Recycled plots and dowdy frocks: what's up at Downton?

TV REVIEW:COME BACK Shirley MacLaine – although, come to think of it, where did she go? Downton Abbey (UTV, Sunday; TV3, Wednesday) limped along this week.

In the first two episodes of this series MacLaine, as the flashy American grandmother, gave the drama a bit of zip and was the perfect foil for Maggie Smith’s dowager. Then she disappeared.

We didn’t really notice it last week, what with Edith being jilted at the altar and Mrs Hughes’s cancer scare. But this week’s episode was as dull as Mary and Matthew’s marriage. The writer of the series, Julian Fellowes, seems to recycle plots and characters; so in the absence of anything new we had Edith coming over all modern and feminist – in other words, becoming her sister Sybil from the second series.

There was also a scene in which Downton’s one-time maid and fallen woman, Ethel, gave up her child to his rich grandparents, which was pretty much from the second series as well.

And Allen Leech as Tom Branson, the worst freedom fighter ever, looked positively pained at his daft storyline and endless speechifying about Irish republicanism. He arrived in Downton, having apparently run all the way from Dublin through the rain, and was now a wanted man after having set fire to a Big House in the name of Irish freedom. Presumably there was no safe house closer to home so he thought it best to head for the in-laws and their honking great symbol of British imperialism. Meanwhile, what came over Lord Grantham, the least controversial sort of chap, with his “There always seems to be something Johnny Foreigner about these Catholics”?

And if the Branson subplot isn’t enough of a tedious cul-de-sac, Bates, whose gammy leg caused him to fall over a great deal in the first series, appears to be cured but is still locked up. There were far too many dreary prison scenes in which everyone was gruff and menacing and looked manky. It’s not the frocks and frippery we signed up for at all.

There was also a heavy-handed exposition from Matthew, who has discovered how the estate has been mismanaged. It felt more like a dull accounting reference than exciting advance news of a juicy plot next week.

DOWNSTAIRS, DAISYthe kitchen maid has fallen for the new butler, which she also did in a previous series, and one of her scenes was shot from inside a cupboard as she peered into it. Then I flicked over to What's Ireland Eating? (RTÉ One, Sunday), and there was Philip Boucher-Hayes peering into his fridge. The hour-long programme was well made, a great big smorgasbord laden with cautionary dietary information, though there was nothing most of us don't already know, food being the great first-world guilt trip of the 21st century.

Together with a long line-up of experts, Boucher-Hayes hammered home how bad we are at feeding ourselves, how enormous our backsides are, how fatty our hearts are and how we’ve all gone to hell in a handcart – except we’re so unhealthy as a nation, we couldn’t even climb into one.

What sort of masochistic scheduling was that on a Sunday night when all we wanted was a bit of diversion? Although, let’s face it, if there were cameras in all our cupboards, recording every absent-minded biscuit raid and crisp forage, maybe we’d stick to three square meals a day.

AT LEAST NURSE JACKIEis back (Sky Atlantic, Tuesday) but it's a darker programme, stripped of the offbeat cruel comedy that made the series, starring Edie Falco as the pill-popping, straight-talking nurse, so brilliantly different from any nurse we've seen before. When a heroin addict she brings home dies in her front room, it's the final push Jackie needs to go to rehab. This signals changes in her own life, while the hospital's takeover by a flash corporate owner flags changes in her work life. This season opener set itself up as a straight drama rather than as the slightly evil dark comedy it started out as four season ago.

EXTENSIVE ADVANCEpublicity for The Meaning of Life (RTÉ One, Sunday) meant the highlights of the interview between former president Mary McAleese and Gay Byrne were well flagged. Most notable was the fact that McAleese, one of our most prominent lay Catholics, supports gay marriage. She said that she has a "a very strong view that for centuries gay people have lived in a dark, secretive world of indeterminate loneliness, dreadful complexity . . .". She said gay people were "as entitled to live their lives on their own terms as I do as a heterosexual". "I'm just thrilled anyone wants to get married," which was "a great grace", she said.

With two such polished and fluent performers, the content was bound to be interesting, but the filming was off-putting. It’s not just that no one looks that good in close-up (the camera stayed in their faces throughout); the lack of variation in direction in the hour-long interview made it slightly soporific, which is dangerous for a progamme that is on so late. The editing was clunky too. It’s not usually so obvious that the interviewer’s questions and reactions – the noddy shots, as they are known – are added later.

One of the contenders for Jewish Mum of the Year (Channel 4, Tuesday) was an Irish woman, Lesley. A mother of two young children, living in Dublin, she said it’s difficult to be Jewish in Ireland, not least because it is so hard to buy kosher food. The shtick is that eight women – the blingy one, the plain one, the grumpy one and so on – take on challenges and the prize is to become a newspaper’s agony aunt. (Yes, that’s a prize.)

Of course it’s just a Channel 4 gimmick and the hackneyed idea dates back to prehistory, or at least to when RTÉ used to screen the Calor Kosangas Housewife of the Year competition. That was presented by Gay Byrne, who, in those days, asked questions such as “Do you iron your husband’s socks?” rather than “What is the meaning of life?”.

The specifically Jewish aspect of the Channel 4 show was that the judge is a rabbi. The women had to prepare food and treats for a bar-mitzvah party. Lesley had to bake a cake and was unashamed to say that she had used a cake mix. She was sent home.

She’s well out of it.

Get stuck into . . .

The mockumentary Modern Family guarantees a laugh at the end of the week. In this episode, Gloria (Sofia Vergara, pictured) comes to terms with maternity- wear (Sky1, Friday).