Sex, Chips And Rock `N' Roll (BBC 1, Sunday & Tuesday) Reeling In The Years (RTE 1, Monday) Make `Em Laugh (RTE 1, Sunday) A Fragile City (RTE 1, Thursday)
Washing billows on lines across a street of terraced houses. The camera pans to a poster advertising Larry B Cool and The Ice Cubes at the local Carlton theatre. This is Eccles, Manchester, in the summer of 1965. Arden and Eloise are twins on the eve of their 18th birthday. Arden is a busty, blonde bimbo - a sort of pocket Diana Dors. Eloise is a bright, bookish brunette - a latent Germaine Greer but without the guff. Arden dreams of London's Carnaby Street, E-Type Jags and the King's Road. Eloise reads poetry - Keats, Shelley, Yeats. Written by Debbie Horsfield, Sex Chips And Rock `N' Roll is BBC's first major drama series this autumn. Its north of England setting is a backdrop to themes of sexual awakening, limited opportunities for women (especially women of a certain class), youthful rebellion, adult repression and the lure of London. Its currency is mythologised images of the 1960s - zeitgeist by numbers.
Arden (Emma Cooke) and Eloise (Gillian Kearney) live with their battleaxe grandmother Ima (Sue Johnston), ineffectual father (Nicholas Farrell) and creepy, middle-aged cousin Norman (David Threlfall). Gran's motto is abrupt: "In this house, `I wan't' doesn't get". Considering that her husband died on their honeymoon, Gran's grimness is not without reason. But it is relentless. She lectures the twins about the need to avoid "yer dregs, yer layabouts, yer unwashed, yer Irish". Mind you, Gran's idea of dregs, layabouts, unwashed and Irish are the sort of people who sustain Norman's string of chip shops, including the one in which the twins work evenings. (The "chips" of the title remind you that in the 1960s, chips were something you ate for sustenance rather than assembled for a wage.)
Outside Gran's gulag, the wider world is changing. Larry (Phil Daniels), ageing vocalist with, and manager of, The Ice Cubes is a lecherous, low-life lizard. He organises a talent contest at The Carlton - surely a Beeb conceit at the sleaze and tinsel of Carlton TV - but rigs the result in favour of Hayley And The Comets after Hayley delivers her favours. Meanwhile, Arden and Eloise, also in the talent contest, unknown, of course, to Gran, are tipped off by The Ice Cubes about Larry's arrangement with Hayley. Incensed, Arden does a Hayley with Larry but Hayley still wins.
Back in the house where `I wan't doesn't get', Norman has tricked Eloise into engaging him. Clearly, he wants, but will he get? Hot-to-trot Arden, he reckons, is too flighty. But she's distraught when she considers how Eloise - whose real dream, though sniggered at by her careers guidance teacher, who advises her to apply to "a top-class secretarial college" is to study Eng. Lit. at university - seems set for a secure future with prosperous, though perhaps pervy, Norman. And then there's The Ice Cubes' Dallas McCabe (Joseph McFadden), an Irish musician who Larry-ises Arden in the band's van before he gets the hots for Eloise. He can quote Yeats, so his chances with Norman's intended are looking good.
There is a verve to this new series even if Coronation Street to Carnaby Street dreams are nothing novel in British TV drama. There are anachronisms too, however. The Ice Cubes' drummer looks more like an early 1980s New Romantic than a 1960s rocker. Arden's dream of going dancing in London's Tramps nightclub with George Best (who, in 1965, was only 19 and in his first full season on Manchester United's first team) seems a few years premature, as do the Cubes' crushed velvet suits. Did Manchester landlords and landladies still have "No Children, No Irish, No Dogs" signs in 1965? It may be true that if you can remember the 1960s, you couldn't have experienced them. But, in 1965, such a defining non-sensibility was surely confined to California's beats turned hippies.
Still, quibbles aside, this airhead blonde/clever brunette historical drama - for that is what 1960s yarns have become - is strong on characterisation and dialogue. The serpent-like Larry, able to pinch people with his eyes, is particularly engaging. Presumably, Arden will face an unwanted pregnancy - Larry's or Dallas's?; Eloise will, after severe setbacks, escape Norman and The Ice Cubes will escape Larry. But even if the plotlines appear predictable, there is a genuine sense of a society on the cusp.
The anti-Irishness - remember the North was quiet in 1965 - adds a dash of racism to the class and gender mix. On that, just one point: why, in 1999, did the BBC find it necessary to have a Scottish actor (McFadden) play an Irish musician? Maybe the question suggests that as well as chips to eat and chips to assemble, there are chips to wear on your shoulder. Then again, maybe not. Anyway, as a slice of nostalgia for the Swinging Sixties, Sex, Chips and Rock `N' Roll generally hits the right notes - especially when Arden and Eloise sing Just One Look.
RTE, too, sought the nostalgia nerve this week. Instead of expensive drama, though, Montrose opted for the low-budget idea of recycling 1980s footage to a soundtrack of contemporary hits. Reeling In The Years is yet another clone of the incomparable The Rock `N' Roll Years. But it is engrossing, opening with Charlie Haughey appearing on TV on January 9th, 1980, to tell us all that "as a community, we're living way beyond our means". For sheer neck, indeed transcendent neck, Haughey's homily has become a classic. For that speech alone, thanks a million, big fella. With Chas accompanied by Abba warbling about the "wonder of a fairy tale", it was hard to know whether to laugh or shoot the screen.
PAYE marches, Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats, Jimmy Carter, the Moscow Olympics, Debbie Harry, Johnny Logan and Shay Healy winning the 1980 Eurovision Song Contest, the discovery of the Derrynaflan chalice, Bank Of Ireland's introduction of Pass Cards, the Nolan Sisters, Dermot Morgan as Father Trendy on The Live Mike, Maggie Thatcher in Dublin (to the sound of The Clash's London Calling), London's Iranian Embassy siege, El Salvador, Eamonn Casey, U2, the Sally O'Brien Harp lager ad, Galway in hurling, Kerry in football, marathon mania, Bracken, Who Shot JR? fever, Solidarity, Bagatelle, the first HBlocks hunger strike and John Lennon's death followed.
Oh, there was also a recording of Brendan Shine singing Catch Me If You Can. Rhyming "Dan", "man" and "can", this example of Shining sophistication in an entertainment world dominated by Dallas rapacity reminded you that even patronising corniness is preferable to hypocrisy. But it also - and the same applies to Sex, Chips and Rock `N' Roll - reminded you that memory is increasingly determined by available footage and by directors' selections of images. If it was filmed once, it can be used again - and nowadays, with TV understandably keen on low-cost recycling, it invariably is.
Back in 1980, Gay Byrne, presenting The Late Late Show, wore a red and white gingham shirt with white collar. He looked like a talking tablecloth. Nineteen years later, Pat Kenny has taken over Gaybo's show and it's no secret that two of the star turns of the opening year of the last decade - Charlie Haughey and Eamonn Casey - are high on Patbo's wish list. Well, that's fair enough. But it begs questions about present notables. Among the good, the bad and the current crop of dentally sublime TV faces, who are the rogues? We saw Patbo interviewing Larry Hagman (J.R. Ewing) - a fictional rogo di tutti rogi - in 1980. It would be more than a decade before the non-fictional rogues were exposed.
If Reeling In The Years - isn't that from a 1970s Steely Dan tune? - promotes scepticism about what we see on TV, then that is a valuable by-product. Ostensibly a simple dose of cheap nostalgia, with classic hits pop music added, this new RTE series unavoidably contains a subversive germ: don't believe too much of what you see on television. If this has proven to be the case in 1980, there's even more reason for scepticism about 1999 - now that PR gush has become even more formidable. Anyway, in spite its lack of originality, this one may well help to reel in some viewer naivete about punters who appear too often on TV. Let's hope so.
YET more local nostalgia from Make 'Em Laugh (a risky title, don't you think?), which is presented by Gay Byrne. Again, this is another recycling job by RTE. This time it comes from the station's "comedy archive", which, even after 38 years, can't be all that large. But Byrne has a good knowledge of pre-television, Irish variety (The Theatre Royal, The Gaiety, The Olympia). His style indeed always had elements of old-fashioned theatre compere-ing and his enthusiasm for people like Jimmy O'Dea, Maureen Potter, Danny Cummins and Jack Cruise is practically that of a fan.
We saw O'Dea as Biddy Mulligan and Potter as Ian Paisley - cross-dressing being nothing new - but the sketches were, frankly, more noteworthy for their history than their humour. We also saw footage of O'Dea's funeral on January 9, 1965 (coincidentally 15 years to the day before Chas Haughey lectured his spendthrift flock and the same year in which SEX, CHIPS AND ROCK `N' ROLL is set). Dev was there and it was clear that a great of Irish entertainment had passed on.
But the passing on of the great of Irish television, from the chair of The Late Late Show to fronting this gentle retrospective, was significant too. Gaybo still has the seemingly effortless delivery of a true creature of the camera. But without a live audience, he's almost as beached as a compere in an empty variety hall. If Make 'Em Laugh proves anything, it is that Gay Byrne became the big wig of Irish TV because, with his knowledge of pre-TV variety, he understood how to work a live audience. Unlike so many of today's wannabes, he knew there was more involved than flashing white teeth.
IN more serious vein - more make 'em cry than make 'em laugh - RTE screened A Fragile City on Thursday night. Focusing on five homeless people - Frank, Paddy, Anthony, Moya and Damian - it sought to humanise these unfortunate individuals. Contributors correctly pointed out how language regularly (a) dehumanises people in such circumstances and (b) commodifies them in business-speak. If they are not "bums" or "dossers" or "layabouts", they may be "clients" when they are seeking hostel beds. Clients, no less - suggesting the capacity to choose between various options.
It does seem, in this city of million-pound houses, that attitudes to homelessness are hardening. Well, who's surprised? When a society promotes individualism, albeit a bogus individualism to fit the economy (just look at the TV ads), compassion has to suffer. We've seen it in New York and London and we'll see it increase in Dublin too. Against such a backdrop, A Fragile City - the title taken from a Micheal O Siadhail poem - was timely. And, for a change this week, its subject was not nostalgia. There is no golden age of homelessness - even if Hollywood's version of 1930s hobo culture sometimes suggests otherwise.