True Lives: Bad Blood appeared in the schedules on Monday night, a barely heralded change to the evening's programming. If that was because RT╔ felt this was a story that couldn't wait to be told, it was the correct instinct. Fiona Gough and Paul Cunningham's report was the best kind of journalism, one which shocks viewers, gives voice to victims and which cattle-prods politicians into taking action. In tracing the genesis of the contaminated US blood products that eventually infected Irish haemophiliacs with HIV, Bad Blood also gave backgrounds and personalities and families to some of those who are so often only names or statistics in a mountain of newsprint.
The details of the documentary bear repeating. In the early 1980s, the Blood Transfusion Board rejected the idea of accepting blood products obtained via donors who had been paid for their plasma, only to change its mind due to its own lack of resources. It resulted in a flow into Ireland from the US of a tainted self-administered drug designed to give haemophiliacs unprecedented independence. It doesn't take much to figure that those giving blood in exchange for money were those who needed the cash most and who were those most likely to carry disease.
For junkies, the blood bank was a macabre ATM, handing out $10 a pint. Prison inmates were paid to be donors too. Gay men were also targeted because they had already built up a natural tolerance to Hepatitis B. This was the early 1980s, remember. "It was," according to one doctor, "absolutely the perfect way for infecting as many people with HIV as possible." Even after one drug company report acknowledged that heat-treating blood to rid it of infection did not actually work.
Bad Blood trawled Skid Row, found people who were there, some who are still there. People who gave blood, shared needles, gave blood again. It heard how junkies would cover up needle tracks with long-sleeved tops and polo necks before presenting a clean vein at a blood bank.
It spoke to ex-inmates of Angola Prison, Louisiana, about how the donor programme trusted prisoners to screen other prisoners before taking blood. It talked with American haemophiliacs, palmed off with the ridiculous diagnosis that they were carrying only a dead HIV virus that would cause no harm. It got to a point where it seemed the only ones who didn't know the risks were those injecting the tainted product. "Haemophiliacs are the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to blood diseases," another doctor explained. Their deaths did not go unnoticed, simply unheeded.
True Lives had already had a steady start to this series, most notably with last week's Dead Silence, a fly-on-the-wall at a BSE-infected farm as it awaited the arrival of the slaughter team. Bad Blood was important journalism, expertly dispatched and deeply moving. Running parallel to the report were the stories of John Kelly and John Scallon.
John Kelly became infected at the age of four and died at 13. His family never told him he had HIV. "It was awful. You see your 13-year-old son like an old man, fading away," said his father, Ray. It is not within the remit of the Lindsay Tribunal to investigate the actions of the drug companies, something which may now change.
The terrible irony of people dying because they injected a product that promised to save them will be surpassed only by the greater shame of whoever is responsible being allowed to get away with it.
We're two episodes into the new series of The Sopranos and some odd rumours that the show had begun to wheeze a little under its own brilliance have been whacked immediately. Last week the series opened brilliantly, with an FBI-eye's view of its efforts to get a bug in Tony's basement, where it now sits, disguised as a table lamp, while the FBI sits outside the house disguised as a van. Perfectly paced and sly in its humour, it was an episode which immediately re-affirmed The Sopranos as television to watch with the curtains pulled, the phone off the hook, the teapot full and the kids at their granny's.
Although you should always beware of granny. This week, after threatening loudly to do so for so long, Tony Soprano's mudda passed away. Well, when they said passed away, they probably meant that she crumbled to dust in the sunlight or turned into shadow and flew out the window. Livia Soprano was not a mother Gay Byrne would have feted with a bunch of flowers, a Goblin Rio and a year's supply of Bold. This mudda once tried to have her son moided.
Tony's reaction to the news hardly filled an ocean with tears. She was about to testify against him in a stolen plane-ticket case that forms only one strand in a plot bound tighter than a new ball of wool. "Whatchagonnado," he shrugged dolefully at his gathered crew. "Whatchagonnado?"
At the funeral service, his sister, Janice - so scarred by her mother that she is developing into a carbon copy - invited everybody to say something nice about the dear departed. The mourners shuffled evasively, heads down, examining their shoes like they were hand-crafted by FabergΘ. A few murmured offerings were broken only by the tiny voice of a tiny old woman.
"She was my best friend," she said, once everybody had located her - lost in a room full of heavies. "She would always call me up to tell whenever anyone had died." Tony, whose last words to his mudda contained such repeated use of the F-word it was a wonder his front teeth didn't pop out from the effort, continued to deal with it in his own way. "So, I guess that's us finished," Tony shrugged to his shrink, Dr Melfi. "I mean, she's dead." Dr Melfi looked at him blankly, but may have been figuring out how she could clear her calendar for the next six months. Tony was quickly torn over whether he had been a good son or a bad son. His son, Anthony Jr, was sensing her ghost within hours of her death. As the commercial says, she ain't dead, baby, she's just taking a break.
It was the actual passing of actress Nancy Marchand, of course, which precipitated the character's death. In Livia Soprano, she developed a character black with bitterness. She was as duplicitous, selfish and calculated a character as has ever been seen on the small screen.
Thanks to her, it really was quite possible to believe that this woman could manipulate the entire New Jersey family from the comfort of her commode. Even if Tony won't miss her, we will.
When Livia Soprano arrived she must have been given some prime barbecue duties. According to Idir Neamh agus Neamhn∅, the ancient Celts believed there were 17 devils, most of whom were up to some class of mischief among the mortals. The She-devil was a magnificently beautiful woman who fiendishly seduced gullible men. Deabhall Muirneach, meanwhile, was the one responsible for leading astray courting couples. According to one expert on these things, "he leads courting couples to trouble. He's the one who makes all the videos and stuff." Stoke up the fire in the local Xtra-vision, one television critic coming down.
A promising start to this quirky series focusing on themes between heaven and hell started at the bottom, as it were. People don't really seem to believe in hell any more. Most felt that you were more likely to find hell up here on Earth than anywhere else; not so much with other people, but most likely through loneliness. Even those who did believe in hell were reluctant to believe that God would ever actually send anyone there. After filling the world with such dread for millennia, Satan must be down there twiddling his thumbs at the reception desk, like the manager of a run-down motel. We're even laughing at him now. "It would be hot, but you'd have great conversations," said one man, cackling so much you feared he'd been possessed. "The most interesting people in the world would be there." Maybe he should consider releasing a brochure.
Idir Neamh Agus Neamhn∅, by the way, is skilfully made by Graph Films - the very people who bring us The Cassidys. Hell, they might now observe, is other people's opinions.
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