If you wanted a lesson in overcoming insurmountable obstacles, you could do worse than look to Davy’s Toughest Team (RTÉ One, Wednesday, 9.35pm). The plan in the first season to take a group of disadvantaged young men to a Mount Everest base camp was waylaid by the pandemic. Now, in series two, an attempted scaling of a volcano in Iceland is frustrated by a snowstorm.
To be fair, a blizzard up a mountain in Iceland is hardly unexpected, and the series does slightly undercut its message of never giving up by abandoning camp as the snows come down. Still, the situation is clearly fraught, as Davy informs his charges they need to leave immediately. The cameras even stop rolling – a sign of genuine crisis on reality TV.
“Things have got too dangerous,” Fitzgerald says. “We have to get our stuff. Get to the jeep. It’s just too dangerous. That’s what has to be done.”
Even before the storm hits, this enjoyable finale has been punishing for all involved. Fitzgerald struggles with the ascent of the glacier leading to the base camp. Tadhg, one of the young men participating in the show, has already had to withdraw, after coming down with flu.
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Fitzgerald takes easily to the role of inspirational figure. Even as he struggles, he has time to give a pep talk to another of the young men, by recalling an operation that saved his life. “I got a heart blockage. All I could hear the doctor saying was, ‘I can’t get it [the tube] through,” Fitzgerald says. “I’m struggling way more than you. I thank the Lord Jesus I can be here for ye.”
With the ascent abandoned, Fitzgerald and his lieutenants, Dane Galligan and Mattie Rice, change the tone by taking their volunteers on a swim and a bike ride across the stunning Icelandic landscape. Next, Galligan opens up about his issues around depression.
“I’ve always for a long time struggled with my mental health. From my early teens it got worse and worse. Didn’t get diagnosed until I was 24. I was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety.”
Fitzgerald follows with one final sermon. “I’m never going to forget that mountain,” he says. “I’m going to put it in the bank. I knew I was gone, and I got through it.”
In an afterword, we learn that the young men are back on the straight and narrow. Rob has returned to making music. Kelvin has become a sponsor for addiction. Tadhg has a new job. They didn’t quite reach the top of that volcano, but they got further than any of them thought possible – and, at the end of a bruising four weeks, that makes for its own kind of victory.
