TVReview Leo Tolstoy, despite his inclination towards mystical humanism, could, when the mood took him, deliver a strain of withering criticism that might have caused Kenneth Tynan to think twice, writes Donald Clarke
"You know, I cannot abide Shakespeare," he once said to Anton Chekhov. "But your plays are even worse."
Tolstoy's reputation survived his attack on two of history's most distinguished theatrical deities. Would he have been so easily forgiven if he had laid into The Sopranos with similar gusto? David Chase's epic saga of life among New Jersey's fattest organised criminals, which returned for a rumoured final outing this week, has, since its debut at the end of the last decade, come to be regarded as supreme proof that high art can emerge from a supposedly low medium. Even eggheads who regard television as brain-swill for the frontally lobeless acknowledge the series' value.
Before offering a meagre qualification to that avalanche of praise, we should acknowledge the programme's undeniable achievements. The success of The Sopranos, a product of the agreeably sweary HBO cable service, has allowed TV producers the freedom to explore more complex stories and more grown-up themes in their drama. Meanwhile, production values - and sometimes actors - normally only encountered in feature films have become commonplace on the small screen. Without The Sopranos we would, most likely, never have seen Deadwood, The Wire, Six Feet Under or Lost. Even a superficially dissimilar show such as the excellent re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica profited from Chase's commitment to pursuing narrative at a leisurely pace. We should thank Tony and the rest of the mob for enabling a golden age in TV drama.
All that noted, it is hard to deny that The Sopranos has, in recent seasons, begun to sag beneath the weight of its own ambition. Like The Godfather - with GoodFellas, a significant progenitor - the series enjoys demonstrating that, while resting from the gruesome trials of the criminal life, its mobster heroes encounter the same domestic pressures that trouble dentists, plumbers and quantity surveyors.
Fair enough. But the last full season was so taken up with ageing, marital discord and business traumas that one began to despair of ever seeing a proper murder again. The characters were more at risk of dying from Alzheimer's than gunshot wounds. Much more of this and the great critical consensus might begin to develop cracks.
Well, against the odds, Thursday night's episode, the first in the second leg of a bifurcated final season, was as good as anything we have seen in the show's distinguished run. A terrible immorality tale unfolding over the sort of boozy weekend that Edward Albee might have savoured, the show had a gorgeous dramatic shape, powerfully layered dialogue and, most gratifyingly, a denouement involving a satisfactorily appalling murder.
Tony and Carmela, currently on good terms, had taken themselves to the country to indulge in a period of boozing, grunting and - fatally, as things turned out - Monopoly with the mobster's sister and her wrecking-ball of a husband. Tony, celebrating his 47th birthday, made the mistake of making one too many smart comments about his big sister's appearance. Bobby Baccalieri, the boss's brother-in-law and a man of comparably substantial girth, responded by walloping his guest in the chops and following this up with several more wild digs.
Seeing Tony pluck little green houses from his bloodied cheeks, the viewer could have little doubt that a terrible retribution was sure to come Bobby's way. And so things turned out. But, rather than slicing away any of his in-law's flesh, the obstinate Godfather, whose capacity for cruelty has survived years of analysis, decided instead to claim what little section of Bobby's soul he had not yet relinquished to the mob. A striking climax, it served to remind us of the ways the Sopranos are quite unlike the rest of us. The series appears back on course.
THE SOPRANOS IS followed on RTÉ2 by a new Irish sitcom. Wait, come back! Soupy Norman, a genetic mutation engineered by comedians Barry Murphy and Mark Doherty, is the most amusing entity to emerge from the national broadcaster for quite some time. This singular experiment sees Irish actors - the series' creators are joined by Tara Flynn, Sue Collins and Mario Rosenstock - dubbing surreal and subversive dialogue over the action from a popular Polish soap opera entitled First Love. What emerges is the story of a Cork girl confused and bewildered by a Dublin that looks eerily like Wroclaw (I looked that up).
Soupy Norman, which began life on Armando Iannucci's uncharacteristically fitful Time Trumpet, is not entirely original in its approach. Forty years ago Woody Allen took sections of a Japanese spy film and, after pasting in his own dialogue, turned it into the pleasurably bizarre What's Up, Tiger Lily? But Murphy and Doherty, unlike their predecessors in this field, have worked hard at discovering dialogue that actually fits the shapes made by the Polish actors' mouths. As a result, their characters, all either sinister or demented, end up being nudged towards conversations of serendipitous obscurity. At one stage, the walrus-moustached paterfamilias finds himself discussing bouncy castles with the protagonist in a manner that suggests no infant should, if asked, even consider accompanying the old fellow to such an inflatable edifice.
As purposefully disorienting as it is technically impressive, Soupy Norman, composed of neat 10-minute episodes, proves that bolting together apparently incompatible forms can sometimes produce delightful amalgams.
AT OTHER TIMES, of course, such experimentation can generate monsters of such terrifying hideousness that all sensitive people feel the urge to stick their heads down the lavatory and keep flushing until the beast has left the room. It's safe to withdraw yourselves from the bowl, folks. Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reels, a misshapen ogre beyond the imaginings of Hieronymus Bosch, has ceased its awful prowling about the airwaves.
"If I switched on and didn't know it was an Irish dancing competition then I still wouldn't know," Colin Dunne, the judge with all the teeth, said during the grand final on Sunday evening. With this comment, Dunne directed us towards the nagging flaw at the heart of the programme's conception. Thirteen years ago, the demonically clever producers of Riverdance demonstrated that the rigid, anti-sexual nature of Irish dancing could best be sold to a mainstream audience by massing the performers together in shapes last seen during certain unlovely events in pre-war Nuremberg.
Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reels, a more intimate business, seeks to introduce raunch to the form by having its participants twirl around to rock songs. We end up with the forlorn vista of dancers appearing to realise halfway through their freeform gyrations that they are breaking the terpsichorean conventions and - ashamed by their transgressions - slapping their hands guiltily back to their sides and pressing their knees chastely together.
The more ascetic round, during which the contestants have to execute particular set moves while remaining within a circle drawn on the floor, is somewhat less compromised by carnality, but there still seems to be a suspicious degree of bumping and grinding going on. The image of Gerard Byrne, a cast member of Fair City, oscillating his hips lubriciously while dressed in a kilt was, surely, not what de Valera had in mind while advising comely maidens to dance at crossroads. Such things are, I believe, seen regularly in certain maritime districts of Hamburg, but it is a surprise to encounter them on prime-time family television.
If the producers are in any doubt as to the grisliness of their creation, they need only consider the obscurity of the celebrities who agreed to participate. At the close of Sunday night's spectacular, a gang of people who, the ubiquitous Rosanna Davison aside, could only accurately be described as members of the public, fell on stage to indulge in one last orgy of arrhythmic disorder. These folk, eliminated in earlier rounds, are all, I'm sure, decent folk with careers of which to be proud. But, such is their fleeting acquaintance with fame, some must have trouble recognising even themselves when they glance in the mirror. A bloke named Gavin Ó Fearraigh won.
SOME DECADES BEFORE reality television began rubbing its fetid carcass against the schedules, Sir Kenneth Clark, father of Alan Clark, the thirsty MP, strode before the cameras to lecture a receptive nation on the history of western art. Civilisation became a worldwide hit and the BBC went on to cultivate a reputation for producing excellent authored documentary series. Jacob Bronowski told us about science in The Ascent of Man. David Attenborough handled evolution in Life on Earth.
During the 1980s, the communication studies graduates who ran television dismissed such shows - those featuring one voice unqualified by other talking heads - as being overly hierarchical (or something). Thankfully, since Simon Schama reclaimed the territory with his History of Britain, we are now, once again, allowed to savour being told what to think by boffins in corduroys.
The latest authored documentary to come our way is Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain. As you might expect from such a source, the programme is informative, lively and - acknowledging, for example, the importance of Ealing films to post-war Britain - eager to gesture to the cultural hinterland that surrounds political affairs. Lord Clark, as he later became, would be generally approving. He might, however, baulk at Marr's description of Sir Stafford Cripps, the famously dry chancellor of the exchequer, as a "pain in the bum". Great stuff.
Hilary Fannin is on leave
The Sopranos
RTÉ2, Thursday
Soupy Norman
RTÉ2, Thursday
Celebrity Jigs 'n' Reels
RTÉ1, Sunday
Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain
BBC2, Tuesday