Don't eat the thespians

The Last Confessions of Alexander Pierce UTVMonday and TV3 Tuesday, Law and Order: London TV3Tuesday, The Culture Show BBC2Tuesday

TV REVIEW:

I WAS HAVING a credit-crunch, state-of-the-nation chat with a couple of friends last week, in a bar, in the afternoon, with the ice in our bluey gins occasionally rattling as, outside the frosted window, furrow-browed Dubliners hurtled up and down the Merrion Road in sooty buses and worried about their lot in these impecunious times. Now it’s quite a while since I have spent an afternoon in a bar (babies and guilt put paid to that jolly part of my life long ago), but there we were, having recorded a radio play I wrote, two actors and me, vainly trying to inject the conversation with a bit of panicked indignation, when it became clear that while the Celtic Tiger’s retreat was bound to cause real difficulties, her hysterical mewling over the last decade had had very little impact on our lives.

We were all freelance, and always had been, we were all well-versed in unemployment (before, during and after the Tiger’s dance), and we had all had bank officials sniggering up their pin-striped sleeves when we went looking for mortgages. The actors had spent the boom years performing on Dublin stages, their weekly take-home pay being about the financial equivalent of some corporate dude’s pre-show fusion supper (okay, I exaggerate, but not by much).

If you detect a note of self-righteousness here, it’s entirely unintentional – for me, the best thing about being freelance is being freelance, despite periods of nervy uncertainty and downright fear. But holy cow, having just had a television week steeped in testosterone and superior goatees, I’m deeply grateful that, whatever about making a living as a writer, I’m no longer trying to find work as an actress. Really, credit crunch or no credit crunch, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of women over 40 gracing your sets these days.

My week kicked off with The Last Confessions of Alexander Pierce, a drama starring a clean-shaven Adrian Dunbar and a host of male actors with weeks of growth obscuring their ever-so-pleased-to-have-got-a-telly-job faces. In 1819, Alexander Pierce (here rendered by Ciaran McMenamin), a young farm labourer from Co Monaghan, having stolen a couple of pairs of shoes, was sent to Van Diemen's Land in Tasmania, where the British had created a penal colony. Deeply unpleasant, a sojourn on Van Diemen's Land seems to have involved much lashing and whipping and being tethered to inhospitable rocks to slow-cook in the antipodean sun. Unsurprisingly, Pierce and half a dozen or so fellow inmates decided to escape, and take their chances in the wild and woolly outback rather than hang around for their next date with the cat-o'-nine-tails.

The drama, populated by plump, insensate governors in scarlet coats, wild-eyed, sweaty inmates and Dunbar in a dog collar, largely concerned itself with the escapees’ endless trek across the Tasmanian interior, during which, starving and desperate, they ate each other (lungs and livers first, apparently).

“This programme contains scenes of cannibalism which some viewers may find upsetting,” the wee continuity announcer had warned prior to the start.

She might have been better off saying that this programme contains scenes of tedious thespians hiking in leather waistcoats, and many lingering shots of moody staring while the peer group decide who is chief and who is lunch.

Oh, I got awfully bored, despite feeling vaguely sorry for poor Pierce. Having swallowed the rest of the party, it was he alone who made it across the incessant mountains to Jericho, but once there, and with a wanton recidivism bordering on masochism, he stole a sheep or something and ended up back in the damn camp to get “whittled down by the lash”.

I’m sure this was a well-intentioned project on the behalf of the drama’s makers, and its central tenet – that moral indignation is all well and good on a full stomach – was clearly heard. But the arch intensity of the production, together with a vague sense that the chirpy actors were just killing time between balmy evenings of banter over a convivial Marlboro Light, somehow trivialised the whole brutal history.

JOBS FOR THE BOYS didn't stop there. Law and Order: London, a spin-off from the long-running US series which engages the viewer by observing crime and justice from a dual perspective (act one the detectiving, act two the courtroom), began this week.

Another fine casting opportunity for East End copper types, funky pretty-boy sleuths and lots of tapering-fingered barristers, the series also, happily, features a leading lady, Harriet Walter, as DI Natalie Chandler, a prudent working mother in a well-tailored suit.

No need to rush to your set just yet. The opening plot was wearyingly predictable, and given the time constraints (the crime has to be committed and resolved in 28 minutes) before the bewigged get their hands on the culprit to begin the judicial process, it seems doubtful that the series will throw up particularly riveting storylines.

If the original American version is anything to go by, however, the series will still be running when I’m queuing up for my timeshare Zimmer frame. It’s not bad, though, and the opening salvo, with a nod towards the (until recently) rampant gentrification of certain areas of London in the form of a greedy, tight-lipped King’s Cross landlady, was an almost nostalgic portrait of property avarice and billionaire-making developments. Remember those days?

ANOTHER LITTLE BIT of London came to Dublin this week too, in the guise of Lauren Laverne, the doll-like, mauve-blonde, punk-porcelain presenter of BBC's The Culture Show. Laverne, on the trail of rock'n'roll icons, leapt across the Irish Sea, probably in her platforms, to interview U2 on the eve of the release of their new album, No Line on the Horizon. Laverne and her co-presenter, film critic Mark Kermode, are everything you'd expect from the BBC's late-night cultural dose. With their cutting-edge footwear, stiff little quiffs and weeping eyeliner, they are in fact so charmingly archetypal that you begin to suspect they've garnered their image from an arty pundits' dressing-up box.

Anyway, the boys in the band liked Laverne, and the interviews, spliced with a bit of blather from Geldof and others, along with performances of a couple of tracks from the album, were affable, straightforward affairs in which the band sang decisively from the same hymn-sheet. Bono, with freshly tended beard and filigreed eyewear, talked about the early days in the 1980s, when times were grim and U2 deftly portrayed the prevailing societal angst. The band then talked about a need to lighten up, commenting with a degree of caution on Bono’s political life. They also talked about an imperative to continue writing songs, but mainly they talked about being a band, a band that has survived since they met at Dublin’s Mount Temple school 38 years ago.

“Rock’n’roll is 60 years old and you’ve been there for more than half of it,” the sweet-lipped Laverne reminded them with great and youthful certainty, looking like Alice in Wonderland at a tea party for the interestingly facially haired.

“We are a dysfunctional family and this is the way we stick together,” concluded Bono, silver frames glinting.

tvreview@irishtimes.com

Slumdogs and superstars Another all-singing, all-dancing, all-simpering night at the Oscars

Danny Boyle did a little Tigger jump on his way to collect his. Kate Winslet was irritatingly winsome collecting hers. Sean Penn, who is ageing with a scratchy grace, looked like he would happily share his with the bleach-blonde Mickey Rourke (and also, poetically, said that he was proud to belong to a nation that “elected an elegant man president”). The Slumdog Millionaires lit up proceedings collecting theirs. And Dustin Lance Black, the writer of Milk (for which Penn won Best Actor), made an eloquently emotional speech predicting equality for all Americans, gay or straight. It was, of course, Oscar night and the echoes of “Yes We Can” were still pulsing through the house.

Apparently, the show itself was spectacular, but I suspect you needed to have been there, or maybe it was just that my television was struggling to carry the weight of all of host Hugh Jackman’s musical talents. Declaring, in his top hat and tap shoes, that the musical was back, his manically extravagant performance (left, with dancing partner Beyoncé) looked like the most public audition in the history of Hollywood.

It was all good clean fun, and most of the players covered up their bruised egos for the night under fairytale gowns and helpful cummerbunds, while enmities were put on hold for the flashbulb and unruly ambition was coiffed into undulating waves.

I’m so glad Slumdog Millionaire swept the board – I snuck my 12-year-old son into a showing in Brixton last week, and he loved the film, and it was wonderful to see the vibrant cast storm that cinematic citadel.