TV REVIEW:RTÉS SUNDAY NIGHT drama, Raw, wrapped up season four with two properly dramatic scenes that were all the more satisfying because, in a series bogged down with predictable storylines, they came out of nowhere.
At the foot of the kitchen stairs, the maitre d’ Pavel (Krystof Hádek), the victim of an earlier assault, lay (dying? dead?) cradled in the arms of the head chef, Geoff (the fantastic Damon Gameau). It was touching and sad, a perfect counterpoint to the lovely and entirely believable scene moments before when the two had agreed to get married and move to the Czech Republic to open a restaurant.
While this good stuff was going on, the staff were sitting down to dinner out in the dining room, all looking rather satisfied because so many storylines were being tied up in a neat but hurried bow: Jojo (Charlene McKenna), who had been drunk for most of the series, saw the error of her ways and refused a glass of wine – so she’s on the wagon then; Fiona (Aisling O’Sullivan) shared a twinkly moment with farmer Ed (Brian Doherty), even though there’s more sexual chemistry in a Kerrygold ad; and Philip (Sam Keeley), the homeless runaway whose father has been hunting him, for some unexplored dysfunctional family storyline, has gone away, leaving the lad – a strangely bland character – free to become the next super-chef.
Missing from the table was Fiona's dad (the always fine Dermot Crowley), who was recovering from a heart attack and from the boredom of being trapped in an unlikely storyline straight out of chick lit: as the restaurant's new landlord, he moved in upstairs and started meddling in the love lives and business of his daughters (including a random new one). Rawstill looks slick, with strong acting and a cool soundtrack, and it's watchable in an undemanding, Sunday-evening sort of way. But this series fired off in all directions looking for plots to cling to, and it lacked the edginess that made the first two series so refreshing.
THE SECOND EPISODEin Andrew Marr's three-part documentary marking Queen Elizabeth's 60 years on the British throne, The Diamond Queen(BBC1, Monday), concentrated on how she "moved to modernise the monarchy" – though she doesn't seem to have had much option what with her now having to pay tax and having had to give up some of her fancy toys such as the royal yacht. Marr, didn't bow and scrape as have other TV royal profilers in the past, though the reverential and slightly awestruck tone was different from his usual questioning style. This episode included her visit to Ireland – "this is not entirely easy stuff" said Marr – with her grandson William (weirdly, there was no sign of Charles in the entire programme) explaining how the visit was so important to the queen and that it was "a huge turning point for her". In an extended segment, Marr interviewed Tim Knatchbull and his mother, Countess Mountbatten, two survivors of the 1979 IRA bomb that killed the queen's cousin, Lord Mountbatten, and three others. If you didn't know a thing about Anglo-Irish relations and were puzzled as to why our nearest neighbour hadn't popped across before, you might have thought it had everything to do with that: it was obviously an intensely personal story for the queen, but details of the broader history weren't given.
The tone throughout was very much on the lines of wasn’t she simply marvellous to put all that behind her and come for a visit, and not how marvellous it was that she was invited in the first place.
Before the queen visited, Marr conducted a rather skimpy vox pop in Dublin to gauge attitudes. A man and a woman weren’t too fussed but said that if she came she’d be welcomed “with courtesy”; another man with a green baseball hat emblazoned with the Sinn Féin logo said, “Maybe an apology would be good”.
TWENTY-FIVEyears ago Phil Agland made a Bafta-winning documentary about the Baka, a tribe of pygmies in the rainforest in Cameroon, recording the ancient culture and daily life of a people insulated from the modern world. For this new film Baka – A Cry from the Rainforest (BBC2, Friday) he revisited the tribe and in a superb piece of work intimately documented how their lives and circumstances have changed for the worse.
Camera, born during the original documentary and named after the way Agland cradled his camera, is now a mother, determined that her young daughter Ambi would get an education – despite the school being an hour’s walk away. The little girl’s story was a glimmer of hope for the future.
But Agland found that the Baku, still living in leaf huts but now wearing western cast-offs of grubby T-shirts and sports shorts, are caught between two worlds. Desperately poor and directionless, they have lost their traditional skills and culture, are prohibited by environmental laws from hunting, and are living in a rainforest destroyed by deforestation and mining.
They work as daily hires for their neighbours, the Bantu people, and are paid in potent home brew. They are now so addicted to alcohol that even the small children drink. It was a tragic picture.
I TUNED INTO the Irish Film and Television Awards(RTÉ 1, Saturday) to see Fionnula Flanagan sprinkle a bit of Hollywood magic over the proceedings with her fantastic speech on receiving her lifetime achievement award – though it would take a truckload of stardust to bring a bit of life to this event.
Maybe it's highly entertaining if you're in the Convention Centre – though the audience looked bored – but it makes for a long two hours of telly. There are only so many times you can amuse yourself saying, "There's Brian O'Driscoll with Amy Huberman, bet he's glad he didn't go to Paris", or "Brenda Fricker looks like she's just popped out to the shops for a pint of milk . . . and her with an Oscar at home"; or wonder how, in the name of all that's mixed up, could the blowsy megadrama The Borgias be in the same "best drama" category as TG4's fine but low-key Corp agus Anam?
It was better when it was in the Burlo and you could see the glammed-up luvvies at dinner tables having a few drinks during the ceremony. It was still long and boring to watch on telly, but you got the feeling that at least someonewas having a good time, even if it wasn't you.
Get stuck into . . .
Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte star in Luck, the new megabucks drama from HBO. Set mostly on a racecourse, it was created by David Milch ( Deadwood) and is directed by Michael Mann. (Sky Atlantic, tonight)
