Shane Hegarty reviews Crimeline on RTÉ1, Lights, Cameras, Farrell: Elections, Television and Irish Politics also on RTÉ1, Scannal!, Dirty War on BBC1, Dirty Filthy Love on ITV, All About My Husband on BBC2 and The Celebrity Awards on ITV.
Crimeline, having handed in its badge and cuffs last year, has been replaced by RTÉ with Crimecall. Officer, I'd like to report a loss of composure.
Between the hours of 10.15 p.m. and 11.15 p.m. on Tuesday night, I observed the presenter, Brenda Power, tugging at her seat having appeared surprised by the camera and then displaying a distinct nervousness when conversing with a uniformed garda. I further observed her accomplice, Dáithí O Sé, reciting his lines in a most unnatural manner. The credits informed us that "Dáithí appears by courtesy of TG4". I would question the wisdom of granting him a release at this time.
Crimecall is an identikit of its predecessor, only the presenters had been infected by the reading-notes-in-the-witness-box manner of the gardaí. Having said that, the most comfortable of the presenters is Garda Mary Liz O'Leary, a veteran of the CCTV footage section from Crimeline. She presents her segment like she's leaning across the table of a garda interview room. There's something about her that suggests she could play both good cop and bad cop at the same time.
It'll become smoother in time, and it still serves a serious and valuable function. But that theme tune is probably there to stay. Any comfort that might come from Crimecall's vigilance is immediately dissipated by the plodding electro-percussion. It's like something from a John Carpenter movie, reflecting not the steady plod of the law but the relentless march of crime.
Lights, Camera, Farrell: Elections, Television and Irish Politics. Quite a title. Almost longer than the programme. Really, it was two titles. The first introduced an unnecessarily glitzy twist to Brian Farrell, a presenter with a reputation for rectitude; the second seemed to have been mugged from a student thesis. Neither really summed it up. Given it was broadcast on the day Farrell retired from broadcasting, no mention was made of this either before or during the programme. As for the elections, television and Irish politics, these were ingredients waiting in vain to be put together.
It was mostly just a potted history of elections since television arrived, with little learnt about how each affected the other. Meanwhile, Farrell talked about the politicians, but none of the politicians - who included Bertie Ahern, Seamus Brennan and Garret FitzGerald - talked about him. It left the impression of a programme that RTÉ supposed would be about one thing, then decided should be about something else and which ultimately became about neither.
It was a week when the titles were sometimes worth as much comment as the programmes. Early on Monday evening, RTÉ1 broadcast a documentary on the death of Ann Lovett and her child 20 years ago. That it was thrown in under the series' red-top title of Scannal! (Scandal!) cheapened what was a pithy but effective film about a local and national tragedy.
ON SUNDAY NIGHT, both the main British channels broadcast "dirty" dramas. BBC1 had Dirty War, wondering what might happen if terrorists were to detonate a radioactive bomb in London. Hold on, wasn't this already on a couple of weeks ago? No. It just feels like that. There was the recent terrorist thriller, The Grid, and role-playing game Crisis Command, which involved contestants dealing with apocalyptic scenarios.
Dirty War was fairly straightforward. Professional and smart, even if clumsily keen on the message that not all Muslims are crazed killers, it anticipated mass panic and a lack of governmental preparedness. But despite the discussion programme that followed, its chief function was to add to the growing body of television dedicated to anticipating an attack on Britain.
It hasn't happened, but it's hard to believe it won't. And while it waits, it is through its TV that we can see the British psyche bracing itself.
On ITV, meanwhile, was Dirty Filthy Love. How many people, you wonder, tuned in simply because of the tasty promise of the title? They would have found the unconventional story of two obsessive-compulsives meeting across a crowded doctor's waiting room.
Michael Sheen played Mark, an architect whose mind had gradually given away to the tics and outbursts of Tourette's Syndrome and to a destructive, irrational paranoia. For every four steps up the stairs he had to take one down, or else something terrible might happen. He would hesitate before sitting, conscious of how the pressure might snap his coccyx, buckle the legs of the chair, damage the concrete foundations of the building . . .
He didn't recognise his disorder, which is odd given that it seems as if half of all television's popular science programmes are given over to Tourette's or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, especially if a narcoleptic is unavailable at the time.
It took Charlotte (Shirley Henderson) to guide him through his illness. She had a serious problem with odd numbers and introduced him to a support group. It was at this point the drama fulfilled its contractual obligations and gave an act in which the mentally ill went on a life-affirming day trip.
Which was the cue to abandon ship, despite how, during its opening half-hour, Dirty Filthy Love had threatened to match its originality with quality. Sheen had played Mark, in his mannerisms and his growing obsession with his ex-wife, with restraint and delicacy. But gradually, Jeff Pope and Ian Puleston-Davies' script lost its way, as it gave in to the standard scenes of beautiful madness while Sheen's performance was buried under an avalanche of twitches and convulsion and a mass of suddenly overgrown hair.
And having written itself into a corner, it gave us an ending that was glib and convenient, leaving a trail of dirty filthy promises in its wake.
FOR A TALE of disability and love there was All About My Husband, an affecting documentary about Colin Green, a BAFTA-nominated editor who a year ago went to bed feeling a little queasy and woke up paralysed by a stroke.
Although partially recovered, it has left him with aphasia, meaning that he cannot communicate properly. He knows what he wants to say but can't say it.
It followed Green as he returned home from hospital to his wife, Julie, and four daughters, and it would be rare fiction that could say as much as this did about how illness can change a life in one unexpected, cruel instant.
Thankfully, though, we always have celebrities to teach us about sacrifice and duty. The Celebrity Awards recognised "the achievements" of hard-working celebrities. Thank God somebody finally has. Kerry and Brian McFadden were not present, of course. Their nomination for Celebrity Couple of the Year had been quietly dropped. However, their publicist, Max Clifford, was in the audience. How much more would he have enhanced his reputation if he had only ensured that they won the award anyway.