Tubridy Tonight got off to a ropey start but improved as it went along. Presumably RTÉ hopes that will set the tone for the series as a whole.
Across the land, people had gripped on to the arms of their sofas, dug their nails into the fabric, grimaced in anticipation. It's Saturday night. It's yet another chat show. Please welcome your dead host walking, Ryan Tubridy.
Ultimately, though, it wasn't so bad. It wasn't great either, but it'll take a little time if it is to turn out right when many others have gone very wrong. It would have helped if RTÉ had for once got over its blind faith in going out live. It added nothing to the first show except a weak caption competition for viewers and a distinct nervousness to the host. The Panel is now pre-recorded and better for it, yet within the station there remains a stubborn resistance to the simple equation that to make an hour of good television you film two hours and cut out the rubbish. Those of you about to suggest that cutting out the rubbish would leave nothing to broadcast are asked to refrain.
Tubridy Tonight is modelled on the US chat shows. The house band's music is sprightly jazz. The set has a library and a cityscape, reflecting Tubridy's nerdish reputation. The show's logo features a cityscape heavy on skyscrapers, even if Dublin's sky remains scratch-free. But because Tubridy is not a natural comedian, he avoids the monologues and comedy that keeps the American shows rattling along.
For something that was supposed to be the future of the Irish chat show, it began in a resolutely old-fashioned manner. Gráinne and Síle Seoige were dull first guests. Once you get over the fact they speak Irish and would turn heads at the local disco, there's not much else to say. Tubridy, though, turned to their parents, who were seated in the audience. It was an item straight from The Late Late Show.
After that, it settled down a little. Hector Ó hEochagáin might be on every billboard, radio ad and television show at the moment, but he was the easy guest that Tubridy needed. Next up was Royston Brady, who answered the question of where he has been these last few months. Out enjoying pints with Tubridy, apparently. In between was a meek replication of Graham Norton's old routine of getting stories from the audience. Then it was over, the credits rolled, and you could hear the sigh from RTÉ breezing through the commercials.
It already looks as if Tubridy Tonight might struggle to get decent guests. It will help the show when the The Panel ends its run, because, having failed to land any international celebs, it was left to take that show's hand-me-downs. It will need to feel its way around the format a little, to figure out what will work. But ultimately, it will rely entirely on Tubridy's personality. On television, he has yet to prove as strong as he is on radio, but last Saturday showed that, having crawled over the corpses of past presenters to get this far, he could succeed. We'll know better in a few weeks.
JACK DEE STARRED as a hapless fairground owner in Tunnel of Love. Or at least his face starred as a hapless fairground owner. It was the only bit of him required to do any acting. It began by illustrating nausea as its accompanying body was flung about on a ride. It included a scene in which it tried to smile, triggering an exhibition of deliberate twitching, a knowing joke from a man who never smiles on television. Mostly, however, it was a grand display of sneering. If you want sneering, you call Dee.
This feature-length comedy drama, with ambitions to become a series, was written by Simon Nye, and it vaguely resembled his exceptional How Do You Want Me?, in which Dylan Moran played an outsider pummelled by life in a hostile English village. The dark humour came from Moran's dislocation and the casual viciousness of the locals. In Tunnel of Love, however, the joke died on the page.
How do you unearth silliness in a fairground, where it is already so obvious? TG4 is currently running the American Depression-era freakshow drama Carnivale, but it is eerie and grotesque and oddly beautiful. Nye's drama was never meant to be Carnivale, of course, but a bit of gentle humour beneath the flickering neon of the revolving tea-cups. So, Nye threw in a love story, a detective story and a host of characters who walk on to the page and into dead-ends. There was a decent joke about neck braces, but otherwise it was forgettable, with neither the sticky sweetness of candyfloss nor the tang of a toffee apple. I should really stop the roller coaster of fairground metaphors right there, before I fall off.
SOMETIMES, OF COURSE, reality trumps fiction so successfully that it's hard to tell the difference. In the latest True Lives documentary, Unfaithful, we met Noel Keegan. He appeared to have wandered off the set of Killinaskully and into this programme about marital infidelity. Noel has teeth like old headstones, hair you could thatch a cottage with and a ton-weight in eyebrows. Noel's problem is this: by Jaysus, he has a way with de wimmin! He lost his wife through his propensity to wander while driving about Laois in his fillum-rental van. Later, his Swedish fiancée (Swedish!) found him in bed with her mother. "If women didn't give in so easily, I'd find it more of a challenge, really."
Only a couple of weeks ago, we watched the first man on Irish television to have his balls chopped for our entertainment. In Unfaithful we met a couple of men who seemed to be offering themselves as the next candidates. There was the yoga teacher, Godfrey, whose life with partner Shirli was lifted straight from some French art-house movie. Godfrey was free to have relationships with any other woman he wanted. And Shirli was free to nod in agreement whenever Godfrey talked about it. "Women are coming on to me all the time and most of them don't get a yes." He is Godfrey's gift to women.
But at least Godfrey was being faithful to the rules of his relationship. The other subjects were either single but had a relationship with a married person or had been wronged themselves. Noel had been unfaithful, but he represents his unique self rather than mankind in general. Only the story of one woman, Anita, gave us much sense of what it is like to be the victim of a husband's infidelity.
Watch mid-morning British television any day of the week and it is flooded with tales of infidelity. Unfaithful was an idea stretched somewhat thinly. It's not so easy to get the right volunteers and the result was an incomplete documentary. So it padded things out through extended slow-motion reconstructions. And in keeping with every Irish documentary ever made, half those featured were filmed making a cup of tea in their kitchen.
THE FASHION FOR travel programmes continues on TG4, with Neelo being the latest to scavenge about America with a digital camera and a private language. There is a steady flow of them going from Connemara to America. It's as if one comes back with tales of how mad it is over there. And their friends listen to the tales, but decide that they really have to go and see it for themselves.
"Neelo" is Niall McDonagh, and last Sunday he was at a meeting of the Promise Keepers. This is a giant, men-only Christian roadshow; a chance for them to reclaim their manhood in the eyes of God, their families and themselves, and to pay handsomely for the privilege. "Beam me up, Jesus," quipped McDonagh.
In the 10,000-seat arena, the event began with a prayer. "That the Holy Spirit will have free reign in this Pepsi Centre," said the preacher. Let's hope God isn't a Coke man.
Outside, the women gathered to cheer on their men; kids waved placards about daddy and Jesus. McDonagh repeatedly walked towards them, rousing the crowds, yelling and whooping. If ever there was a man asking for a good smiting, it was him.
Inside the building, McDonagh prodded the merchandise - typical T-shirt slogan: "My best friend walked on water" - interviewed the organisers and generally treated it like a visit to the zoo. On stage,preachers and artists and Christian rock bands entertained the men.
"Bring it on Satan!" yelled an extremely fat preacher. "There's nothing he can do to me that my gut can't handle!" . . . or maybe he said "that my God can't handle". Finally, there was a comedian, Christian Denis Leary. His set involved cracks about not putting the toilet seat down for women. Satan has all the best jokes.
The whole thing was a bit "sickening", decided McDonagh. And they passed buckets around, but the congregation filled them with money. "I don't like to preach," added McDonagh, even though he was in a good place to do it, "but if Jesus does exist, I hope he's nothing like this." Meanwhile, at that very moment, somewhere in Connemara, another young presenter was packing up his camera and cynicism and hailing a taxi to the airport.