Television: Selfies on steroids – the strange appeal of ‘Connected’

If you’re going to boast you may as well boast big, and Connected (RTÉ Two, Monday-Thursday) says it’s “a time capsule of what life is like for women in Ireland in 2014”.

Well, not really. Connected is selfies on steroids. It does give an honest, sometimes raw, look-at-me portrait of what life is like for the six interesting women who have taken part in this TV experiment, which is an Irish version of a hit Israeli format.

The six participants have filmed their lives over 10 months, and the thousands of hours of footage have been slickly edited down to these half-hour programmes.

My least favourite feeling when watching any “reality” format is wondering if the “civilian” participants – which is to say the noncelebs – fully understand what they’re getting themselves into.

Here, though, Venetia, who is 40, is a media-savvy radio producer and three are performers: Anna, who is 32, works in advertising and is a part-time stand-up comedian; 26-year-old Elayne is a rapper; and 35-year-old Kate is a pole dancer. So in Connected (I don't get the name; connected to what?) they get to show their work on TV, which is, I suppose, some trade-off for the intrusion into their lives.

By episode four, on Thursday, we learn that Kate is also a prostitute, but we don’t see her working – “reality” TV has its limits. “I can’t stress how vastly normal these men are,” she says; she has such an open, in-your-face way about her that I suspect a few of her clients in Cork are sweating that she’ll reveal too much in the weeks ahead.

I wonder about the two youngest women, who are both 20. Nicole is immersed in a fraught, tearful drama with her cheating boyfriend, and Alanna is still grieving over her father’s suicide. They seem too fragile for this.

Four episodes in and I’m hooked, interested to know what happens to the women next, although a niggle has been planted in my head by the tough-on-the-outside, always-performing Elayne: “What’s going down in your life that you have time to watch my life? Weird.”

Darndale, a suburb in north Dublin built in the 1970s to help alleviate the city's social-housing crisis, gets little press coverage beyond the crime pages. Parts of Love/Hate are filmed there, horses and teenagers roam aimlessly, and there's a general air of bleakness from the graffiti and piles of smouldering rubbish dotted around the wind-blown, socially disadvantaged estate.

The observational series Darndale (TV3, Monday) gets all that. Having spent a year filming there, its directors, Matt Leigh and Katie Lincoln, have clearly established a strong rapport with the residents, who let the cameras into their homes and speak openly about their drug, money and family problems.

There’s little sense of anyone acting up for the camera, and the film is neither judgmental nor sensationalist. When an eight-year-old gets a birthday horse, which is tied up with rope on the path outside his house, it’s a quiet scene showing the mother’s joy at getting her “horse-mad” son something he’ll love.

Darndale is strikingly filmed, alternating between the jerky immediacy of handheld cameras and calm overhead shots, swooping high over the rooftops. The film-makers have made a social document, a snapshot of life on an estate that is a byword for social disadvantage. I wonder, though, whether the people chosen for interviews are a balanced reflection of the 3,000 people who live there.

In episode one (of three) the women interviewed are unemployed single parents and the men are former heroin addicts now on methadone, with long criminal careers. We hear 19-year-old Gemma talking about getting a welfare payment for her newborn so she won’t just be getting the €100 she now gets, which she says is not worth going down to the post office to collect. I have to believe there are many other Darndale teenagers with more ambition for themselves. I hope we see them.

The Driver (BBC One, Tuesday) has Colm Meaney in his first UK television role since 1982, so it's interesting to see what lured him away from Hollywood. And he's not even the star of this three-part drama set in Manchester. That role goes to David Morrissey, expert in middle-age hang-dog misery, who is Vince, a minicab driver with a wife who mostly ignores him, a whingeing teenage daughter and a son who's already left. Vince's morning routine is cleaning the vomit from the upholstery of his minicab. Instead of buying a set of cycling lyrcas and an expensive bike, his solution to his midlife crisis is to join a criminal gang, as their driver.

The leader is the Horse (Meaney), his viciousness hidden, for now, under a terrifying affability – Meany does a good gangster, with his big, open face. By the end of part one Vince is starting to see there’s a price to be paid for the new money excitement and “the bit of driving” he signed up for. It’s watchable enough but predictable; hanging over every scene is the feeling that this isn’t going to end well for poor Vince.

Downton Abbey (UTV, Sunday; TV3, Wednesday) is back and looking far too familiar. So many scenes and great chunks of dialogue seem remarkably similar to ones Julian Fellowes has already written; it's like a comforting period-piece patchwork quilt.

Aside from the house fire I’m not convinced there is much new in the 90-minute opening episode. There’s the usual harrumphing from Carson and Lord Grantham that everything is changing, but they’ve been saying that since 1912. The smarmy butler is still scheming, for no apparent reason, which is getting beyond tedious. And dead-eyed Lady Mary still says her lines as though she’s reading from a far-off prompt card.

Mary did, however, have the best Downtownish line of the episode, and even that didn’t amount to much: “I’ll just go upstairs and take off my hat.” Disappointingly, it’s not a euphemism. Every time Maggie Smith’s dowager opens her mouth you hope she’ll say something as clever as her “what’s a weekend?” quip from series one, but it’s series five and there’s no sign of that now.

And how old is the dowager, anyway? Time has moved on 12 years in Downton land, so she must be pushing 90. At least Lady Edith got to flirt with a hot fireman after setting her bedroom alight. (Viewers, don’t try that at home.)

Downton Abbey is still the best-dressed soap. It's Corrie with jumped-up notions. Perfectly silly, and perfect for Sunday night. tvreview@irishtimes.com