True Lives (RTE 1, Monday)
Glamour Girlz (Channel 4, Monday)
When England Played Argentina (ITV, Tuesday)
Where Were You? Passion, Pride and Penalties (BBC 1, Wednesday)
Big Science (RTE 1, Monday)
To mark a decade in which bachelor Francie Meighan has unceasingly serviced the community, the local Macra branch presented him with an ornamental bull. Symbolic or what? Clearly, even allowing for the fact that "bull" can suggest nonsense as well as virility, irony is thriving in drumlin country. Francie, who is also the current holder of "the most eligible hunk in Monaghan" title, has, it appears, always chosen to remain celibate. Anyway, Francie, unfazed, found a reason to deem the bull appropriate: "Thanks, I'm a Taurus," he said.
True Lives: Lives Without Wives, directed by Irene McCormick, focused on a group of Monaghan bachelors, four of whom are pensioners (brothers, Bobby and Loftus Millar and twins, Pat and Willie Savage) and the egregious Francie. At 40-ish, Francie was therefore the toy-boy as well as the hunk of the group. It was a splendid documentary, providing compelling accounts of true lives in an age when the media is choking on PR spin and gossip-column bull. It was sad too, of course, but not without humour and warmth: lad culture, albeit oul' lad culture, in a pristine, marketing-free condition.
Francie seemed like a hybrid of Daniel O'Donnell, Fr Dougal and Brian D'Arcy Mark 1. Almost maniacally pleasant, he described himself as being like "a half priest" and indeed, when younger, did consider becoming a full priest. But he appeared to be extraordinarily happy - smiling, joking and dancing with alarming gusto. He "had girlfriends in the past" but is happy to be a confirmed celibate. Given his present contentment, it was impossible to decide whether to pity or envy him.
He told part of his story: his mother died when he was 13 and his father passed away less than five years later. The loss of both his parents during his teenage years seemed to form the axis of his life. He has been a Pioneer (in terms of total abstinence from alcohol) for 24 years and believes he "has a way with people". He certainly has a way with documentary-makers because in spite of his, albeit pumped-up, routine of small-town bonhomie, he was among the most extraordinary characters on TV this year. Watching him trying to tame his "cow's lick" (claiming that cold water was better than gel for the task) was a window into the past).
Sixty-nine year old Bobby Millar has no cow's lick, but he does have a great shock of grey hair and a face as chiselled and lived-in as the mature Sam Beckett's. Bobby is a Protestant, who might once have married. But his father wasn't keen on marriage "to a Catholic girl". Bobby stayed single and claims to have "no regrets" about assenting to his father's wishes. Still, he did later suggest, "there's no man right without a wife and there's no girl right without a man".
Bobby's pension amounts to £78.50 a week and his invalid brother Loftus gets just £72.50. Bobby's extra £6 is a living alone allowance to which he was entitled while Loftus spent years in hospital. Now that Loftus has returned home, Bobby has written to Sligo to have the allowance cancelled. In a country and a time full of financial and political scandals, the scruples and honesty of a poor man like Bobby Millar were shaming. Though he no longer enjoys the health of a young buck like Francie Meighan, Bobby retained the light of life in his sparkling eyes.
Throughout, Lives Without Wives, made telling use of a height-for-hire camera. Ascending above little homes and fields to pan about the surrounding countryside, the camera provided not just a geographical but a kind of spiritual context for the bachelor lives being led below. We saw Pat and Willie Savage visit the house in which they were reared - now just a ruin, of interest to ruminating cows and the ruminating brothers. It was, forgive the cliches, a glimpse of the hidden Ireland which continues to beat beneath the dizzy fuss of the Celtic Tiger.
This one, for the humanity of its subjects and the sense of time taking its time, had a bucolic quality which never sank into tourist board sentimentality. Opening with Big Tom's Gentle Mother, it did not overlook the emotional or material hardship of the bachelors. But it gave these lives room to breathe - to tell their own stories - and, along with the pathos, there was a kind of heroic quality to it all. Bachelor life may inevitably (save for rare exceptions like Francie Meighan) lead to yearning and wistfulness, even bitterness. But while it lacks the companionship of sexual partnership and the vitality of children, it lacks many of the myriad compromises too. Fine TV.
It would be difficult to find lives of greater contrast to those of the Monaghan bachelors than those led by Glamour Girlz, American porn star Midori and British nude model Charmaine Sinclair. Midori and Charmaine are "women of colour", beavering away in the sex industry. Both of them do their stuff for the "positive promotion" of black women and are keen to end "blacksploitation". Oh, they have money and a kind of sleazy glamour, alright. But their lives seemed sadder than anything we saw in Monaghan, reminding you that excessive sex can be more pathetic than no sex at all.
Really, this was quite vile stuff. Charmaine, believing that her career has peaked in Britain, went to Los Angeles. There she met Midori and a bunch of the most sleazy people ever seen on mainstream television. Charmaine was introduced to Ron Jeremy ("he's like a legend in our industry," said Midori). The legendary Ron has directed such classics as ET The Extra Testicle and John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut. He's a sharp talker and promised Charmaine "a lot of new prospects" in the business.
Chief among those prospects was a chance to "star" with Midori's leading man, Mr Marcus. Built like a Macra bull on steroids, Mr Marcus smiles a lot as he goes about his daily chores in the hardcore porn business. He regularly makes a few movies in the same day and with Viagra now on the market, well, his productivity is practically boundless. As we watched him try to seduce Charmaine, a former squeeze of Robert De Niro, it became clear that this was a tale which had nothing to do with the positive promotion of black women. It was about the attempted induction of a semi-innocent into one of the most exploitative industries imaginable.
For her part, Midori, now in her late 20s wants to get into "the music business". Luke Campbell is the dude who has put naked black women in music videos and to Midori, he is "God". We saw her meeting this unusually foulmouthed deity. Through his gold teeth, Luke talked the talk (look, you can guess it for yourself!) and promised to phone Midori. This made her more ecstatic than even Mr Marcus ever could. It was all cobblers, of course. By film's end, Midori, like so many other women on promises, was waiting by the phone trying to deny reality.
THERE has been a huge explosion of sex on television in the last few months. Sky One's British Sex, for instance, has been so sleazy that it's practically beyond reviewing in the normal sense. Now Channel 4 has been loading its schedules with similar, if more intelligent, material. Indeed, of all the developments within television this year (TV 3; Murdoch buying Manchester United to use as a battering ram for digital TV; increasing pay-per-view) the spread of blue TV into mainstream schedules has been the most dramatic. Then again, perhaps we ought not be surprised. The worldwide porn industry is massive and still increasing.
It has colonised the Internet, where there are very few regulations and taken over the top shelves in many Irish newsagents. Television is merely following other media and with huge profits to be made, the trend will almost certainly accelerate. Anyway, Charmaine went back to Britain, although Mr Marcus, smiling as ever, is confident she will return to LA. For all its PR about being "adult" and "liberal", porn destroys most of its "stars" while the sleazebags make the profits. Part skin-flick, part cautionary tale, Glamour Girlz used the oldest ruses in the book to justify its explicitness.
STILL, at least football is matching sex in the number of programmes it generates. Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch was screened on Channel 4 on Sunday, preceded and followed by It's Only a Game, a look at obsessive soccer fans. (Obviously so obsessive that they'd need to see the same programme twice in the same day.) Curiously, When England Played Argentina and Where Were You? Passion, Pride and Penalties also looked at the same subject (this year's World Cup quarter-final classic) - from very similar seats in the ground.
The Beeb had Mick Jagger, the most-shown England fan throughout that night in St Etienne. But it also had Ulrika Jonsson. Neither Mick nor Ulrika are known for the sophistication of their tactical appreciation, although both could probably bluff it out against the matrons of the Alwoodley Bridge Club, featured on ITV. These were that kind of programme: mix a few well-known names with punters not usually caught up in the excitement of football, add mood music, edit tightly and roll it there, Colette.
The best contributions came though from the players involved. A pity that neither channel could get David Beckham to talk. But the Argentine captain, Diego Simeone, involved in a controversial penalty and in Beckham's sending-off, was almost forthcoming. Without quite saying so, he indicated that in top-class professional football, any little trick is fair enough. Certainly, he left his foot trailing so that England keeper Seaman couldn't but take him down. Shortly afterwards, Michael Owen dived for England and Shearer equalised.
On and on through Owen's wonder goal, Argentina's superclever free-kick equaliser, Beckham's dismissal, Sol Campbell's disallowed goal, a genuine penalty denied England and then . . . the penalty shoot-out. It was rollicking stuff - even in replay and knowing the result. But what of the school that insisted on running its production of The Tempest on the night in question? This was, I'm afraid, a case of the most idiotic anti-culture believing itself to be high culture. It was almost possible to feel sympathy even for the dreadful Richard Madeley who had to go watch his daughter mangle Shakespeare. Almost!
FINALLY, Big Science. Journey to Offworld, the final episode of the four-part series was screened this week. The little science of videotaping went astray on me so I missed almost its first half. Still, the part I did see was more visually sophisticated than anything previously made by RTE. In fact, it looked spectacular - a glimpse into the unnerving future as engaging as True Lives' glimpse into the frozen past. It is obvious that Big Science costs big bucks. But some big bucks, Mr Marcus notwithstanding, are well spent. Standards (in some areas - there's still stuff like Limelight) are rising in home productions. Good.