Living With The Enemy (BBC 2, Wednesday)
Prime Time (RTE 1, Wednesday)
Health Farm (BBC 1, Monday)
Kings In Grass Castles (RTE 1, Sunday)
Scealta o Theach na mBocht (TnaG, Tuesday)
`Take a cork with you and sleep with your eyes open," Wayne's mother had told him. Wayne's world, like that of his mate, Mick, was the rugby league scene of Castleford, Yorkshire: macho, coarse and provincial. For Living with the Enemy, the two buckos agreed to spend five days with Paul and Mark, a homosexual couple living in Soho, the seat (indeed, the very buttocks) of London's gay scene. All four lads were in their late 20s - the 1820s in the cases of Wayne and Mick.
Mark and Paul were offended by the "cork" remark (grinningly told to them by Wayne within minutes of his arrival) even though the Castleford boys thought it hilarious. "Cork!" said Mark, shaking his head in disbelief. "Cork!" In fact, the more the Yorkies laughed, the more piqued became their hosts. The cork, having popped out during their first exchange, released the genie of rampant homophobia. After that, it was going to be difficult to get it back in the bottle. And so it proved. The longer the programme went on, the greater became the hostility between the two sets of blokes.
Still, there were some genuinely hilarious moments - some predictably vulgar, of course, but others splendidly subtle. Mark and Paul took their guests on a tour of Soho's "gay village". In their rather garish Castleford shell suits, Wayne and Mick tried to appear as mucho macho and disparaging as possible. Mark, however, sensing their discomfort, pointed out that because of their outfits "people around here will just think that you're doing the rugby look thing - that you're gay". The glances of terror exchanged between Wayne and Mick were riotous. One-all!
As well as gay/straight dialogue, the two sets of lads confided separately to camera. "Well, let's face it, we're apprehensive 'bout kippin' 'ere and stayin' in 'ouse with two puffs," said Mick. "Mind you, they've not done anythin' in front of us to make us feel sick." Mark and Paul admitted to feeling a bit frightened their guests might turn violent. "They make me feel dirty," said Mark, "and I've spent years trying to get over feeling like that."
The four of them visited a gay sex shop. The camera panned around the range of paraphernalia before stopping to zoom in on the largest of a set of gleaming, metal, phallus-like objects. "What?" said Wayne, with a sharp intake of breath, "you ram them up . . . give over man!" At this juncture, it was clear the director was flogging his topic for all it was worth. Ashen-faced and clearly out of his depth, Wayne just couldn't believe his eyes. In fairness, it was hard to blame him.
So, it was time for the Yorkies to arrange a night out for the foursome. They chose a lap-dancing club in Hammersmith. Watching gyrating female strippers wrapping themselves around a pole, Mick and Wayne were as pop-eyed as acid-trippers. Mark and Paul yawned. The Castleford lads, aesthetes to the core, explained the allure of women's bodies and the repulsiveness (to them) of "hairy males with beer bellies". The gay blokes differed: "It wasn't a fun thing. I don't know what it was. It was a bit scary. They just treat women like meat," said Paul.
The arranged finale saw Wayne and Mick guesting for London's only all-gay rugby team. Paul and Mark cheered (well, sort of) from the sidelines. Afterwards, as straights and gays mixed in the clubhouse, it became clear that the rugger-bugger element, regardless of sexual orientation, especially gloried in vulgarity. But relations between the Yorkshire straights and the London gays had hit rock bottom. "I think even less of them now," said Wayne, "they're just puffs . . . filth." For the outraged Mark, his guests were incapable of understanding anything beyond "beer, rugby and bonking".
Since it was made, there have been claims by some of the participants that this programme was a set-up. Certainly, it looked suspicious. It was obvious the Castleford neanderthals were playing it up for their peers back home. The gay couple, on the other hand, appeared remarkably precious and humourless. But it wasn't just geography and sexuality which separated these pairs. The gays had a class confidence and better education, reminding you that there are often more crucial and alienating variables than people's ambitions for their private parts. Such is culture: funny - but sad too.
It may be in response to the hyped threat from TV3, but Prime Time has, at last, decided to beef-up its investigative output. This week's edition was titled The Baby Broker. Reporter Mike Milotte told the story of Irish-born Brendan Maloney who, since 1994, has been finding (sometimes) Russian children for adoption by American families. Maloney claims to have a Cambridge degree (majoring in economics) and to have been an officer in the British army. Cambridge, however, has no record of him and he replied "no comment" when pressed about his alleged army career.
With the country close to economic ruin, there are around 500,000 children in care in Russia today, most because their parents are too poor to maintain them. The foreign adoption "business" there is worth $100 million a year. Children have become Russia's newest and fastest growing export. Families seeking children typically hand over $9,000 or $10,000. A Russian MP insists agencies are fleecing clients. In Moscow, the adoption authorities will not deal with Brendan Maloney any more.
Interspersing a confrontational interview with Maloney by speaking also to Russians and Americans, Milotte was told a number of horror stories. One American woman, Grace Wilson, handed over $11,500 for a baby, whose picture she was shown. The baby was never delivered to her. She sought a refund only to be informed by Maloney that this was not possible and that she could adopt a different baby instead. After that, she was offered handicapped babies only. She has since recouped $4,000. Another woman continued to pay cash instalments for a baby who had died almost a month earlier.
In interview, Maloney repeatedly addressed Milotte as "Sir". Presumably, this was meant to indicate due formality (in British army officer class mode?). But, in truth, it had quite the reverse effect, emphasising an impression of calculating coldness. "He leaves a trail of tears and heartache behind him," said an American commentator. "He does a great job at the beginning and wins people's confidence to get money. He always return calls. But then the bottom falls out . . . "
Brendan Maloney is currently under investigation for tax fraud in New Mexico. He has come to Ireland and plans to set up an adoption brokerage business here. This was the first of Prime Time's new series of investigations and it did give teeth to a current affairs programme which has far too often been as toothless as a new-born baby. Milotte is a fine reporter anyway and his quizzing of a not-to-be-underestimated-opponent gives hope for the future. An auspicious opening: the real test will be to see if PT is prepared to bare its teeth at some of the better-known, establishment codgers thriving under the Celtic Tiger.
In lighter vein, BBC's latest docusoap is titled Health Farm. After a hotel, an opera house, a cruise ship and many others, the latest community of workers striving for stardom is that of the refurbished, £14 million Forest Mere health farm in Hampshire. At this stage in television's evolution (or regression), the cast of these efforts realises that television directors respond better to character types playing at full volume, preferably in pressurised or comic situations.
So, we got to see four of the principals - two male and two female staff - cavorting naked around the newly-installed mud-room. If they were watching, Wayne and Mick would doubtless have been sick at the obese figures on display. Put it this way: whatever your sexual orientation, only the most developed of aesthetic sensibilities could possibly discern beauty in the human forms on offer. No matter - it made, at least in the current fad for vulgarity, funny TV.
More vulgar by far though, were some of the guests. Pushy and demanding, the worst of them could drive you from a health farm to a psychiatric ward. One bejewelled and scrawny-looking punter, her wrinkly skin suggesting that she had just finished a grand tour of sunbeds, shrieked that her room did not afford the view she had demanded. It is possible that even the guests in docusoaps are hamming it up nowadays to get on camera. This chicken, however, looked like a natural. Her search for eternal youth seemed predicated on the notion that prematurely ageing everybody else ought to do the trick.
In fairness, a health farm offers great scope to survey not just human hope, but human vanity. For that reason alone, this one may succeed - but the docusoap genre is being overexploited. A docusoap on the makers of docusoaps can hardly be far away. Oh, lest I forget, a health warning on Health Farm: it's narrated by Lesley Joseph, whose cloying, ultra niceynicey, advertising-style voice is a form of verbal molestation. Even an industrial-strength mud-bath couldn't scour away the irritation of her glutinous tones.
BACK on RTE, Kings in Grass Castles has taken over from Deirdre Purcell's abysmal Falling For A Dancer on Sunday nights. An Australian co-production with RTE, this is another four-parter. It's adapted from Molly Durack's novel, which is based on the story of her emigrant Galway ancestors. It has that unconvincing and sanitised feel of drama made for an international market: sweeping symbols and a melodramatic plot, not characters, are its dominant currency.
In terms of scenery, it opens with a move up the west coast from Deirdre Purcell's Beara Peninsula to Galway Bay. Famine, rent, obnoxious English landlords, evictions - the standard ingredients to tell the horrors of the 19th century's parasite class and its tyrannical courtiers - are all included. But it looks like story-telling by numbers. Anyway, the family emigrates to Australia, where they face similar hardship until one of them strikes gold. Still, at least the cast does its best.
Finally, another Famine-based drama. Scealta o Theach na mBocht (Stories from the Poorhouse) is written by Eugene McCabe. This week's opening sceal was titled An Dilleachta (The Orphan). Sheenagh Walsh was the orphan, recalling her hopes flattened by horrors as the Famine worsened. It was practically a monologue - therefore inexpensive to make - but Walsh's performance, though more theatrical than is standard on TV drama, was suitably strong and stark. She dreamed of a new baby and a new life in America and of food and clothes and of music and dance. It was, perhaps, a little long - but it seemed like a real human voice was yearning in the way that real human voices do. Good.