Over-balancing act

TV Review: If anyone should be making dramas about the Northern Ireland conflict, it is probably best that it shouldn't be Northern Irish television itself. Who worse to pick apart the rotting bones of the Troubles than those who have spent their existence trying to walk through the graveyard without stepping on anyone?

Traditionally, there have been two approaches to drama or comedy by BBC Northern Ireland or ITV: they either soak the script with conciliation or they treat both sides with equal mockery. It's a perfectly understandable approach. It's not my phone that will ring at the slightest suggestion of imbalance. They are not my windows that will need replacing.

This week, BBC Northern Ireland, co- producing with RTÉ, brought us Holy Cross, a docu-drama that ultimately trod so quietly it made no noise at all. Bronagh Gallagher and Zara Turner played Sarah and Ann, Protestant and Catholic mothers whose houses backed on to each other. Their daughters, Karen (Louise Doran) and Aoife (Lauren McDonald), could see each other from their bedrooms, two schoolgirls who, in any other circumstances, would have been playing together, but here only exchanged brief stares from behind the grills put up to protect them from petrol-bombs.

Each of the women struggled with their men. Sarah had the indolent, drunken boyfriend, Peter (Patrick O'Kane), whose life was given a sudden purpose by the protests. Ann had husband Gerry (Colum Convey), whose paramilitary past brought muddied ethics and death threats to the family, and teenage son Tony (Henry Deazley) rioting every night.

It is hard, though, to see the point behind Holy Cross, a dramatised version of a recent event that was the focus of the world's media for weeks on end, and through which the stories and arguments were delivered in soundbite chunks until it numbed the mind to realise that it was still going on.

"This is a fictional story based on real events," we were informed.

As it fictionalised, though, so it cauterized. This, the programme's makers could argue, was the human side of the story, the view of the families. It was a close-up that could present the battle between two sides of the same road without the need to examine the role of paramilitaries or politicians or to feature any real-life public figures. This approach helped in avoiding judgments. The programme opted for reconstruction over revelation.

The men were almost uniformly lazy thugs, but both women were portrayed as good mothers caught up in a bad situation. The production was so eager for equanimity that even after Sarah had abruptly and unconvincingly switched from wise, caring mother, disgusted by the notion of screaming obscenities at children, to vulgar protester, she was subsequently handed a redemptive speech to deliver to her sleeping daughter. If it did not convince her daughter, it at least ensured dramatic parity of esteem. Ultimately, Holy Cross settled for the notion of commonality between the women and children. These were good women in bad circumstances, with conjoined lives even as the situation divided them. However, there was a nagging sense that it was a conclusion reached less out of dramatic logic than out of political sensitivity.

Much of what was covered here - the details of life in a riot zone, the pressures on mothers, the poisoning of the children - had already been covered in the two-part, either-side-of-the-wall documentary, Interface, which was broadcast earlier this year in Northern Ireland but not by the other UK regional channels. Much the same happened here. Scheduling made Holy Cross nothing more than fish food. RTÉ broadcast it on Saturday, not normally a showcase night for drama; BBC, meanwhile, sacrificed it by throwing it into the pond with the second episode of Prime Suspect; The Last Witness on ITV, where it never stood a chance.

It was Holy Cross's added misfortune that detective Jane Tennison's first outing in seven years also happened to be one of her strongest. Tennison (Helen Mirren) was working on a case in which two women, the last living witnesses to a massacre of Muslims during the war in Bosnia, were murdered, and in which the chief suspect's translator was not all he seemed.

The gender politics once integral to Prime Suspect are no longer considered so relevant, with the single nod here being an ironic one: the treachery of a younger female colleague was an attempt to undermine Tennison in the way the men used to. Peter Berry's excellent script instead focused on Tennison's ageing, and her superior's suggestions that she might retire, a factor which introduced some logic to the otherwise clichéd development that saw her suspended from the case but nonetheless pursue it to a successful conclusion.

It's been seven years since the previous Prime Suspect. It was one of the parents of a genre of British detective dramas, all intensity and atmosphere, gloom and moral confusion. That genre has become spent in recent years, so Prime Suspect returned at a time when British television drama has handed in its badge and gun and gone looking for other stories - and it has found fertility after the volcano. The Last Witness, though, reminded you of how great a good detective yarn can still be.

The House of Love, meanwhile, reminded us how awful live television can be. Here, eight couples were competing over eight weeks for the prize of a house. How they will win this was not made quite clear. Not much was made clear. It may have made the option of turning over a little easier.

It was a wholehearted mess, television that anchored your chin to the ground. It was presented by Sean Moncrieff, who used to be a promising talent, but to whom RTÉ now seems to serve only the bad wine. He constantly referred to a "panel of experts", who gave their opinions of the couples. I left the country last week, and when I returned it was to discover that Mary O'Rourke is considered to be some sort of expert in matters of love. Sometimes you feel you're not quite getting a joke.

It is, as Moncrieff reminded us, a live quiz show. A live quiz show is always something to be wary of. Without editing, the suspense drifts away and the atmosphere dissipates. Tuning in to The House of Love was like arriving at another firm's Christmas party and not knowing the personalities enjoying the party games. Poor format was partnered with technical incompetence. It was riddled with panic. Contestants went missing early on and had to be smuggled in to shot. Links to Brenda Donoghue's backstage interviews dispensed with logical progression. Near the end, the camera returned to the studio to find the contestants scattering across the floor, like cockroaches when the lights go on, and you wondered if any of the crew had even noticed, so deep would their heads have been buried in their hands.

However, it was about 55 minutes into the programme, long after the brain had disassociated itself from the eyes, when a question was asked that had it scurrying back to find out if it really did just hear what it thought it did. It happened during a round of the quiz. Well, it isn't quite accurate to describe it as a round. A bout, perhaps. It had been 40 minutes of questions, identical to the old Mr And Mrs format, in which partners must match their answers about their relationship. Mr and Mrs was popular in the past, until television decided that if it wanted a future it should shake off such nonsense.

Most of the questions went along predictable lines, involving first dates and breaking wind and such things. Then, one girl was asked what she would do if a halting-site was put next door to her house. Remember, Moncrieff had been reminding the contestants to give honest answers. So she did, and took the option that allowed her to request that they be evicted. When her partner guessed that she would in fact do nothing, the audience giggled at the discrepancy between their answers.

There can have been few quiz-show questions as misjudged, as crass, as offensive as this one. Would the audience have giggled if contestants had been asked about an asylum centre opening nearby, or a refugee family moving in next door? The House of Love can limp along for as long as it wants, but it should not be allowed to heap insult upon that injury.