Tubridy's toy story hit the spot, but piercing tale sounded hollow

TV REVIEW:PUT ASIDE THE bread and circuses theory for a minute. There has to be another reason why this year's Late Late Toy Show(RTÉ1, last weekend) was the most-watched television programme for 17 years.

Nearly one and a half million viewers tuned in – think of our tiny population and do the maths – and more adults were watching than last year. Shiny plastic, colourful lights, cuddly toys: the telly toy box seemed a nicer place to be than the grim real world. But it was also because it was simply entertaining.

Ryan Tubridy was brilliant with the children and the children were brilliant in return. To his immense credit they were so relaxed they could have been playing in their own front rooms; the performing kids had none of the precociousness that used to be such a teeth- jangling feature of the show; and the producer kept it low key, with only one “celebrity” singer, Olly Murs, and the show could easily have done without him.

We're at a strange point in our world that the most-watched programme this year was a toy show, followed a few days later by the second most watched: Enda Kenny's it's-not-your-fault-but-you-still-have-to-pay-for-it state of the nation address. (I didn't watch it live on RTÉ but caught the delayed version on TV3 after T he X Factor:is that bad?)

RTÉ IS CHURNINGout magazine programmes with such grim determination it's as if someone has a stack of dog-eared women's magazines and is working their way through them because, surely, that's what women want. We've had programmes on postpregnancy weight, working mothers, anorexia, male grooming, long-distance commuting, online dating. If they make one about mothers who run off with their daughters' boyfriends, they'll have the full set.

Gráinne Seoige features large in this new programming, though I'm not sure she's cut out for it, because, although she smiles and looks fabulous, she still hasn't lost that buttoned-up newsreader delivery. This week her task for her series Gráinne Seoige's Modern Life(RTÉ2, Thursday) was to "to find out what attracts Irish women to decorate, pierce or cut their bodies", and her face got a fair old workout. Her gallery of grimaces during the many tattoo sessions she witnessed was impressive, though not in the same league as the faces she pulled while watching a genital piercing. I did a bit of gurning at that point myself. What qualifications do you need for this sort of job, she asked the piercing guy. "A good knowledge of the anatomy," he said. And, with luck, a steady hand.

She didn’t ask the young woman why she got the piercing, and that was the thing about this programme. The material was all there – the research was brilliant – but Seoige never really (and no pun intended) got under the skin of the people who were getting piercings, tattoos or, in one of the most disturbing fads, scarred, in which a scalpel is used to cut the skin and create a permanent raised scar.

She could have asked the young one in the tattoo tent at a fair in Galway, who was getting a giant Buddha inked on her side, how she’d feel when her skin wasn’t so tight and gorgeous and Buddha had shrunk to a dimpled blotch. Nor did she ask whether the young woman with “Danny” on her arm realised that tattoos are for life but Danny might not be.

The researcher came up with the goods, from a lovely, homely-sounding pensioner who got her first tattoo when she was 69, and now her back is covered, to the young performance artist who hangs from the ceiling with hooks through her skin. But the overall production, particularly the leaden voiceover, let the research down.

There was just too much of the "Well Holy God, Brigid, you'll never guess what those young people are up to now" about Gráinne Seoige's Modern Life– and, anyway, putting modern in the title of a documentary almost guarantees it's going to seem old-fashioned.

NINETY YEARS AGOthis week a document was signed in London that changed the course of Irish history. The tension, indecision and sheer misery experienced by the five signatories, Michael Collins, Robert Barton, Arthur Griffith, George Gavan Duffy and Eamonn Duggan, was captured in Andrew Gallimore's compelling documentary An Treaty 1921(TG4, Wednesday). The archive footage included moving shots of prisoners being released from Kilmainham Gaol and women on their knees at Downing Street, praying for the signatories. Some of it had never been shown on TV before, and the simple but powerful technique was to edit the film together with the testimonies of the people who were involved, from Winston Churchill to Arthur Griffith, their words taken from their diaries, letter or memoirs and spoken in English by actors.

An Treaty 1921captured the fraught 72 hours in London as the delegates came to the conclusion that their only option was to sign the treaty or there would be war. The pain of what he had just done was written on Collins's face. De Valera had refused to go to London for the negotiations, giving instructions that a draft was to be brought home, but "nobody thought of the instruction on the night", said Barton regretfully later. An engaging, beautifully made history programme: it deserves a wider audience.

IF YOU'RE ONFacebook and saw the intriguing (and not for the number of times Emily Matlis, its presenter, changed her clothes) Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook(BBC2, Sunday), it's likely you'll have double-checked your privacy settings immediately afterwards.

She interviewed the 27-year-old founder, visited the headquarters and learned how Facebook now has 800 million users and is predicted to be worth $100 billion if floated on the stock market next year. Without its users’ personal information, its monetary value would plummet, because it allows advertisers to target customers. If, for example, you “Like” a company on Facebook, your picture could be posted on your friends’ Facebook pages, telling them you like a particular product.

“I might like a company, but I don’t want to advertise it,” Matlis said to Elliot Schrage, a spokesman for Facebook. He seemed genuinely confused by Matlis making a fuss about this blurring of private and public. Check those settings.

Get stuck into...

While all eyes were on our Janet in The X Factor, James McCullagh (right), the likeable teenager from Derry, was doing well in The Young Apprentice. He's in Monday's final on BBC1.