Documentaries and 'Dallas' make TV3 autumn comeback

ANALYSIS:Brash and salacious entertainment will take pride of place in TV3's autumn schedule

ITS BUDGETS may be smaller and more precarious than RTÉ’s, but if there’s one thing that’s not in short supply at TV3 – well, apart from high heels – it’s cheerful self-deprecation.

Dublin’s Light House Cinema, venue for TV3’s autumn season launch, was decorated with large posters displaying some choice quotes about the station’s contribution to the national culture.

“Were TV3 to disappear tomorrow, who would miss it?” read one 2002 review from journalist Tom McGurk. “TV3 is RTÉ for beginners, that’s what the Cabinet thinks,” were the two cents of an unnamed former Fianna Fáil minister.

Elsewhere, blown-up newspaper headlines featuring TV3 faces from Vincent Browne to Danielle Meagher (aka Dublin Wives’ Dr Botox) blared from the walls.

To say that things have changed at TV3 since the station first started broadcasting from Ballymount in 1998 would be to understate the massive shift it has made since venture capitalists Doughty Hanson took over in 2006.

Director of programming Ben Frow merrily drew attention to old channel listings for cheap documentary imports with such sensitive titles as Half Man Half Tree and Help! I Smell of Fish.

This season, they have been displaced by a hard-hitting, three- part tale of deprivation in The Estate, set in Ballybeg on the outskirts of Waterford, and a two- part history lesson on unmarked graves from the War of Independence and the Civil War in the documentary In the Name of the Republic.

The grotesque, the unbelievable, the bizarre and the unprecedented have always found a home at TV3, it’s just that in 2012, they will be found in current affairs documentary GUBU 30: Ireland’s Year of Political Disaster.

“It’s our broadest schedule ever – you can’t deny it,” Frow said.

Still, in case anyone thought they had wandered into the wrong room, there was plenty of brash, salacious entertainment to take pride of place in its autumn schedule. Fresh from their jaunt to Santa Ponsa, the Tallafornia cast will ditch swimwear for Santa hats in a Christmas special called – wait for it – Talleluia. “These programmes make themselves up,” grinned Frow.

He got a round of applause, but that was nothing compared to the waves of pleasure in the viewing room when Frow showed a clip from Dallas, which makes its European premiere on TV3 on September 3rd.

“Ewing Oil is back in business, Bobby,” drawled JR Ewing (Larry Hagman, right). And, ooh, look, Christopher and John Ross are all grown up now.

Old favourites remain, and remain stubbornly strong. Frow informed guests that last Saturday’s episode of The X Factor won an audience share that was steady on last year’s opener. “It’s not over yet,” he said of the format.

TV3 stalwarts Glenda Gilson and Sinéad Desmond and Deception cast member Nora-Jane Noone, of the station’s first home-produced drama, were among those at yesterday’s launch, but it was Xposé’s newest presenter that stole the show.

“Never leave the house without your nylons,” is Kathleen Leahy’s top style tip, Frow said, before revealing that Leahy (67) was getting in front of the Xposé cameras as part of TV3’s celebration of the European Year of Active Ageing. “The last thing we want is for TV3 to be boring and predictable.”

Indeed, anyone who thinks TV3’s output represents the collapse of civilisation as we know it might be cheered by the fact it is planning a special End of the World Weekend, just in case Mayan predictions that the world ends in December 2012 turn out to be true.