Radio Review Conor GoodmanWednesday's Afternoon Play on BBC Radio 4 was The Kerlogue, by Dermot Bolger. Performed in Belfast with a largely Irish cast, it told the story of an Irish cargo ship travelling from Wexford to Portugal in 1943, when it happened upon scores of men floating in the water - survivors of a stricken German naval vessel.
Bolger's play examined the moral, political and practical dilemmas faced by the Irishmen, as they set about rescuing 168 German seamen and transporting them back to Cork.
The play not only brought to life a little-known event in our history, but also had modern resonances. Similar flotillas of men - though today they are shipwrecked refugees - are now routinely ignored by ships at sea.
A central character is The Kerlogue's cabin boy, Kevin, whose own father has died at sea eight months previously. When, early in the play, the ship receives a distress signal, Kevin is gripped by the sudden hope that it's from his father's ship. This is impossible, of course, but the very futility of his hope demonstrates the trauma suffered by those who have lost loved ones at sea. Bolger's script skilfully wove backstories into the dialogue and captured well the banter among crew members. He also convincingly imagined the argument that may have ensued as the rescued Germans tried to persuade the Irish crewmen to land them in France.
All the same, the production values showed that so much radio drama is rooted in outmoded conventions. When a play set at sea sounds as though it was recorded in a studio before having a few seagull sound effects added, there's a credibility problem for a modern audience. And if they went to the trouble of finding actors such as the half-German Kenneth Collard to deliver convincing accents, surely they could have persuaded Owen Roe, playing Capt Tom Donohue, to lose the Dublin brogue in favour of something a little more south-eastern (the real Donohue was from Dungarvan). Radio drama is always going to be low-budget, and I wouldn't expect cast and crew to take to St George's Channel for the recording. But a greater sense of location would have given this play some much-needed sonic verisimilitude. Bolger's script deserved better.
Daytime listeners to mainstream Irish radio are sure of a few surprises if they go to some of the less visited points on the dial late at night, when political correctness has been tucked up in bed. On Tuesday, Declan Carty's Newstalk show Late Night Live was blithely broadcasting the sound from a YouTube clip, in which a young Irishman lay under a train track - for a laugh - while a train passed overhead and his friends filmed the event. If Joe Duffy had put that out, the RTÉ comment line would have been engaged for a week on the immorality of broadcasting such irresponsible high jinks. But on Newstalk as midnight approached? One text. Yes, Carty's guests condemned the man's actions and made derogatory comments about YouTube's failure to remove the clip, yet none of them passed comment on Newstalk's playing of it, which was only marginally less stupid than the stunt itself.
Meanwhile, The Adrian Kennedy Phoneshow on FM104 was getting to grips with the big issues of the week. What should a girl do when her boyfriend is addicted to lap dancing? Should drinking on planes be banned? Is it rude to use "the C word"? On Tuesday night, callers debated - I use the term loosely - the dynamics of "sexy dancing". A male stripper came on to describe the effect of his "full monty" act on women. A caller named Ross informed us that his girlfriend regularly paid for other women to dance for him. He considered this perfectly all right, but said he wouldn't be comfortable with his partner going to "the full monty thing - that's sleazy". Joan, a token right-thinking moralist, condemned the whole provocative business.
And it wouldn't be The Adrian Kennedy Phoneshow without the input of a lap dancer or two. Outraged by the attacks on her profession, Linda insisted it was only harmless fun. "If you came down to my club," she said, "all you'd see is a little bit of crack". Roddy Doyle couldn't make this stuff up.
On Kennedy's programme, the subject matter is rarely wholesome and the conversations are usually inconclusive. Yet both these programmes are fascinating, not for the quality of opinion but for the variety they bring to the airwaves and the access they give to groups usually excluded from the media. This slice of another life is a valid alternative to the relatively rarefied atmospheres of other radio studios in Ireland. And it's pretty entertaining, too.
cgoodman@irish-times.ie
Bernice Harrison is on leave