This year marks a century of public broadcasting in Ireland, and RTÉ is honouring that anniversary with the watchable if tonally confused RTÉ100: Points of View (RTÉ One, Wednesday, 9.35pm).
The feature-length documentary wants to be several things at once and ends up in a bit of a muddle. At one level it’s striving for a Reeling in the Years-esque hopscotch down the yellow brick road of shared cultural experience.
So we get journalist Sinéad O’Carroll recalling Davy Fitzgerald and Clare’s 1995 All-Ireland win – their first since 1914 – and comedian Colm O’Regan remembering the life-changing thrill of going inside Bosco’s cardboard home and watching the iconic puppet having a private moment as he painted and sang to himself.
But it also strives to be serious, sociopolitical television. And so Lindsey Earner-Byrne talks about how The Late Late Show became a sort of national wailing wall – a clearing-out for the traumas accumulated over decades of theocratic hegemony. Meanwhile, Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole observes how Joe Duffy’s Liveline served as a warning signal to the government during the 2008 financial crisis when people rang up to express fears for their savings.
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Most interesting of all is the contribution of film-maker Jim Sheridan, who draws a contrast between the anarchic thrill of gangland classic Love/Hate and the more calculated high-jinks of its spiritual successor Kin, which he says has been tailored for international streamers – and that RTÉ is trying to appease the very forces plotting its destruction.
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But there are occasional lapses. We are told that Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh was “the voice of the GAA” when that honour should surely be shared with his predecessor, Michael O’Hehir. Later, someone delivers this stunning insight: “What one person finds entertaining is completely different to what someone else finds entertaining.” Hey, easy with the truth bombs, RTÉ.
