. After all, that would change a hard-fought gender issue into a more complex and uncomfortable class and gender issue. You had to wonder too why, in particular, young women such as Toni and Melissa, agreed to be filmed in jail. Fame - fame of any sort, I suppose. Jailbirds, like Donald Taylor Black's The Joy is powerful TV from a place of nightmares. Aerial shots of New Hall, accompanied by the amplified sounds of slamming cell doors and wailing women, made you realise that with greater freedom comes freedom to abuse that freedom. Ironic, isn't it, that liberation can increase your chances of being locked-up.
In the world of books, Imprint, according to recent reports, is not expected to be given a second series. Like so many of RTE's book programmes, it faces the prospect of being remaindered. It's a pity, really, because Theo Dorgan, after early nerves, has become an accomplished presenter and the series' mix of mild reverence and lively populism is practically inevitable when commerce and litteracha clash. Perhaps Dorgan gives aesthetes (real and imagined) too cosy a time but RTE is unlikely to screen a better books programme.
This week Anthony Clare and Lelia Doolin joined the presenter to review Dancing Naked in the Mind Field by Kary Mullis; The Mistress of Lilliput by Alison Fell and A Farewell to God by Ludovic Kennedy. Clare, who can certainly be perceptive but who could also benefit from some editing, correctly recognised in talking about Mullis's "self-portrait of a certain kind of scientist" that "economics is driving science to a great extent now". It's true, of course - but then economics is also driving medicine, education and the arts.
The "director's feature" (dodgy title that, suggestive of self-indulgent film auteurs) focused on the writer Dermot Healy. To moody camerawork which made the Atlantic appear alternatively dark 'n' brooding and like an arty version of the Old Spice aftershave ad, Healy's voice-overed words made compelling rhythms. All seascapes and shores and barnacle geese, called by a local woman "the writing in the sky", the feature dealt with the literary imagination without unduly prostrating itself.
Other items included Keelin Shanley heading to the hills with mountaineers to find out what they read on expeditions and Hugh Linehan calling for Budd Schulberg's The Disenchanted to be republished. There was also an in-studio interview between Dorgan and Michael Longley. "Has poetry any duty to history?" Dorgan asked at one point. "No," said Longley, "the poet has a duty only to his or her imagination". Aesthetes love this notion of artistic autonomy. Perhaps Theo Dorgan does too. Still, he might have pressed on by reminding his guest that the individual imagination cannot but be informed (or misinformed) by the passage of time and by the time in which it lives.
Anyway, as book programmes go - especially RTE book programmes - Imprint is worth retaining. It can be slightly stilted and perhaps too kind to aesthetic agendas which need to prove their credentials rather more. But there will always be a natural tension between the techniques required to hold a TV audience and the techniques required to talk meaningfully about books. In spite of a few curled corners, this programme has a reasonable format and an engaged and improving presenter. Maybe a slice more drama would improve it - but it, at least, deserves a second print run.
And so to football, which did provide the drama of the week with Manchester United's visit to the San Siro in Milan. Alan Hansen presented Football Millionaires, talking to such wealthy stars as David Beckham, Michael Owen, Alan Shearer, Dwight Yorke and Daveed Ginola. Hansen, a dour character at the best of times, appeared caught between disbelief and envy at the loot the lads make nowadays. After all, only 10 years ago, he was in the centre of the Liverpool defence - when Liverpool had a defence. Now he has to make a living talking to footballers.
Shearer, who makes a reputed £18 million a year, recalled being a YTS apprentice on £25.50 a week. These days, the average Premiership player makes £200,000 a year in wages alone. Hansen really couldn't handle the figures. Probably to console himself, he spoke to Norman Whiteside, the former Manchester United midfielder. Back in 1985, when his extra-time goal in the FA Cup Final denied Everton the double, Whiteside was earning just £350 a week. When injury ended his career at 26, he went to college to train as a podiatrist.
And so it went . . . a series of mostly financial anecdotes generating reactions from Hansen, a man who reached maturity 10 years too soon. Whatever about poets, footballers such as Hansen are conscious of history. Anyway, perhaps the best nugget on offer came from David Beckham. After his sending off in England's World Cup quarter-final against Argentina, Tony Adams was his most supportive and consoling ally. Adams, of course, used to be a wild man - he even did time in the nick for drunk driving. England's "Christian" manager, Glenn Hoddle, did not speak one word to Beckham. This gem was worth more than all the guff about today's football fortunes. In fact, it was a goal against the run of play - but a goal nonetheless.
Finally, Reel Time's Double Carpet. Set in 1990s mobile-phone; he's-an-asshole; dial-a-pizza; did-you-get-that-bid-in; home-cycling-machine Ireland, this hour-long film drama featured Darragh Kelly as a bloke with a growing gambling problem. Between the bookies and the race course, we got senses of the low-life desperation and high-life parading associated with horse racing. At the bottom, hopeless gamblers borrow from each other; on course, it's all racecards, hats, shades and punter guff.
As such then, it was something of a cautionary tale. Kelly almost loses his wife as he embarks on a final, do-or-die bet. The tension, which causes him to vomit, so that he ends up listening to the commentary in the race course jacks, was well-built and sustained. Naturally, the crucial race ended in a photo-finish. In the week of Cheltenham, so readily accepted as a great occasion for Irish people who follow the nags, there will be tears as well as laughter. Double Carpet (slang for a 33-1 bet, apparently) was therefore at least timely. It was also dramatic, albeit without great imagination. Strong performances saw it well-placed in a strong week on the box.