When Mike met Marian: it warmed up, eventually

TV REVIEW:David Norris could have produced those letters and no one would have paid a blind bit of notice

ABOUT HALF A DOZEN questions into The Big Interview(RTÉ1, Thursday) and, with just a hint of exasperation, Mike Murphy said to his guest Marian Finucane, "You don't really enjoy it yourself, the process of being interviewed," to which everyone watching the strained conversation and the look of grim endurance on her face could have replied with a resounding "Well, get you, Sherlock."

There was Murphy, sitting back in his chair, all smiley, avuncular and chatty, with Finucane, fabulous in a little black dress and pearls, sitting bolt upright and looking quite cross. It’s difficult to watch someone, especially such a skilled communicator, being uncommunicative to the point that you had to wonder why she agreed to be interviewed place. But I’m glad she did because, once a thaw set in about a quarter of the way through – or, rather, when she decided to open up – it became a truly interesting, even intimate, interview with someone who has achieved the difficult trick of being a very public figure but keeping herself to herself.

Explaining her usual reticence on personal matters, she said that, early in her career, she decided “I chose a job in the public eye, and my family didn’t.” She talked about her first marriage, at the age of 24, “a really, really nice guy; we just weren’t a good marriage”; her current husband, John Clarke, “a terrific guy”; the traumatic burglary and attack on her son John in their home; her charity work in Africa; and the final interview with her great friend Nuala O’Faolain. For someone who came across as so guarded initially, she ended up being open and engaging and thoroughly good TV company.

The series of interviews that has brought Murphy back to the telly – and it’s a welcome return as he’s such a pro; could he be more relaxed? – is filmed on the top floor of the Grand Canal Theatre, its glass walls giving spectacular views over Dublin.

RICHARD CURRAN FILMED Property Crash: Where to Now?(RTÉ1, Monday) in an adjacent building – Dublin's docklands being the telegenic shorthand for modern Ireland – though this follow-up to his 2007 documentary Future Shock,which so clearly and controversially predicted the property crash, didn't have the same impact. In that first programme, confident predictions about price drops and an imminent property collapse seemed so unimaginable to so many people that it became a huge talking point, and he had to soak up considerable criticism from vested interests. Given what has happened, all credit to the Sunday Business Postjournalist for not becoming a told-you-so media fixture over the past few years.

This programme, being full of information that is already widely known and agonised over in the media, was simply dull. There were so many coloured maps of Ireland, and so many percentages and prices coming thick and fast, that, for the most part, it wasn’t so much a TV programme as a PowerPoint presentation. The attempts to liven it up – Curran visited Finland and Japan to see how they emerged from their own spectacular property busts – didn’t work because it was too difficult to see the relevance. And despite a roster of heavyweight experts (including Peter Nyberg, Patrick Honohan and Alan Ahearne) addressing Curran’s central question of where the property market will be in five years’ time, it became ever clearer that nobody knows. So what was the point?

SITTING AT THE kitchen table with her mother and filling out her application form for the National University of Ireland, Galway, 20-year-old Róisín de Búrca wanted to answer its question of why she wants to go to NUIG with "Because I want to escape from home." Her mother agreed it was time for her daughter to get more independence. Leitir Mór in rural Co Galway is small and quiet, she said; it's better for a young woman to be in a city where there was more going on. A fairly typical conversation, but what was unusual about the scene in the documentary Cogar: Bac is Bua(TG4, Sunday) is that Róisín has Down syndrome.

In a film aimed at raising awareness of the abilities of people with Down syndrome (which it did beautifully, without any lecturing), Róisín’s mother pointed out that as her daughter has already passed her Leaving Cert and achieved a Fetac Level 5 award, university was the next stage. Her sister – Róisín is the middle of nine children – wryly said that “people think she’s thick because she has Down syndrome”, a judgment that became as amusing as it was ignorant as we heard Róisín’s views on her atheism, saw her working at her part-time job in marketing in a local business and learned of her plans for her new life.

The McPhillips family in Belfast was the second filmed for the programme. Elliryn, who is four, is just starting out, and the family are at the stage where her parents – exhausted but enthusiastic and hopeful – are doing as much as they can to ensure she fulfils her potential. “I think I’m breaking new ground,” Róisín said, when she was accepted by NUIG, and this simple, well-filmed and well-edited film showed she’s right.

PROVING THAT ALL those years in showbiz taught her a thing or two about perfect timing, Dana upstaged all around her on the Prime Time Presidential Election Special(RTÉ1, Wednesday) and provided the TV moment of the week and maybe even the presidential campaign.

“I have to make a very special announcement, please,” she said, apropos nothing, but getting all our attention in what had been a poor debate, with no new questions, the candidates’ messages driven by sound bites, little interaction and a tetchy atmosphere: all in all, not a clearly frustrated Miriam O’Callaghan’s finest hour. The media, Dana said, her voice quivering, were about to publish “vile and false allegations” about her. On and on she went, ignoring O’Callaghan’s persistent interjections of “What are you talking about?” Dana said lawyers had been called in to fend off the attempt to “destroy my good character”. Now that’s how to hijack live television.

For someone who was physically centre stage all evening but was all but invisible in terms of her contribution, she certainly had our attention. David Norris could have produced those letters and Martin McGuinness could have flashed his IRA exit papers and no one would have paid a blind bit of notice. It was all about Dana. The winner was again Tonight with Vincent Browne: the ratings must have spiked as viewers turned over to TV3 for Browne's nightly preview of the next day's papers, desperate to know what Dana was so coy about. "We'll put the papers on screen the minute we get them," Browne promised. But when they came, at the end of the programme, we were none the wiser.

Get stuck into . . .

Let's see: Monday's choice is a doom-laden George Lee in Pension Shock: The Future is Now(RTÉ1) or a bright slice of retro glam. Pan Am(RTÉ2), a new US drama starring Christina Ricci (right), is the clear winner.