Prostitute - BBC 1, Wednesday
Manchan Ar Seachran - TnaG, Friday; rpt Sunday
The Madness From Within - RTE 1, Wednesday
True Lives - RTE 1, Monday
`I can cope with sights but not smells," said Talia, folding a leopardskin bra. Talia works in "the sex industry" - previously as a prostitute, now as a porn actress. Her story was the first in BBC's latest confessional series, Prostitute. An off-camera Esther Rantzen asked the questions and, yet again, it was difficult not to conclude that television was exploiting an interviewee aroused by less than self-nurturing motivations.
Talia's tale didn't quite add up. Hassled at school because of her black skin and with a "strict, Catholic upbringing", which decreed that she not encourage vanity by looking in mirrors, Talia developed "a negative self-image". Just in case her self-esteem somehow survived this mangling, her mother regularly reminded her that she, mama, could have had an abortion. This didn't sound like the typical guff of a strict, Catholic mother. But then, maternal techniques of making children feel guilty for their very existence often show a ruthlessness beyond mere religion.
Aged 32, a single mother and fluent in English, French, German and Italian (with some Japanese), Talia's decision to quit her job as an air hostess to go on the game was not fully explained. Was it merely money? Prostitution brought her £75 an hour. "That's a new kitchen," was the way Talia might look at an accumulation of tricks; or, such a service will mean a new pair of curtains or paint for a daughter's bedroom or . . . whatever.
It seemed ultra-cold and businesslike, this ready-reckoner conversion of sexual acts into consumer goods. More pointedly, it didn't really seem convincing - especially after Talia told us she had been sexually abused between the ages of 10 and 16 "by someone close to the family". Ah, so here was the story: self-esteem pulverised by sexual abuse; by an unloving, subverting mother; by being black in an overwhelmingly white society. And then exploited by Esther Rantzen?
The urge to confess on television is ethically and psychologically complex. Certainly, even taking self-validation into account, it was impossible not to conclude that Talia was motivated primarily by anger and a desire for revenge. Indeed, assuming that she was telling the truth about her past, such a motivation would be understandable: if Talia was made to feel so badly about herself then, given the opportunity, she could repay her abusers in public.
Talia told of being so frightened that, at 14, she would not leave her bedroom at night to go to the lavatory, lest her abuser would intercept her. Often she urinated under the carpet and once she sat out on a window sill, contemplating suicide. As often as not, during that time, she slept with a carving-knife under her pillow.
Is a psychiatrist's couch not a more appropriate place than a television screen for an individual so emotionally scarred? (Even if the story isn't true, then surely she requires some form of treatment for making it up.)
"I'm in control now. I don't feel like I'm the one who's being exploited," Talia insists. She has shifted from prostitution to porn movies - surely an extreme example of method-acting training that would put even Dustin Hoffman to shame. "I'm using what I have to the best of my ability. In whose opinion is it a waste?" she asked, defensively. Yet, when pressed as to whether or not she would like any of her three children to work in "the sex industry", she looked away from the camera and agreed that she would not.
There was something less than fully convincing about this programme. In one sense, it was a cross between a Jeremy Isaacs Face To Face and a moral striptease show. In another, it really didn't hold together. Why, given her knowledge of languages, her good looks and her obvious intelligence, did Talia switch from training air hostesses to selling herself for sex? Or how, given the abuses she described, did she manage to have a pre-prostitution career at all? There was a link missing somewhere.
This was exploitation TV. No doubt, Talia has the right to tell her story and presumably, Ms Rantzen and/or her producer advised their subject of the consequences of going so public. Near the end, we saw Talia nuzzling a horse. "There's something very comforting about the smell of a horse," she said. Again, it seemed a contradiction of her earlier assertion about sights and smells. Ultimately, something didn't quite smell right about this programme: detailing abuse on TV can be quite an abuse too.
We can be quite sure Manchan Magan does not suffer from low self-esteem. As writer and presenter of Manchan Ar Seachran, filmed and edited by his brother Ruan, Manchan seemed in love with the camera. Still, even if he was dubiously animated - more melodrama than method acting while on screen - this was a splendid little travel programme which wound through some of the more exotic parts of South America.
The opening episode of two was set mostly in Columbia; the second in Ecuador and Peru. Combining history, geography and personal observation in an engaging script Manchan, although he was excessively extroverted, clearly enjoyed himself. The real star, however, was the photography of sublime scenery. A 10-hour train journey through some of the remotest parts of Ecuador's interior made this travel programme comparable with Michael Palin's mega-budget skites for the Beeb.
At one point we saw the train come down the middle of a street. Later it would be derailed and crushed cactus plants used to get it back on the track. Apparently the cactus oil acts as a lubricant. At Vilcabamba in southern Ecuador, we met a husband and wife who claimed to be 127 and 105 respectively. In fairness, they looked every day of their claim. Eating eggs and taking things easy are, allegedly, keys to their longevity.
The climax of the second programme was the lads' arrival in Machu Picchu, the legendary lost city of the Incas. Again, splendid photography of spire-like peaks, plunging valleys and eerie mists revealed a place not just of remoteness but of great mystery. Manchan, understandably, became excited but his script about the city "acting as a bridge between our human world and the greater universe beyond" was like some kind of dodgy, New Age Mary McAleese speech.
Still, overall this was an excellent TnaG offering. The Magan brothers spent six weeks in South America, shooting with a small, digital camera. Their own publicity describes them as "punchy and fresh" and their programmes, they claim, offer "exciting, invigorating, engaging visions of another part of the world, dramatically presented". This is true - except that the word "too" should precede "dramatically presented". Personal excitement is one thing - it just shouldn't be inflicted on viewers.
The television event of the week was, of course, The Madness From Within, RTE's documentary marking the 75th anniversary of the Civil War. Reviewing it at length in The Irish Times on Thursday, the principal point I made about it then was that, although this was TV's best programme yet on the subject, it fell short of fulfilling its publicity of being "a full account and analysis" of a war which cost between 3,000 and 4,000 lives.
The debunking of De Valera continued apace. Neil Jordan's bio-pic Michael Collins really shafted the Long Fella and this documentary did likewise. In mustering compelling interviewees, (including participants) and splicing their contributions with evocative old footage, this was one of RTE's better historical documentaries. But its limited context - Britain's role was less examined than it might have been; Belfast's anti-Catholic pogroms of the period were ignored; the class elements of the war were not mentioned - meant it was something less than "a full account".
Anyway, these arguments and others were published in Thursday's paper and, on the reasonable grounds that if you give it, you've got to take it, readers are perfectly free to disagree.
In more than a decade of reviewing, I've never responded publicly to any criticisms that readers, producers, presenters or directors might make. However, in the case of Gerry Ryan, it is important to make an exception.
Deciding on the basis of a front page blurb that I had probably dismissed The Madness From Within as "shite", Ryan told listeners on Thursday that he wouldn't bother reading the review. Well now, that's fine. But if words are going to be put in my copy, I suggest it is read first: "welcome"; "TV's best yet"; "admirably chronicled the major players and events of the Civil War" do not mean "shite". None of this would matter much were it not for the fact that Ryan is being tipped as the successor to Gay Byrne as RTE's premier presenter. Sad to see standards in the national broadcasting organisation going down the tubes.
This week's offering in the True Lives series was titled A Beach Near Belfast. A peculiar programme, part home movie, part detective story and part art documentary, it centred on the finding of a roll of undeveloped Super-8 film in a second-hand camera. French film-maker Henri-Francois Imbert made the find, which showed a happy family on a summer beach and images of an antique shop in Bangor, Co Down. He decided to try to trace the family.
Bringing the film to a Kodak lab, he was able to determine that it had been manufactured in 1983. Imbert then travelled to Belfast, arriving there two days after the loyalists had called their ceasefire in 1994. However, attempts to graft the significance of this on to the significance of the Super-8 film were rather contrived. Imbert did, though, manage to find the family - the Nicholls - featured on the film.
Unfortunately, Imbert had a sort of whingeing, Jacques Cousteau voice, which was not only grating but difficult to understand. As a gentle detective story, A Beach Near Belfast was intriguing - especially as the beach turned out to be in Bognor Regis on the south coast of England (reminding us of the kind of relationship many unionists have with Britain). But, as a vehicle to analyse The Troubles or the nature of time passing - Imbert's intention - it deteriorated into irritating cod-philosophy.