TV REVIEW:IF EVER A SERIES was crying out for an American version, it was Who Do You Think You Are?(Monday RTÉ1).
A country built on immigration is bound to take the genealogical programme to interesting places and throw up multilayered stories. There was no prize for guessing where this week’s episode of the American version, featuring the comedian Rosie O’Donnell, was going to end up. “Imagine if we found out I’m Jewish,” she said in a tone that suggested it was as likely she came from Mars.
O’Donnell was brought up in a large Irish-Catholic family in New Jersey, and her mother died when she was 10. “It was like all the colours were sucked out of the movie; it went to black and white,” she said. It was her mum’s family tree she chose to explore. The name she needed to follow was Murta – the more familiar “gh” ending was dropped more than 150 years ago.
She found cousins she didn’t know she had and discovered that her Irish great-grandfather went to the New World via Canada during the Famine. Eventually the trail led to Ireland – “Finally,” she said, seeming genuinely thrilled to be here – to unearth a background that was far from the idealised Irish-American misty view of the old sod that was part of her childhood.
Andrew Murtagh, his wife and four children were so impoverished they had spent at least a year in a poorhouse in Kildare in the 1850s before going to Canada. That poorhouse has since been demolished, so she was taken to one in Birr, Co Offaly, and a grim place it was too. Surveying the surroundings and hearing about the dehumanising deprivations the inmates suffered, she mused: “Historically Irish people are not known for their feelings and emotions. Maybe this is why.”
The existence of a poorhouse was news to her, and she wondered why it isn’t a more prominent, more explored feature of our history, though you could say the same about the Famine. For a series where tearful interludes are almost part of the script, this was genuinely moving, maybe because it brought a story of emigration home but also because O’Donnell’s emotional reaction seemed so genuine.
IN UNDERCOVER BOSS (Channel 4, Monday) Andrew Withers, the managing director of Southern Fried Chicken, a UK fast-food chain, had a genuine, emotionally-charged reaction to one of his outlet’s snack boxes. “It’s filth, it’s greasy, it’s absolutely s**t,” he said. He was tearful plenty of times during his undercover stint as a regular worker at three Southern Fried Chicken outlets. This probably came as a surprise to him as a big bluff man and a workaholic who had taken over his father’s fried-chicken company, extending it into Europe and beyond at the expense of the 200-store British operation. “I probably know more about the stores in Siberia than in South Shields.”
This series always manages to haul itself back from the brink. Just when you think it’s cruel and exploitative for a megabucks boss to dupe his minimum-wage workers in the name of finding out how his company is really doing, there’s a moment of understanding when the boss finally realises how hard his workers’ lives can be. “I have a nice lifestyle on the back of the guys,” he said.
The reality of what his brand means on the street was a shock. The takeaways looked grim – one even seemed filthy, in a raw-chicken-on-the-floor-a-few-feet-from-rat-poison sort of way – and Withers was wide-eyed in horror at the antics of his customers, who were as far from his rosy image of happy families enjoying a delicious drumstick as you could imagine.
Southern Fried Chicken, he came to see, was a byword for cheap, post-pub stomach liners. He worked behind the counter long after midnight dealing with drunken punters. One charmer dropped his pants and sat bare-arsed on the counter. You’d need industrial-strength Cif to wipe away that image. It was all more than Withers could stomach.
The way this series works is that when, at the end, the boss reveals himself, the duped workers are thrilled, in a cap-doffing way, to be given some goodie or other.
By the time Withers had climbed back into his Jaguar and his smart suits, all traces of tears had gone. His “prizes” to his workers included health-and-safety courses for all. They would be fully paid for, he said, as if dispensing great largesse instead of doing something that could save the image of his brand and that business sense would suggest he should have been doing anyway.
IT WAS ALSO fast food on the semifinal of The Apprentice(BBC1, Wednesday), in which the two teams had to come up with a concept for a takeaway. Amazingly, the Belfast man Jim Eastwood made it into tomorrow night's final despite botching the task. They are a bit tired of smooth-talking, superconfident Jim in the boardroom, and the word "Blarney" has been mentioned more than once. "If there was an award for talking . . ." Lord Sugar said with a sigh at one point, clearing itching to fire him but not quite having enough reason.
He probably had plenty of ammo this week, though. It was Jim who thought up the name of their Mexican restaurant. “Caracas,” he said confidently, “as in the Mexican shaking thing.” Or, as you’ll find, as in the Venezuelan capital, Jim. And surely calling himself “macho nacho” was a clear firing offence.
ON TV3, Tonight with Vincent Browne is filling the space left by the summer-holidaying host with a roster of stand-ins, kicking off with the former minister Mary O'Rourke. On her first night, Monday, I lasted a long three minutes and she stillhadn't finished asking her first question. Even for those of us used to Browne's meandering questions, this was beyond what a viewer should be expected to endure. That and the sight of Bertie Ahern, who was on her panel because, as she said, he "oversaw the peace process". (The subtitles called him "former Taoiseach of Ireland" – where else can you be taoiseach of?)
O’Rourke said she had chosen the peace process as a subject for the programme because “children nine, 10, 11, 12, they think peace just came about, they think they woke up one morning and it was all over”. I’m more inclined to imagine that children that age are too busy listening to their desperately worried parents discussing money problems or wondering what a junk bond is to give the peace process a first thought.
This was a themed programme, but I later watched it online, on the off chance that Ahern might comment on or be asked about the current affairs of the day – not a crazy expectation, this being a current-affairs show. The chance would surely come, I thought, during the newspaper preview at the end of the show. Maybe then he could explain why he climbed into the News of the World'scupboard as soon as he left office and what he thinks of events at News International. Or if he felt in any way responsible for the recession headlines that dominate the news.
But by the time the newspaper slot arrived, O’Rourke’s panel was long gone: that segment of the programme was recorded days before.
Get stuck into. . .
The Hour (BBC1, Tuesday) Set in a newsroom, this promises to fill the gap for cool retro drama left when Mad Menwent off air. And it's got Dominic West.
tvreview@irishtimes.com
