TV REVIEW:'I'VE SEEN very hard men crying in this studio," said Tracy Piggott in the RTÉ studios on Monday after Katie Taylor's bronze medal bout, and that's why we watch the RTÉ coverage. Not actually to see Mick Dowling, Bernard Dunne and Michael Carruth come over a little teary-eyed (though who wasn't at that point, and that was only the start of it), but to see our own team perform, for the homegrown analysis and the athlete interviews.
(Some were heart-breaking: sailor Annalise Murphy on Monday was a lip-trembler, and the most candid one of the week was when the woman from RTÉ asked Alistair Cragg, who was full of excuses after his disappointing performance, “Realistically, should you have come to the Olympic Games?” Harsh maybe, but it was what we, by that time so full of boxing hope, were all thinking.
By Wednesday’s silver-medal bout, RTÉ’s pundit panel had grown to four, making us slightly worried that when it came to Katie’s Olympic final – or “the last stop on the Dart”, as it’s known in the veteran commentator Jimmy Magee’s head – they’d be sending out to the RTÉ canteen for more chairs.
Mostly, there’s a clear line between off-screen commentators who tell you in detail what’s actually happening and the back-in-the-studio analysts who are more free-ranging. That’s not so true in boxing, though, where Magee doesn’t much bother with a blow-by-blow of what’s actually happening, mostly preferring a more Blarneyesque approach. “It’s Mullingar versus Mexico,” he said of John Joe Nevin’s bronze bout on Monday – a rather unequal class of a fight, you’d have to think, but at least John Joe “had a built-in satnav”. Or, during one of Katie’s fights: “You don’t expect to come in here for a toboggan ride.” To which there really is no response – or sense, come to think of it.
There’s nothing more satisfying for us Olympic junkies than when a commentator piles on the technical details and the rules – the more arcane the better – leaving us feeling like instant experts. Anyone, no matter how landlocked, who watched the sailing on Monday lunchtime (excellent commentary by Myles Dungan and Maurice O’Connell – and nearly half a million tuned into RTÉ for it) can now talk for at least 30 seconds about the perils of a bad downwind without sniggering.
FOR EVERYTHINGelse about the Olympics it has to be the BBC. What astonishingly good coverage, and no ads – the bill for it must be enormous. Okay, that Team GB tubthumping does get a bit wearing after a while, but you couldn't begrudge them. The commentators and presenters are strictly global A-listers. This week for the athletics they've got Brendan Foster and Steve Cram and the great Michael Johnson in the studio. And there's presenter Clare Balding who seems to know everything about every sport from canoe slalom to the pentathlon. And Gary Lineker who's good on the blokey interviews, though not half as relaxed as when he's talking football.
Every time you switch on there’s a female expert in the studio, analysing or commentating. They had a woman boxer commenting on the women’s boxing, a female marathon runner on the women’s marathon and so on, which seems a blindingly obviously route to go down. And there’s the red button, BBC TV’s weapon against online coverage and boredom. Tired of the hockey? Click on the red button and find out what else is going on in London, and next thing you’re watching basketball or handball or weightlifting, skipping swiftly past Greco-Roman wrestling because seeing two large sweaty men writhing against each other is a Lycra moment too far.
Turn on the Olympics for five minutes and two hours later you’re still immersed in the gymnastics. Great telly.
NOW WE'VEthe boxing cracked, maybe someone could lure Br Colm O'Connell home. This extraordinary man, who trains world-class Kenyan runners, including David Rudisha, the new Olympic 800m champion, was profiled in the Ifta-winning documentary Man on a Mission (RTÉ One, Monday) by Eamonn Coghlan who visited him in a small town in Africa where running is a way out of crushing poverty.
When the Irishman arrived in Kenya to teach he had never coached before, but the humble, quietly spoken man in his Leinster rugby hat said he learned from the runners and then they learned from him.
Coghlan was quietly in awe of the coach, amazed that Br Colm never shouted at the athletes and that their training along the red dusty roads seemed almost leisurely. But they work hard. Silas, an 18-year-old runner, explained that he gets up at 5am for his first training session of the day. “Boys your age in Ireland would only be coming home at that time,” said Coghlan.
OTHER THANthat there's very little on TV and you'd be half suspicious of anything that is on, wondering if the schedulers are just filling it with any old rubbish. On Tuesday, Channel 4 tried to lure us away from the sporting action with a proper tabloid shocka with an irresistible title: The Girl Who became Three Boys. The documentary told the truly weird, hardly credible, but nevertheless true (it's been through the courts) story about Gemma, an 18-year-old girl from the north of England who created three virtual personas – all boys – on Facebook. As these "lads", she formed Facebook relationships with two of her actual friends, 15-year-old Jessica (who told the story on screen) and "Alice" (who remained anonymous). So far, so believable, and fitting in nicely with all those parental warnings about people online not being who they pretend to be. Then Gemma took it further by dressing up as the boys and becoming her friends' boyfriends. She wore a hoodie, never took off her hat and, amazingly, "Alice" and Jessica never copped that their lovely new boyfriends were in fact their friend Gemma – even when they were having sex. Gemma was eventually rumbled, arrested and imprisoned for sexual assault.
Delving into why the girls were so blind to what must have been fairly obvious and why they were so confused and vulnerable to being duped would have made for a more substantial documentary. “He’ll always be my first love, even though he doesn’t exist,” said an older though not much wiser Jessica.
Get stuck into ...
The Great British Bake Off (BBC Two, Tuesday) Of course we’re never going to make a rum baba or have a signature cake, but the brilliantly watchable bake-off, presented by Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc (right), is back for a new season.
