An appetite for grief

TV Review: Only "a dirty lowlife pox bottle with an appetite for grief" could fail to warm to Legend, playwright Ken Harmon's well-crafted drama series which, on the heels of Eugene O'Brien's impressive Pure Mule, further enhances RTÉ's fledgling reputation for quality drama.

Legend began a little shakily with the aftermath of the funeral of a young mother mown down in a hit-and-run on the west Dublin housing estate where she lived with her husband (somewhat unhelpfully called Fridge) and their two small children, Zoey and Skittles. Emotionally squally in spells and over-full of demanding personalities, it took a second episode to establish the drama's rather more gentle, character-led identity.

Evocatively shot in seemingly constant drizzle, the muddy, monochrome estate, with its drearily beleaguered lounge bar full of unappetising clients in equally unalluring acrylic sweaters, could pass as a set for a localised version of Trainspotting. But notwithstanding the drama's potential for violence (strapped-for-cash residents in the hands of moneylenders, the insidious presence of hard drugs), Harmon's story has a much softer edge. Focusing on the vicissitudes of the occupants of two vividly painted houses amidst a slew of concrete boxes, it is an urban tale of love and loss told without recourse to melodrama or to overt hard-nut characterisations.

Fridge (Padraic Delaney), a twenty-something widower with a denim jacket, a recalcitrant washing machine and a bucketload of responsibilities, is a laid-back, easygoing chap thrown into crisis by tragedy. His neighbour, Jacinta, beautifully and succinctly played by Ruth Bradley, is a tenacious young woman juggling the needs of her sparky young daughter, her immensely likeable ex, Willy (Allen Leech), and her apologetic but increasingly confident current partner, Barry (Simon Keogh). It is within these wholly domestic and atmospheric settings that Harmon's stories shine; when the drama demands action and the baddies come out of the Formica, the plot feels a little more predictable.

Legend, however, is a pleasure to watch: the actors are superb, and the territory, perhaps because it seems to avoid cliche so well, feels fresh. But on a personal level, seeing my old acting colleague, the dynamic Joe Savino, cast as grandfather to Fridge's gorgeous kids, didn't do much for my equilibrium - since when did one's contemporaries get to play the senior citizens?

RICKY GERVAIS AND Stephen Merchant's award-winning comedy Extras clocked on for a second series this week - and, as with the first, big names are getting in line to be sent up by the beadily malicious and frighteningly astute duo, who will forever be synonymous with their chillingly fantastic creation, The Office.

Extras opened with Gervais's character, Andy Millman, graduating from the fetid ranks of the walk-ons (or "atmosphere people", as they say in the US) to having his own sitcom produced by the BBC. In an artistic quandary over the bastardisation of his original comedic intention, it takes Millman, once he's reminded of where he came from, all of two minutes to abandon the moral high ground and accept a fuzzy wig, big specs and naff catchphrase.

Meanwhile, Maggie (Ashley Jensen), Millman's complacently depressed but naively hopeful sidekick, is serving her time as a jury member in a courtroom drama, where she finds herself the recipient of the unwanted attentions of a paranoic and deeply vain Orlando Bloom, anxious to prove that he is a bigger sex symbol than old scissorhands Johnny Depp ("Willy Wonka? Johnny Wanker!").

As with the brilliant device of the faux-documentary in The Office, Extras makes use of the play within the play, quite literally this time, as Millman films his uncomfortable sitcom, revealing the man within the comic. Like a schoolboy in a sweetshop (or an actor with enough Emmys under his belt to call the shots), Gervais gets to raid Auntie's ancient casting files for aromatic has-beens to populate his fictitious comic world, unearthing for the opening show a blisteringly homophobic Keith Chegwin looking like a Prozac-ated teddy bear.

Despite Gervais's Midas touch and bleak genius, this is not The Office - and how could it be? But Extras is still as funny and as subversively intelligent a comedy as you'll find on the box, and with a prospective line-up that includes a foul-mouthed Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Sir Ian McKellen in search of a title and the lissom David Bowie, it really shouldn't be missed.

Exploring the delicate instrument between our ears, Beautiful Minds, a three-part series made in Germany and voiced for the Irish market by our very own Ryan Tubridy, continued on RTÉ this week. Mining the fascinating shadow worlds of autism and Asperger syndrome and investigating the phenomenon of the genius savant, it made for riveting viewing.

Excuse my crude left-brain rendition of the programme's carefully elucidated thesis, but it more or less went like this: Einstein (who had more grey matter than the rest of us), Newton, Beethoven, Freud and their ilk apparently had defects in their brains' wiring, causing them to become geniuses with lousy social skills. (The programme-makers failed at this point to include Sharon Osbourne on their list, despite her virtuoso ability to negotiate life with Ozzy and her alarmingly defocused, mildly senile interview technique - but more of that anon.)

Genius is all to do with the right side of the brain, apparently; the creative side, the one that doesn't necessarily know how to lay a table or read a train timetable but can compose masterpieces, decipher gravity or, in the case of the astounding young Englishman Stephen Wiltshire, draw, after a 45-minute observational flight, a precise 5.5m wide replica of the city of Rome, including St Peter's, the Pantheon and the myriad tiny streets that run through the city like veins through marble.

Wiltshire's purity of perception, his 100 per cent accuracy (like that of a human camera) comes at a price: he cannot live unaided or navigate the complexity of day-to-day living. Yet hauntingly, as his notoriety grows and his social skills improve, his extraordinary abilities gradually fade. It would appear that our rational right brain dominates and subdues our left-brain potential, thus populating the world with our pedestrian selves and only rarely allowing genius to assert itself.

Assuming, however, that unlike the aforementioned geniuses, you (like me) are still at the unravelling-the-mysteries-of-the-remote-control stage, there were some salient points of interest in the documentary that one could (more or less) grasp. Firstly, we all need dopamine, a naturally produced chemical in the brain that kick-starts the creative network. Abundant when reward is promised, the little elixir can dry up like tacky nail varnish when artistic efforts are ignored.

And secondly, guess what? Teenagers' brains need lots of stimulus; their continuously evolving neurons wither on the brain vine, not to be replaced, if they are under-used. So, for God's sake, drag little Johnny in his Kurt Cobain T-shirt off the couch before his grey matter gets permanently bleached by Sharon Osbourne's new afternoon chat-show.

I NOW OFFICIALLY abhor Mrs Ozzy. Queen of excess, doyenne of the scalpel, avaricious, cloying little pixie that she is, with a wallet bigger than her (dubious) assets.

"I want to give give give," squawked Sharon on her daytime sofa slot, the extravagantly originally named Sharon Osbourne Show. Sharon "gives" in a variety of ways: nothing whatsoever to her beached guests who vie for attention with the chandeliers, the stained-glass windows, the many framed photographs of Sharon that litter the strenuously lively set and, of course, her fussy little dog, who at least seems to know which camera he's on (although he's not terrific on the autocue). Sharon "gives" by "making dreams come true" for her rapt studio audience, who look a little startled, as if they've been plucked from their Asda queue only to find themselves reunited with their long-lost twin or that hairdresser they went to for a bodywave in 1962.

On Wednesday, Sharon lashed on the sentimentality and gave an adolescent in the throes of chemotherapy a skinny pink feather boa and an embarrassingly flat party to catch up with her schoolmates.

"I could never have done what you're doing when I was going through my chemo," Sharon chirruped to the stunned and exhausted-looking teenager.

Sharon also gives away money, 'cos that's the kind of girl she is. Yeah.

Sharon gave a lady in an unflattering stripy top, from Hertfordshire ("Oooh, that's nice!" - the county, not the T-shirt), £100 for naming a famous artist beginning with the letter L.

"La Vinchy?" Madame Stripe offered after a moment's hesitation.

You know him? Sharon knows him! La Vinchy, no? That great old left-brainer. La Vinchy? Specialised in five-foot TV presenters in formaldehyde.

Bless.