Present Tense »

• Saturday column: Pitching it right

  May 25, 2008 @ 11:28 am | by Shane Hegarty

  WEDNESDAY NIGHT WAS a long, long night of Champions League football and an even longer night of football coverage, although this applied more to RTÉ than to ITV or Sky Sports.

  If the stats had popped up on the screen, in football terms RTÉ would have spent far more time on the pitch than its rivals, because once half-time was done and dusted, the broadcaster didn’t go to a single commercial break until well after the last unused substitute had danced around the trophy. Instead, the Irish viewer was treated to analysis before extra time, during its half-time changeover and before the penalty shoot-out. A small screen – with mini-Giles, Dunphy, Brady and O’Herlihy – even slid into view at the appropriate moments.

  ITV, on the other hand, gave the viewer ads. Lots and lots of ads. It was only just short of squeezing one in between each of the penalties. And when it had run out of ads, it took a minute to remind viewers of what other sporting action it had in store. Finally, it got to analysing the action, although the important action was flashed through so quickly that its panellists had little time to actually talk about it. Instead, they clung to the platitudes that help them float at such moments. (more…)

• R-R-Ronaldo is a d-d-diver

  May 21, 2008 @ 1:47 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Last night’s ITV tee-up for the Champions League final included a mash-up in which DJ Yoda mixed and scratched Chelsea and Man U footage with a few tunes. Sounds like a cool enough idea. Yet, as soon as Robbie Earle pops up, you know that this effort to get down with the kids just isn’t going to work.

  

• Getting lost in a Lost theory

  May 20, 2008 @ 1:22 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  There are many, many theories that attempt to explain what the hell Lost is all about, but for fans with half an hour to spare, here’s the complex but fascinating Time Loop Theory*. The gist? That the island had been deliberately kept in 1996, meaning that all the crash survivors reverted to their 1996 selves (no cancer for Rose; Locke being able to walk). But it goes far deeper than that. Far, far deeper.

  * As first heard of on Sky One’s excellent Lost Initiative podcast.

• Bill O’Reilly losing it

  May 13, 2008 @ 1:35 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Niall sends in this gem. It’s got a wonderful Anchorman quality about it.

  

• The great Armistice

  @ 10:02 am | by Shane Hegarty

  Jeremy Vine’s finest few minutes reminded us that most television news seems to have viewed the likes of The Day Today as an encouragement to act like gibbering news monkeys, rather than as a deterrent. This gives us the excuse to look back at the BBC’s brilliant late-90s satirical series Saturday Night Armistice (later Friday Night Armistice), presented and written by Armando Iannucci, with Peter Baynham and David Schneider.

  (more…)

• THIS is how to make an arts show

  May 1, 2008 @ 4:07 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  I was griping with someone earlier about how dry The View is – the only regular arts programme on RTE television, and not worth staying up for – and how BBC2′s Late Review has become of a caricature of itself. And I was reminded of how fresh and ambitious the BBC’s Culture Show can be, and specifically how this piece on skiffle music, by Mark Kermode, was one of the best packages I’ve seen on television over the last couple of years.

  Top moment: Kermode giving a piece to camera while playing double bass with his skiffle band.

  

• The truth is out there. In Bangor of all places.

  April 30, 2008 @ 10:07 am | by Shane Hegarty

  This BBC Northern Ireland report on “UFOs” over Bangor last year is stranger than any X-File.

  

• Lost is back. Brain needs rest.

  April 29, 2008 @ 9:17 am | by Shane Hegarty

  If you haven’t seen last night’s episode, there are plot spoilers below, folks.

  Lost returned to RTÉ2 last night (which has now got the jump on Sky One by a week) and it revealed the value of the writers’ strike. Textually frustrated writers, with less episodes than they though they’d had, just couldn’t hold back. The Shape of Things To Come was a blast of violence, pathos, intrigue, daftness, time travel, revelation and bullets. The kind of episode fans at one point must have thought they’d never see.

  It wasn’t perfect. The death of three red shirts was a little cheap. And Claire’s survival of a house-wrecking RPG was a mite ridiculous, even if was made look a little more convincing by Sawyer’s bullet-dodging run to help her. If picnic tables and picket fences acted as an effective barricade to bullets, maybe the Americans wouldn’t be in so much trouble in Iraq.

  On which point, Ben wandering around Iraq as the only Yank not in a flak jacket was a plot stretch too far.

  But that’s all a diversion, because if you want realism, you really shouldn’t be watching Lost. There were some startling moments. Ben awaking in the Sahara was a great shot. And the execution of his daughter Alex was a reminder of how willing the writers are to pull the trigger. But Michael Emerson’s reaction made it. Such hangdog devastation.

  By the way, if you cared for those poor extras, slaughtered simply for the sake of getting things moving, then you can learn more about two of them here. Their names were Doug and Jerome, and they’d been hovering in the background since the start. God speed.

• Next up, Bosco does Bertie…

  April 28, 2008 @ 10:31 am | by Shane Hegarty

  This is brilliant mash-up between Rainbow and Newsnight’s London mayoral candidates’ debate.

  

• Disproving the idea that television is worse than it used to be

  April 25, 2008 @ 4:38 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Two slices of RTÉ’s promos, and the ads it ran, from 1986.

  In the first, gasp at the flecky RTÉ logo, marvel at the way that mime was considered an effective sales technique, be astonished at how the Lucozade ad makes the drink look better than crack cocaine, and weep with nostalgia at how the ad break ends with those cardboard ads that used to be accompanied by a voiceover. Such a shame they’re gone. How else can men’s clothes stores in Birr get a slot on RTÉ TV now? One of these is even crooked. Nice touch.

  In the second, check out the Bank Holiday Monday viewing on RTÉ2. These days, they’d just give you a some sort of Gerry Ryan Hitlist. Gerry Ryan’s Haircut Hitlist or Gerry Ryan’s Property Show Hitlist or Gerry Ryan’s Bad Television Shows Presented By Gerry Ryan Hitlist. Maybe 1986 wasn’t so bad after all.

  (more…)

• Laughing at Liverpool’s own goal

  April 23, 2008 @ 2:28 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  The problem with last night’s match was that some of us didn’t know which team we wanted to lose more. But thanks to John Arne Riise’s own goal at the death, neutrals got a good laugh at the end of a turgid game.

  Phil Thompson isn’t neutral, but is an ex-Liverpool legend and can these days be found as one of those strange breed of commentators who watch matches on a hidden screen and relay what’s happening. He was doing it for Sky Sports News last night, and at least one person was watching because Thompson’s priceless reaction to Riise’s goal is now up on YouTube.

  

• The national sport…

  April 21, 2008 @ 11:44 am | by Shane Hegarty

  …is waving at TV cameras. And the RTÉ report from yesterday’s Tipperary v Galway match features a world class display from several individuals, and clearly confirms our place as the world leaders at edging into shot.

  As ever, most of the wavers are kids (including an impressive nipple-rubbing display at the very end), but there is the all-important quota of middle-aged men getting a slice of the action so they can get a cheer in the pub later in the evening.

  Watch it (from exactly 2 minutes in) here.

  Feel your national pride swell.

• Pat Kenny breaks his silence

  April 15, 2008 @ 8:26 am | by Shane Hegarty

  Pat Kenny has John McCririck as a guest on last Friday’s Late Late Show, and an early wise crack from McCririck drew a self-deprecating and funny response from the host. It’s here.

  Be aware that this clip includes gratuitous scenes of John McCririck, although he does go all Richard Dawkins towards the end of the interview and antagonises the audience in pantomime fashion.

• Saturday column: the ads don’t work

  April 12, 2008 @ 9:53 am | by Shane Hegarty

  

  THE DEPARTMENT of the Environment is running a television ad proclaiming that this generation will be defined by how we tackle climate change.

  As examples of previous generational challenges, it includes images of emigration, an aid worker in Africa, and the North. To illustrate the Independence era, it features both Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins, so hinting that someone in the Department felt it was best that the issue of switching off unnecessary lights was not split along Treaty lines.

  But each time this “Change your world. Change the world” ad runs (to be followed by a commercial for bottled water or some attractive product wrapped in unnecessary packaging) you have to wonder: what’s the point? Yes, it is trying to help us take personal responsibility for a global issue. And it directs us to a website that has handy tips, a map informing us that Westmeath will some day be a haven for exotic wildlife, and that promises it will soon feature a carbon calculator.

  But is it really worth spending millions to raise awareness of an issue that the public is possibly more aware of than any other? It’s a message that is already being hammered home in schools, that’s been seen in an Oscar-winning documentary, and that pops up in regular news reports. And we’re still fresh from the Power of One and the Race Against Waste ads, also funded by the Government. Surely anyone on this island who hasn’t already got the message is, at this stage, never going to get it, no matter how snappy the ads. (more…)

• Let’s move to Venezuala

  April 10, 2008 @ 7:30 am | by Shane Hegarty

  From Wednesday’s Breaking News:

  Venezuela has forced US cartoon The Simpsons off its airwaves, calling the show a potentially bad influence on children, and filled its morning slot with reruns of the beach-and-bikini show Baywatch.

  Venezuala’s kids TV presenter, Ron Jeremy, was believed to have felt particularly strongly about this.

• 21st Century Child, 21st century conundrum

  April 8, 2008 @ 8:32 am | by Shane Hegarty

  RTÉ’s new long-term project 21st Century Child began last night. Too busy establishing characters and the premise for the series, the first episode was pretty dull. But it will, like Child Of Our Time (the series it apes) develop over years rather than weeks.

  But, as with the BBC project, it raises interesting questions about how much the mere observation of these children over a period of years will actually affect their development.

  RTÉ announces that:

  21st Century Child promises a fascinating study of the development of our children through their life stages. The 21st Century Child cameras will be there, capturing the dynamic of the Irish family in some of its many different guises.

  In fact, it’s open in how the presenter and psychologist David Coleman will directly assist the parents at times, which actually makes the series something of a very long episode of his previous series Families in Trouble.

  There may be nothing fundamentally negative about that – he is excellent in that after all, and attractively forthright to the point of being grim. And filming for 21st Century Child will, presumably, only impinge on the subjects’ lives occasionally each year, so it will hardly be The Truman Show. But once a television crew is invited into a family, the consequences are obvious in terms of their privacy alone. When they are invited in for a period of six years (less than BBC’s 20-year plan) it’s worth pondering what fundamental impact it might have on a child’s development, and that of the family as a whole.

• And the award for most nauseating coverage of Bertie’s resignation goes to…

  April 3, 2008 @ 11:58 am | by Shane Hegarty

  RTÉ’s Nine O’Clock News, which last night went out on a musical montage (Westlife, naturally). “How could you just turn and walk away…”

  Watch the piece here.

  Warning: this may make you cry tears of vomit.

• Yet another Late Late Show post

  April 1, 2008 @ 1:09 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  Some observations that arise from Friday’s Late Late:

  1) Celebrity Bainisteioir is a pretty good idea for a show, but at what point will the Late Late stop acting as a free ad for RTÉ reality shows?

  2) Is Rasher the Late Late’s pet artist? Has it adopted him? And, frankly, is he actually that good, or does his talent – like Kevin Sharkey and Guggi – come from getting publicity in a media that doesn’t give a damn if he can paint or not.

  3) Returning to the Harris, Dunphy, Waters debate was a natural but entertaining idea. As an aside, the Aertel p888, subtitle writer did an incredible job during the later stages of this debate. Well done. Take the rest of the week off.

• Saturday column: Marching to the lifestyle fascists

  March 26, 2008 @ 9:56 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  (Due to technical difficulties, this didn’t appear on Saturday.)

  *

  ON WEDNESDAY night, RTÉ1 broadcast a new series, Not Enough Hours, in which a man with a clipboard and a camera crew came to the aid of a workaholic.

  At the start, the workaholic was filmed slogging all the hours he could.

  After half an hour, he had transformed into a contender for Dad of the Year. This is the miracle of television. A man with a clipboard and a camera crew can improve a life in less time than it takes you to realise that there are not enough hours in the day to waste on watching Not Enough Hours. (more…)

• What you can’t say on David Letterman

  March 20, 2008 @ 12:15 pm | by Shane Hegarty

  “No anatomical reference to a man, except were Dick is used as a man’s proper name…”

  Bell X1 played David Letterman’s show on Patrick’s Night. On the eve of it, they entertained an audience by reading out the list they’d been given instructing them on what profanities are not allowed on the air.

  Warning: This video is not suitable in an office environment. Although that depends on what kind of office you work in, I suppose.

  (Thanks to Fiona for the tip off)

  

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