TV REVIEW: It has been a barren television week. For the first half, the choice was between Queen Elizabeth II or constantly re-winding and re-playing Matt Holland's goal against Cameroon.
From Wednesday, it was between everything else and replaying Robbie Keane's goal. That was a moment so remarkable that any second now the realisation will hit us that he really, truly, unbelievably did score, and the country will spontaneously burst into renewed celebration.
After an eight-year hiatus, the Dunphy panto rolled back into town. He is an elastic band tuned to atomic clock precision. Who said it couldn't be 1990 again? One-all victories and Dunphy burning effigies of the manager.
His face appears on the big screen and the crowd boos to order. He should wear a cloak and end each programme by disappearing in a puff of smoke. If you're in the chipper this weekend, ask for a Dunphy and chips for old times' sake.
About 2,000 callers have complained about him to date, far surpassing the previous record of 1,200 objections to RTÉ 1, for replacing the weather forecasters with newer, younger, less meteorological models. It was some tirade. All over the country, biscuits will have been dropped into teas, cigarettes will have drooped from lips, slippers will have been launched at the screen. In his 1990 tantrum, he invoked the great Irish players of the past he was embarrassed for. This time, he roll-called the young lads currently playing out there, and insisted that a beating would do them good in the long run.
"It's a nuanced argument," he admitted. Take a note of that line for the next time you've argued your way into a corner. He even threw his arms up in the air at the end of his diatribe on Saturday evening. For God's sake, you thought, somebody give the man a pen.
This time round, though, the Après Match crew is there to draw the comedy out of the situation before it gets shouted out by the boos. It has been superb during the tournament, three comedians in such blithe control of their characters that the weaker lines are allowed free passage. To emphasise the absurdities of its own commentators remains one of RTÉ's smartest decisions, and Gary Cooke's "Dunphy-as-flag-waving-leprechaun" sketch after the Germany game was magnificent. Of course, it mightn't have seemed so funny if there had been only one minute of injury time instead of three.
Meanwhile, the Golden Jubilee spilled across the British schedules and, like a slick, seeped into ours too. The incongruity of the British soaps became embarrassing. They came wearing Union Flag boxer shorts and English football jerseys, the slow torture of their Jubilee storylines not so much coming to an explosive climax, but more nudging the buffers after a long, wearisome journey. EastEnders at least had the good grace to end its jubilee evening with a drunken, drug-taking prostitute comatose in an allotment. Coronation Street did not.
Its plot involved a row over the characters re-enacting a civil war battle. I'd explain it more, but I'm in danger of dropping asleep at the keyboard if I do. A few years back, at the beginning of a decline that now seems terminal, Coronation Street ran a storyline in which Jack Duckworth banged his head and became possessed by the spirit of a Middle Ages tavern owner. Even Patrick Duffy would have gone straight back in the shower rather than face that plot. Until now, it was the most agonisingly dull storyline the soap has run. Again, this has been a week for records.
Following the soaps on Monday, Network 2 bought in the live feed of the Party at the Palace being held at Buckingham Palace, a gig in which legendary rock stars played bland cover versions of their own songs. It was most notable for the performance of Brian Wilson.
Although, to say it was a performance might be an overly florid description. Wilson looked as if he had been only half-thawed from cryogenic suspension and was spending a good deal of his set trying to re-learn basic motor skills, most visibly that of clicking his fingers in time with the music. Sitting rigid behind a keyboard, his face the colour of chalk, the most alarming thing about him was his voice. It has not changed at all. He can still execute the vocal backflips that allow him to hit notes audible only to dogs. Close your eyes and it could be 1966. Open them, though, and it's definitely, depressingly 2002. Wilson was poured into a suit that had been ironed and laminated to prevent creasing. He is obviously revelling in finally throwing off the shackles of Hawaiian shirts and surfing and girls in bikinis, and all that acid The Beatles gave him.
THE queen arrived late, enjoying the chance to put into practice the maxim that "even if Atomic Kitten were playing a gig in my back garden I wouldn't go and see them". She left early too, perhaps aware that the show would end, as all gala concerts are now obliged to do, with Paul McCartney leading the assembled performers in a rendition of Hey Jude. It has got to a point where the only way you can tell the difference between gala concert climaxes over the years is by the creeping height of Paul's jeans. On Monday they were threatening to annex his nipples.
If you have wandered across the Australian comedy Dossa and Joe and wondered who has the gall to so blatantly rip off Caroline Aherne's The Royle Family, don't get too worked up. It's Caroline Aherne. She is sequestered Down Under these days, away from Britain, where her comic ingenuity was forced to walk side-by-side with her very public personal problems.
With Dossa and Joe she has practically re-made her already legendary comedy, only this time with the sun streaming through the blinds and the language brashly Australian. Dossa (Anne Charleston) plays a middle-aged Irish woman married to Joe (Michael Caton), a layabout who spends most of his life in a battered armchair in front of the telly. Other familiar parts of the engine are there too. Joe's mates are chancers and wasters. The neighbour is eccentric. The son is dim but well-meaning.
It differs in its pace, being slower and less purposeful, and there is the sense that Aherne doesn't quite yet know the Australian psyche as well as she does that of north-west England. It is also far more bitter-sweet, played out in vignettes that are linked by Dossa in conversation with an unseen marriage counsellor. But it has its moments, and acts as a little methadone to those of us finally beginning to accept that there will never again be a new Royle Family series.
As ever, it is in the father-daughter relationship that she hits the target. This week, Joe was alone, watching the footie, when daughter Giselle rang all the way from London. He used it as an opportunity to grab a beer and snack, but lost interest in conversation once that task was completed. "Giselle," he said, as a way of signing off, "make sure your mother's in next time you call".
Seven Days: A Journey with Paulo Coelho was a maddening, frustrating, hollow documentary, aimed at the soul, but never even scratching the skin. Liam McGrath invited the Brazilian writer and "philosopher" to Ireland to investigate supposed Marian sightings by his two cousins and a friend at Melleray Grotto, in Waterford, in 1985. Coelho takes depth to new depths. He believes his life is guided by omens, little moments in his day that are God's way of communicating directly with him. The door to his hotel was locked. It was a sign. He found a hammer on the ground at the grotto. It had been left there by God. He often held silences McGrath didn't wish to disturb. It is always dodgy to assume that a long silence ultimately leads to wisdom.
For McGrath, this was obviously a highly personal journey, and it hurts to be so harsh on it. But personal films walk a thin line with the viewer, and this one strayed horribly into turgid self-indulgence. Worse, that also meant indulging Coelho. If you look for omens, you will always find them.
The Waterford sightings were typical Marian apparitions. Children given a simple message. Live in peace. Love God. Pray more. Ireland will be saved. They claimed to see whole Bible chapters played out in front of them. They were Bible chapters taught to any Catholic child: the great flood; the casting out of the moneylenders. That they could have been children channelling school-taught sentiment and scenarios, in a situation in which creeping hysteria took hold, was hardly considered. The objections raised by the scientists were given token airtime.
There was a silence to keep. When it was broken, it was for Coelho to say that he was convinced by everything he had heard. He had searched for signs and found them located far away from logic. Sometimes a hammer is just a hammer.
tvreview@irish-times.ie