Over the years, RTE has taken a vast amount of flak, not least in this newspaper, over its difficulties with comedy. Leave It to Mrs O'Brien, Extra, Extra and Upwardly Mobile have been contemptuously recalled; the national broadcaster's seeming inability to stem the flow of young Irish comic talent to British television was lamented; a corporate timidity over daring new projects was sniggered at.
Then, a few months ago, came Network 2's Paths to Freedom, an Irish mockumentary made by Grand Pictures that was very funny by any standards. And now, with the plans of Billy McGrath, the new commissioning editor for entertainment, for a more structured approach to comedy within RTE, the future may start to look more interesting.
It won't happen overnight, says McGrath, an accomplished television producer and director, and a veteran of the Irish comedy and rock scenes who was working in the area long before Irish comedy became cool. He's full of plans, some of which will take a couple of years to reach fruition, but which he hopes mark a change of approach.
McGrath, who has been in the job since September, inherited two other television comedies likely to go into production soon. The Cassidys, a six-part sitcom produced by Graph Films and written by Brian Lynch, with script editor Seamus is about three 20 something siblings trapped in the same house; it is at the final casting stage, and if everything goes according to plan, will be broadcast on Network 2 in the autumn.
McGrath is also enthusiastic about Wally Breslin, another sitcom - for a prime-time RTE 1 slot - written and played by Gary Cooke ("Eamon Dunphy" in Apres Match). "There's been a lot of work done on it and it just has to be made. It's very seldom that you get an idea that is so character-centred. A lot of sitcom ideas have a group of people in a house, or an occasion, or a situation, but here Gary Cooke has created a character called Wally Breslin, and he is such a wonderful, wonderful character. He jumps out of the screen. He did a pilot - at the moment they're in the first development phase; he's co-writing it with Mark Doherty. Arthur Mathews has come on board as script editor. So that makes a nice team. An interesting range of talents."
In a mould-breaking bid to build a structure for comedy talent at the station, McGrath is setting up a comedy website which will come on stream next month as part of a trawl for entertainment talent and ideas. And he's seeking to send out the "right signals" to attract them. "Maybe some people think there's a closed-door policy, that there's some kind of magic involved in writing comedy or appearing on TV. If you send out the wrong signals, then would never, ever apply. Which, I suppose, has happened in the past.
"The entertainment department I inherited includes The Late Late Show, Winning Streak, Bull Island, the Reeling in the Years series and Don't Feed the Gondolas, as well as independent productions like Wanderlust or The Blizzard of Odd. So it's quite a big brief as regards budget and resources." His commissions since taking over have included programmes such as Apres Italia 90 last December, Ireland's Greatest Hits - a 13-week series about an eclectic mix of significant songs that starts on April 23rd - and the much-heralded Treasure Island survivor series, which has had a big response.
"I think entertainment should have a very strong studio connection and to do that you need brilliant presenters. So we're looking for raw talent in the area of presentation." This week, therefore, McGrath launched a quest for new presenter talent, with a website that invites people to open, live auditions on April 27th and 28th at the RDS. (See also Weekend 10)
Initially, McGrath is looking for someone to front a twice-weekly Network 2 show called The Fame Game. Commissioned from Adare Productions, the summer programme involves people writing in to say they want to meet their hero, taking part in a studio game show and, if they win, hopping in an airport-bound limo to hunt down Madonna, Tom Jones or whoever. . So first there's a four-part reality series called Selection Box, which is in effect a competition - "at the end of our talent trawl, one person will be told: `You are here for 24 programmes. You are going to be a presenter of The Fame Game.' "
The second website is planned as a focus for new comedy writing and performing talent and ideas, and ultimately as a resource for potential writers, performers and presenters. Subsequently, they plan to set up a training system. It will have "online classes, dos and don'ts on the art of writing for television and radio", and will also feature "bites" from established writers and performers who will be part of the ongoing training structure. McGrath sees the website developing over time, "so if you are interested in writing for radio or television, it becomes your workshop in some way, and there will be an element of interaction: chat rooms and so on".
He sees it as a key element of his search for talent that there are "prizes" at the end of the process. He aims to have a 12-week season of pilots leading on from the quest - game shows, quizzes, sitcoms and sketch shows - and, with luck, "formats so original they haven't even been thought about yet", he says.
These pilots, note, will be on radio. "Some people say: What the hell is the head of entertainment television doing spending money on radio? But I think it's been accepted that radio could use us as a feeder of ideas, and we could use radio as a feeder of talent." The idea of using radio as a nursery slope for talent and ideas that might later transfer to television is one McGrath has been advocating for years.
Now he's in a position to do it, he has gone through the RTE corporate structures to clear the way for the concept, and allocated a small portion of his development budget to radio, in the hope of creating "a synergy". Working with Anne Marie O'Callaghan, head of development for radio, the pilots could translate into a number of radio programmes, of which some might transfer to television. This is a long process, seeing results over a number of years - but then part of the problem in RTE has been that talent has not been nurtured for long-term results.
"RTE has never had that kind of growth, where you have to crawl before you can walk. In almost all walks of life there's a period of apprenticeship. There's no secret to it - it's worked for the BBC over 30 years. It's not as if you have a commercial radio station one side of the city and a commercial TV station the other side of the city; they're on the same campus. There's always been a very good flow of producers coming from radio, a good flow of talent, especially in daytime programming, current affairs, sport."
In a first for the RTE entertainment department, he has also appointed Peter Vamos to liaise with writers, to compile a database and to give feedback to writers.
"There's never been a comedy department with dedicated comedy producers and directors. It's very difficult to create a department around one or two shelves and one or two sitcoms. This is an attempt to promote the status of writer as more important in TV comedy production," he says.
One of the key things he and O'Callaghan are hoping to develop from the radio pilots is a good sketch team in which "rather than have people talking funny, we want to have funny people talking. Rather than parody and satire, where people put on accents, which has been a comedy staple in Ireland, I'm looking for performers who don't have to put on an accent, wig or different clothes to be funny. If they do put on accents, it is for original characters. Without taking away at all from the huge success of Bull Island, contemporary comedy doesn't have to be tied to the news of the day. "I see my job as trying to put the right talent in the right pool to make something a success. There will be element of care and an element of training to try to find these three to five people who we will immediately commission to perform for a six-part series for radio.
"I'd love them to have the potential and sense of their own vision to go out and perform live as well, so they have a life beyond radio and TV. It's like forming a band: you're not necessarily looking for the five best singers, you're looking for the five singers who complement each other. You're casting."
McGrath's plans stand or fall on the untapped talent being out there somewhere. "Looking through the stuff that has come in to RTE over the past year or two, I was amazed to discover that there is a kind of underground group of writers that never go to the comedy clubs, that have never written for TV or stage, that just watch TV and love writing comedy.
"And they went to the trouble of writing a half-hour sketch show, not little bits of ideas. People had broken down the characters, broken down the scripts - and in one case they shot a group of people performing the scripts. If there's that belief there, you want to return the favour. They're the people I'm looking for. People who have a passion to do it. A need."
McGrath has worked at three stages for RTE, but has also worked outside that protected structure, at other stations and as an independent producer and director in Britain and Ireland. He feels RTE should be developing its own ideas, and perhaps selling on finished packages in much the same way as we buy British quizzes or Australian formats.
"RTE hasn't built up the loyalty of comedy writers and performers, and I'd love to turn that around." But he hopes that instead of that talent later moving to British television, he'll be able to "sit down with those presenters and performers and say: Hold on, why can't we produce the programme from Dublin? Maybe co-produce it with a British producer, but let's keep it moving on, and not leave an empty treasure chest again. Why can't a British audience watch an Irish-produced show?
"That's the game we're in now. RTE has in my opinion been very inactive in developing its own entertainment content. One of my briefs is to see if we can reverse RTE's copycat tendency. I hope to do a series of pilots this summer which are completely original shows for television. We already have the ideas. There's no room in the schedule, there's no budget, but they're good ideas, and for me ideas are the currency of what we do."
www.rte.ie/selectionbox has registration details for open auditions for new presenters organised by Adare Productions. The new comedy talent site is launched next month. Peter Vamos is at vamosp@rte.ie