The Lakes (BBC 1, Sunday)
Glenroe (RTE 1, Sunday)
True Lives (RTE 1, Monday)
Upwardly Mobile (RTE 1, Friday)
In The Lakes, the hills are alive with the sound of lust - sighing, panting, groaning, moaning, screeching - the cacophonous carnal symphony, so to speak. We ought not be surprised by such candour since Jimmy McGovern, the author of this four-part, semi-autobiographical drama series, can list Brookside, Cracker, Priest and Hillsborough among his credits. Liverpudlian gritguru McGovern was never likely to replicate the idyllic Wordsworthian Lake District of Walks With Wainwright or One Man And His Dog.
So, this is no romantic Lake District Lite. Rather, it is a kind of desperately dogged, English Peyton Place, where "ordinary" folk harbour nasty secrets and grapple with grubby obsessions. At the heart of the series, not surprisingly, are McGovern's own obsessions - the usual suspects of love, sex, Catholicism, gambling and guilt. It does not have the violence of Cracker, but it throbs with comparable raw energy and dramatic power. Indeed, in parts, it is not merely dramatically engaging, it feels - especially the opening episode's final 10 minutes - like an emotional mugging.
The story centres on Danny (John Simms), a 21year-old Liverpool lad, and Emma (Emma Cunniffe), a Lake District local, who, as she encounters Danny, is preparing to go to university. The pair meet, when Danny, fleeing from Liverpool after yet again gambling his fortnightly dole giro in an afternoon, heads to the Lakes, where he gets a job as a hotel kitchen porter. Soon, having honed his skills in a robust bout of hillside rumpo with another young siren - practice makes perfect and all that - Danny has Catholic Emma pregnant.
Postponing (forsaking, her parents say) university, Emma marries Danny and they head for high-rise hell in Liverpool. They are clearly in love, but Danny's gambling addiction drives him to theft and prison. Emma, complete with baby daughter (Danny was at the dogs as she gave birth) heads back home to her dysfunctional folks in the Lakes. Upon release, Danny follows her back, gets a job as a boatman and is in charge when four young schoolgirls steal a boat and drown, despite his valiant attempts to save them.
The schoolgirls went AWOL and stole the boat because the local headmaster, who was teaching them, left his class in order to confirm his suspicion - by peering through a window - that his wife was being rogered by the mucho macho chef at the local hotel. Emma's mother and the local priest are drifting ominously close to panting, groaning and screeching too. And, as for the younger adults in The Lakes - well, you get to recognise them by their bare behinds bobbing up and down in front of a backdrop of super-symbolic, chocolate-box scenery.
That's a capsule summary of the action so far. As ever, of course, with McGovern, the texture is as crucial as the action. Danny is not just a Scouse scally, he (autobiographically) likes poetry too. Yet he has been shaped by a Liverpool where flinty humour is prized as the most evocative and telling discourse: "He needs to find himself, my arse!" bellows his father to his mother, "this is Liverpool, woman, not bleeding Tibet."
Fair enough, there is humour here. Among Danny's brutalised mates from the hotel kitchen, there is a stammerer (more McGovern autobiography) and a bloke desperately seeking a cure for premature ejaculation. The over-excitable one is advised, by another nutter, to have his sexual partner punch him hard on the tip of the nose just before he reaches a climax.
Ten minutes later, when you think the action has moved on from such nonsense, we come across our hero, half-way up a mountain, engaged in the Lake District's ubiquitous sport of sex al fresco. The camera pans up to reveal a badly bloodied nose and a female hand passing up a stream of tissues. It's dramatic compression even though it's also slapstick. But among the grime, grit and genuine horror of a McGovern script, such snippets of pathetic hilarity are invariably integral and not just added-on awkwardly.
Along with Tony Marchant's Holding On, this latest McGovern offering has re-established gritty, contemporary stories as the dominant force in TV drama this season. The initial bonnets, busts and breeches (even the Mr Darcy wet breeches performance) revivals were worthwhile. But last year the period craze got out of control. Emma, Moll Flanders, The Mill On The Floss, Jane Eyre, The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall and others - it was too much. Exploring contemporary rural/urban stereotypes and those other grander McGovern themes, which really are as old as the hills, there's depth in The Lakes. Immerse yourself.
Glenroe, itself nearly as old now as the Wicklow hills, has regularly spiced itself up with sex - not the graphic sex of The Lakes, of course, just the softer, standard soap opera stuff. Returning for a 16th season, the series screened an hour-long special on Sunday. Given its difficulties in recent years - principally, too many defections in too short a space of time - it may have recaptured some of its old verve.
Clearly, after dominating RTE's popular serial drama slot since the time of The Riordans, agrisoap now faces new problems. Chief among these is the simple fact that Ireland has urbanised rapidly in recent decades. As such then, a rural soap opera faces some of the problems which blighted Irish urban soaps in the past. It can't, for instance, feel sure that a majority of viewers will readily identify with the characters and storylines. There are, let's face it, now more Bella Doyles than Miley Byrnes in Ireland.
However, that's all the more reason why RTE should seek to protect a rural voice and perspective in popular drama. It's not as if the Mileys and Biddys of Ireland are an endangered species - there's just not as many of them anymore. But they remain - given the limitations of soap - representative of an Ireland which continues to have relevant stories to tell to all of us. The fact that Glenroe cannot now generate the legitimate controversy of The Riordans era, says more about now than about Glenroe. The same is true for The Late Late Show: it's harder to shock a more liberal country.
Anyway, on Sunday, Miley, in search of Carol, who is still pining for Blackie, went to London. Hilariously, the gormless one got himself arrested, accused of casing out a number of Hammersmith banks. Whether or not this entire episode is meant to indicate bumpkin imbecility on Miley's part or racist mean-mindedness on the side of London's Metropolitan police, is not clear. It's unlikely that the Glenroe One will become another Guildford Four. But Miley's experience mustn't be depicted as merely funny - as the fair, if unfortunate predicament of an innocent abroad. In other plot developments, Dick Moran could get done, unfairly, for arson and Tim is about to have his book published, a development which could come with Shirley attached. Clearly, Glenroe needs to integrate its newer cast members with its hardy annuals. It is a soap in transition and has got to remake itself as relevant without losing too much of its traditional, cutesy entertainment. A season for hardening up then - more grit and less idyll (or more The Lakes and less Ballykissangel) - but the precise proportions of the mix will be crucial.
In home-produced documentary, True Lives screened an offering titled Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Made to mark the 10th anniversary of the National Lottery, it looked at seven past winners. Contrary to the schadenfreudian hopes of many, winning a million or more, it seems, is great fun and seriously improves the quality of life for most winners. There were, of course, some reports of former friends becoming jealous.
"Be prepared to lose 50 per cent of your friends and suffer the heartache because of that," said Vincent Keaney, a Cobh dandy in a straw hat and bow tie. Vincent, who won £1 million in October 1994, didn't seem especially heartbroken, although his remark that he "has better relationships with bricks and mortar than with women" was intriguing. Perhaps money can't buy you love, but with property prices as they are nowadays, Vincent is doing quite nicely and he knows it.
Kathleen Waters, wife of £2,020,542 winner, Willie, said that they too had suffered jealousy. She wasn't specific about how this was made manifest but was quite clear that it was other people's problem. An Elvis and Joe Dolan fan, Kathleen has incorporated Graceland stonework and motifs into her house. The rather constipated taste vigilantes of Dublin's restoration classes would not be impressed. But . . . you pays your money and you buys your ticket.
Over the last decade, more than £2 billion has been spent on lottery tickets and scratch cards. There was some mild debate (near the end) about how fairly and wisely lottery money has been distributed. But, in the context of this programme, where the lucky punters were the stars, it really was tokenism. However, there remains a serious documentary unmade on this topic. Anyway, to the crucial question (in terms of commonness it is the "Do you come here often?" of its generation): what would you do if you won a lottery million?
A vox pop elicited the following: I'd drink meself to death . . . from the top shelf; I'd go to Florida and sit under the coconut trees; I'd go away and never be seen again; I'd have a good holiday; I'd get a sex change. Strangely, it was a woman who had the sex change wish. Now, if it had been Albert Reynolds, it might have made some sense. But a woman . . . in Ireland . . . in 1997!
Finally, from real lottery millionaires to sitcom ones. Upwardly Mobile is now in its third season and seems assured in the ratings. Certainly, it is better, much better, than previous RTE sitcoms. Yet, despite strong, enthusiastic acting, it still seems too timid, too afraid to say much that is really meaningful about class. It's not that sitcoms need to be sociological or political treatises. But, given the sizeable audiences which the more successful ones attract, they can, without hectoring, say meaningful, pertinent things.
This season's first two episodes have had plotlines focusing on the christening of the Keoghs' new baby and on competition between Molly and Pamela training for a women's marathon. That's fair enough. But unlike the best American comedies - or even the British ones (which, with a few exceptions, have, in the last 10 years, fallen very far behind) - there's a lack of bite about it. Of course, it's meant to be light entertainment and it doesn't require a Jimmy McGovern approach. But, given that class friction is not always a laughing matter, a tiny bit of grit could seriously improve it.