Everything's gone green

TV REVIEW: The National Lottery Skyfest RTÉ1, Saturday St Patrick's Day Festival ParadeRTÉ1, Tuesday Give Up Yer Aul Sins: The Story of St PatrickRTÉ 1, Tuesday St Patrick's Day Festival Highlights RTÉ1, Tuesday The All-Ireland Talent ShowRTÉ1, Sunday

THE ANNUAL St Patrick’s Festival Skyfest fireworks display took place at the quayside in Waterford last Saturday, and RTÉ was on hand to document the event. Let’s see if I can write about it without using the expression “damp squib”.

Fireworks are fun when they whoosh past your ear and burst overhead in great kaleidoscopes, when every bang hits you like a thunderclap and the crowds around you gasp as one. In short, they’re great when you’re there. By contrast, watching them on TV is about as much fun as staring at a screen-saver for the afternoon.

You’d feel sorry for the production team that was asked to create a broadcast from this flimsy concept. How could they liven it up? Give it an air-raid vibe by asking John Simpson to do his best shrapnel-dodging moves and shout “that one just missed us”? Make the programme for Imax only? Strap Charlie Bird to a particularly large rocket and launch him over the River Suir? (Sorry, I’m fantasising here.)

No, instead they went with endless shots of exploding fireworks, and drafted in effervescent presenters Derek Mooney and Laura Woods to overstate the fabulous brilliance of it all. Derek worked the assembled crowd, fizzing like a sparkler, vox-popping like a catherine wheel and whooping them into the sort of reluctant frenzy that only an encounter with a TV camera and a jaunty presenter can bring on. I was relieved when the fireworks started and things calmed down a bit.

There followed shot after shot of distant starbursts above the Waterford skyline. It seemed to go on for days. When it was over, I checked my watch and was astonished to find that just half an hour had elapsed. Derek said it had been the most spectacular, most surreal event of his life. I hope for his sake he was just talking his usual rubbish.

THE SAME PRODUCTION company, Coco TV, covered Tuesday’s St Patricks’ Day Festival Parade in Dublin. The parade itself had some spectacular participants. Sproai’s King Kong, Artastic’s Age of Aquarius, City Fusion’s Conference of the Birds and a colony of colourful creepy crawlies were all inventive, dramatic and fun.

But if parades have evolved slightly since the age of Dev, it seems the televising of them hasn’t. This was mostly straight filming of a procession which, while it had its moments, also had a very large number of marching bands – I counted seven. It was more interest -ing to watch than a traffic jam, but only just.

The action was accompanied by commentary from our old pal Derek Mooney, and interspersed with on-the-ground reports from Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh and Aidan Power. Now, Mooney is a presenter of long experience and I admire his nature programming on radio, but maybe his broadcasting genius is activated only by the birth of a litter of badgers or a sparrow with a broken wing. ’Cos it was definitely switched off on March 17th.

His voiceover was a blend of scripted trivia ("The Clondalkin Youth Band, founded in 1985 by Joe Dolan's nephew"), redundant chatter ("I'm not sure if this is the Garda Band or the Army Band") and pointless exaggeration ("It's been estimated there are half-a-million people here today, but I think there might be more" – I mean, how could he possiblyknow that?).

The commentary cried out for the surrealism of the Après Match crew or the acid wit of Colin Murphy. Embedding the How Low Can You Gotrio as participants in the parade or placing Nell McCafferty inside a dragon (sorry, fantasising again) might have given a lively and fresh perspective on the event.

Or maybe they should just drop the coverage altogether. I kept wondering who this was for. Children whose parents won't bring them to the parade, because they're reviewing it instead? Nope. Five minutes into the programme, my toddler son wandered off to watch the washing machine spin. I'd have joined him but The Irish Timesdoesn't pay me to review woollen wash programmes. The best I can say about this show is that it persuaded me that, next year, I'll take him to the parade itself.

THEN, JUST AS I was about to flush my TV licence down the loo, on came Brown Bag Films’ animated film of Give Up Yer Aul Sins: The Story of St Patrick. This five-minute film – one of a series made for RTÉ and the Irish Film Board in 2002 – put simple graphics behind a recording of 1960s Dublin schoolchildren telling religious stories in their own words. Its innocent humour would charm the gold out of a leprechaun’s pocket and, 40 years after the original recording, has lost none of its magic. I put the licence back in its envelope.

IT SEEMS ONLY fair to mention that, with the benefit of some editing time, Coco TV made a better job of the St Patrick's Festival Highlights on Tuesday night. Former Bachelor's Walkactor Simon Delaney presented a well-produced package that condensed the five-day festival into 25 minutes and, more importantly, brought an ounce or two of personality to the party. It mercifully included only about two minutes of fireworks.

SUNDAY NIGHT’S FINAL of The All-Ireland Talent Show was a tense affair. I came late to the series and saw only the last few programmes, but they suggested a thoroughly likeable series that had high production values, great community spirit and more crafty vote management than a 1980s by-election.

Sopranos, rappers, guitarists, box players, set-dancers and people who seemed to do all these things simultaneously had performed on the programme over 10 weeks, in front of judges John Creedon, Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh, Shane Lynch, Dana and Dáithí Ó Sé.

RTÉ and Tyrone Productions looked at an internationally successful TV talent-show format and localised it by introducing regional rivalry (contestants from the north, south, east, west and capital of Ireland were pitted against one another).

The name suggests that the show deliberately set out to harness the local pride that characterises the GAA inter-county competitions every summer, and in this it seems to have succeeded.

I was stung, though, by the Mulkerrin Brothers’ victory over pint-sized breakdancing charmer Jack Lynch. What sort of a stone-hearted mobile-phone-owning public votes for a family of mutually-supporting siblings, albeit gifted instrumentalists, over a solo-dancing seven-year-old?

In the interests of journalistic objectivity (and to save money), I didn’t cast a vote. I wish I had now.

tvreview@irishtimes.com

Breaking the taboos Wendy's bravery helps change the public perception of cancer

In Wendy Richard: To Tell You the Truth(BBC1, Thursday), the former EastEnders actor who died in February told of her battle with breast cancer. Most of the programme was filmed late last year, before Richard knew she would soon die. She glowed with optimism, speaking of her desire to give hope to other sufferers. "No point in sitting on your backside feeling sorry for yourself."

Richard matter-of-factly explained her chemotherapy and its unexpected side-effects, such as an ulcerated mouth, which prevented her enjoying food, and limited contact with friends, as her depleted immune system left her vulnerable to their colds and coughs.

But in the middle of this positive story, the programme changed direction and drew to a sudden close, just as her life did. We saw Richard’s doctor telling her that the treatment was going well, then listened to her husband John describe her rapid weakening and how he had learned only minutes before her death that the cancer was terminal. The tone was different from other recent broadcasts relating to terminal cancer, such as those by Jade Goody and Nuala O’Faolain. The varying styles remind us that each person deals with their disease in an individual way. However, all of these women have helped change public perceptions of cancer, demystified the treatments and taught us a little about the psychological dimension of the disease.

There are people who dislike such programmes, saying that they encourage voyeurism, or represent exploitation by the media, or simply feed the egos of their subjects. Some or all of these charges may be valid, but regardless of the complex motives behind them, the programmes are breaking the taboos that once kept cancer out of polite conversation.