Prime Time (RTE 1, Tuesday)
Obsessions (RTE 1, Tuesday)
States Of Fear (RTE 1, Tuesday)
Day Trippers (TV3, Wednesday)
The stomachs of pregnant women were cut open and their babies were picked up with a knife, said a Kosova nurse, identified as Menete. She said, too, that Serb militia were raping young girls in front of their tied-up families, adding that the rapists were gouging Serb symbols into their victims' breasts. In one instance, sisters aged 13 and 14 committed suicide because of the abuse. Another refugee claimed that six-month-old babies were being roasted in ovens.
Are these stories, which were told to Michael Heney on Prime Time: Exodus of the Kosovars literally true? We cannot know even if it is indisputable that unspeakable, diabolical savagery is ongoing in Kosovo. We do know that during the 1991 Gulf War, the New York public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton hired a tearful, twentysomething woman to say she saw invading Iraqis throw new-born Kuwaiti babies out of hospital incubators. The woman, it was later revealed, was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family and was not in Kuwait during the invasion. She was, in fact, attending an Ivy League university in the US, where, no doubt, she excelled in drama studies.
There is, though, a sameness to many of the horror stories coming out of the rutted dirt tracks that pass for roads in Kosovo. Brutal expulsions, peppered with murder, mutilitation, rape, torture and grand larceny are certainly taking place: people do not leave their homes in such numbers and such distress because somebody is calling them names or smashing a few windows.
But the depravity described by Menete and others is almost too much to contemplate - skewered foetuses, roasted babies, mutilated pubescent girls! And, of course, the practically routine mass exterminations of Kosovan men.
Throughout Exodus of the Kosovars, Heney stressed the Biblical proportions of the horror. Given that the victims of the bloodlust are nominally Muslim and the perpetrators nominally Christian, there was, at least, a cultural irony in this. But, certainly, the stories as told had the elemental and bestial dimensions of Herod, plagues and epic endurance. Seeing refugees in makeshift camps in Albania and Macedonia, living under sheets of plastic, challenged all faith in human progress.
Even if the stories told are not utterly true - though knowledge of Bosnia would suggest that they probably are - the undoubted barbarism in Kosovo makes most of the rest of the news and, indeed, most of the rest of the TV schedules, appear absurdly trivial. Soaps, sitcoms, sport - the solid and most popular genres of television as entertainment - do not (even in spite of Sky Sports' ludicrous, quasi-apocalyptic, sometimes obscene hype for the likes of Wycombe Wanderers v Wigan Athletic) have the dimensions of Biblical epics. Kosovo has.
Bislim Fetahu, a schoolteacher from the village of Istog, said that 19 members of one family were murdered. They had lived in the first house visited by the Serbs. Persuading the rest of the villagers to flee was not at all difficult after that.
An Istog woman told of how her invalided aunt was shot dead in bed to speed the rest of the family on its way. The refugees interviewed were keen that NATO should keep up its bombing campaign. Hardly surprising, I suppose, but the truth is that innocent Serb civilians are being blown to pieces and horribly mutilated too.
It is axiomatic that good journalism requires diverse and antagonistic sources. Heney's report from Kosovo broke that maxim but was good journalism nonetheless. Even without interviews, mood music and reports of blood-curdling savageries, the lingering documentary camera captured moods which the more dramatic, tightly edited news pictures have not time to develop. To live in one of these refugee camps is appalling - but to be stuck out in the open inside Kosovo, as perhaps 500,000 Kosovar Albanians are, is unthinkable. We were seeing and hearing some of the luckier people.
And yet, as ever with television and war, there was an anxiety that the plight of the Kosovar Albanians could easily be used as propaganda to rationalise awesome violence against all Serbs. It is simplistic to believe that all that can be construed as propaganda is always lies and tall stories and that, by definition, what is true cannot be propaganda. The truth can be used to intensify existing opinion (Serbs are animals) when the truth, in perspective, is that some Serbs are animals. Exodus of the Kosovars, though rightly poignant in itself, pointed up the risks of this sort of journalism.
Heney, like any normal human being, was clearly moved by the sights he saw and stories he heard. Few people can doubt that the butchers of Kosovo, having regressed to a sadistic and primitive state, must be driven back - brutally, if necessary. But bombing the main cities and towns of Serbia is hardly the most honest or effective strategy to achieve this.
Many of these refugees will never return to Kosovo, though understandable revenge will drive others for the rest of their lives. It was a fine report but so emotionally overpowering that it unavoidably left itself open to be perverted into propaganda.
From Kosovo, the mood swing necessary to contemplate Obsessions: Real Men Don't Wear Togs, an atmospheric portrait of the Forty Foot swimming spot in Dublin's Sandycove, requires an emotional somersault. Directed by Jennifer Keegan and shot last summer, this was an affectionate look at Forty Footers at play. It didn't quite have the complex interweaving of Lido, Channel 4's homage to a south London swimming baths, but its moody trumpet, sunny ambience and sense of sanctuary made it as appealing as a swim in a heated indoor pool.
There was, of course, an early concentration on the nude aspects of Forty Foot life. In winter, especially, male swimmers would do well to make 40 millimetres. But there was no exhibitionism or crassness about the poor craturs hobbling naked to plunge into the Irish Sea.
Neither did it appear to be a gender issue of any great import now that women, albeit wearing swim suits, are bathing there too. Filmed last July, when the water temperature was 57 degrees - about six or seven degrees below normal room temperature - jellyfish were the biggest threat.
Martin "Jellyfish" Miller recalled the summer of 1955, when a plague of jellyfish (perhaps not of Biblical proportions, but substantial nonetheless) forced the closure of Sutton beach for three or four weeks. Some of the male Forty Footers now wear women's tights to protect them against jellyfish stings. "I'm not a transvestite or anything like that," said one. Well, no, of course not. A transvestite nudist is too much to contemplate, even for the trendies of Sandycove.
We saw a young, tattooed woman plunge in; blokes skipping, doing push-ups and pullups; others diving from the well-washed granite. "We don't need Viagra (No? It must have been the water so) and we all live to be 80," said one man. Well, not all, actually.
This gentle, little film was dedicated to the memory of Billy Wyse, who drowned tragically shortly after it was shot. Billy had been a committed Forty Footer, a man who seemed to soak up the peace and sanctuary of the place. The impression was left that this is a place which attracts adults who have never forgotten the joys of skipping a day from school. That - not the narcissistic body culture codology - is what makes the Forty Foot a health haven.
ANOTHER dramatic mood flip is required to consider the second episode of States of Fear. After last week's horror show from the industrial schools, this week's focus was on those who grew up in institutions for the deaf, blind and mentally or physically handicapped.
Again, there were tales of sexual abuse, excessively severe punishments and enforced separations of children from their families. Perhaps it was because the programme was sandwiched between Exodus of the Kosovars and The Nazis - A Warning From History, or because it largely lacked the protracted, seething anger of the previous week's episode, but this one, though harrowing in spots, was less disturbing.
Specific incidents - including a Brother of Charity forcing Alan Carroll, a child with learning difficulties, to perform forced fellatio; a Rosminian cleric telling blind children that his swishing cane is demanding "fuill" (blood); a nurse reportedly rubbing soiled underwear into a boy's face - were thoroughly repulsive. Yet one anecdote contextualised much of the abuse of the period.
"If you got beaten, you must have deserved it, was the dominant attitude of parents," said one blind man, adding that many children would receive a second hammering at home. There's faith and obedience for you.
Clearly, the wider society provided the context for abuse to flourish. Children should be seen and not heard, was an axiom of the day. It was repressive and often brutal - giving carte blanche to conveniently positioned abusers. So, it was often vile . . . but its replacement today by a growing trend, across all classes, towards brat culture on the lines of over-indulged American kids is not perfect either.
Even so, suggestions that children in a Church Of Ireland Smyly's Home in Dun Laoghaire were used as human guinea pigs, were as hideous as any of the rest of the litany of reported abuses.
"A lot of them are dead now and I hope they're in hell," signed a deaf man, captioned as "John". John had attended St Joseph's School for the Deaf in Cabra, Dublin. He was sexually abused while he was there. His anger was understandable.
Shortly afterwards we saw footage of the putatively legendary Seven Days. Shot in November, 1969, it focused on Alan Carroll's alma mater, Cork's Lota House. Gleeful children whizzing around on bicycles as the sun beat down made life there seem like an Enid Blyton picnic. The media, as well as the Church, the politicians, the lawyers and the medical people, played its part too. Lest we forget.
FINALLY, yet another reversal of mood: Day Trippers. Brian Kennedy made the maiden voyage in this new TV3 series of travelogues by Irish notables. Having found "personal peace and contentment" on the shores of Lough Derg, between counties Clare and Tipperary, he decided he should share his bounty with viewers.
The style was typical of such pieces: formalised informality. Reaching the shore of Lough Derg, Kennedy - just by sheer coincidence, you understand - arrived moments before a boat loaded up a coffin for burial on the lake's Holy Island.
Shortly afterwards he and sean nos singer Lillis O Laoire sang Eist. The pair stood in a field, beside a stone wall, and belted out the song with feeling. It was weirdly rivetting. There was guff then about Brian Boru, shots of ruins and a visit to an early mediaeval church in Killaloe, where Kennedy sang a hymn after chatting to the organist.
Later we met the egregiously dapper Garret Gavin, who runs a health farm in the area before a final, arranged impromptu music session saw Kennedy play the guitar accompanied by two violinists.
As a star vehicle for Brian Kennedy to sing a few songs in evocative and scenic settings, Day Trippers was reasonable. However, the laboured informality jarred. Kathleen Watkins used to traipse the country during summers past doing similar, albeit non-musical PR, for various regions. Still, as one of the few examples of home-produced programming on TV3, at least it's a start.
Clearly, it was inexpensive and its attempts at links were often awkward. But in a week when, yet again, the crucial TV programmes reported from the darkest recesses of the dark side, this offered brief sanctuary. It wasn't, by any means, a Condor moment - but it offered relief even in its flaws.