Spotlight (BBC 1, Wednesday)
True Lives (RTE 1, Monday)
Saints and Sinners (RTE 1, Thursday)
Streetwise (Network 2, Tuesday)
Wearing a pink tutu, a blonde wig, a white veil and a plastic Miss Piggy nose, the blushing bride-to-be sipped her drink through a straw shaped like a phallus. Elsewhere in the city, young men were baring their behinds in public places. Spotlight, which the continuity announcer had introduced with the promise, "This programme contains scenes which may offend some viewers" (televisionese for "roll up, roll up"), was following British stag and hen groups around Dublin.
What followed wasn't so much offensive as bizarre. Yes, in a pub, or at the airport, or on a city street, seeing some drunken clown drop his trousers might be offensive. But watching it on television, it seemed sad that any bloke might think that exposing his buttocks in a public place could be a great revolutionary statement - the culmination of a carefree, single life. Wow, what an untamed, radical, subversive you are. Walk on the wild side, lads - mooning in Temple Bar!
It would be wrong to say that this sort of typically British bawdiness is not a feature of Temple Bar at weekends. Cheap flights and Dublin's reputation for being relatively easygoing about such nonsense attract an average of about a dozen British stag/hen groups every week. But, the presence of the Spotlight cameras couldn't but have added an extra incentive for the boys and girls to perform. After all, if you're going to get your kicks from trying to shock people, you might as well maximise your audience by doing it on TV.
So, along with the receiving hostel's minibus, a camera met groom-to-be Daniel Ross and his mates at the airport. The driver pointed out the Four Courts, mentioning the Michael Col- lins film, but it was clear than Dan and his pals were not in Dublin for a seminar on history or cinema. Within a few frames, one of them was vomiting into the Liffey. "I'm fine," he said, "I'm ready to go again. Er . . . anyone got a tissue?" And so the scene was set, the mood established.
The 12-strong hen party had one man with them. "I'm the office homosexual," he said, as he watched the Miss Piggy-in-pink-tutu performance. The head hen then read an extract from a 1953 Home Economics book on How to be a Good Wife. This was an ironic touch of subtlety, clever too, considering that the same woman had provided the "willie straw" which set the brood of hens giggling and screeching. "Down in one, down in one," they sang as Miss Piggy tried and failed to knock back a pint of lager.
Although much of it seemed suspiciously staged anyway, there was a sense that the cameras spurred on the stags but restrained the hens. Certainly, both groups were ribald and, predictably, almost all of the "fun" was predicated upon being coarse about sexual matters. But there was a mania about the males which was largely absent from the females. Handcuffing Dan Ross (in thigh-high silk stockings and make-up) to a tree, after he had brown goo poured over his head and his bare (of course) butt spanked in a public bar by a stripogram girl, seemed on the edge of sadism.
It was clear that he thought so, too. In fact, he seemed on the verge of tears as he was being released from his humiliation. Still, it didn't stop him mooning from the mini-bus and baring his behind at Dublin airport departure lounge the following day. He was arrested for this final performance but was released after 20 minutes with a warning. None of the stags or hens seemed especially nasty but the lavatorial humour suggested not people who were liberated, but rather people who were brutalised.
There is a place in the world for bawdiness (nowadays it's called Temple Bar) given that excessive effeteness often suggests repressed rage. But, it's difficult not to conclude that the British strain of bawdiness is essentially a reaction to a society which demands undue and unearned deference. The fact that so many young Brits come to Dublin (it used to be Spain) to grin and bare their arses tells us something. The rude gestures are not to Ireland, where some people are making quite a bit of money out of the vulgarians.
The stags would do their thing back home, only they face greater risk of getting locked up and having the crap knocked out of themselves. And OK, while it might be a touch fanciful to suggest that they are dropping their trousers to bare their souls, the growing trash elements in British culture are bearing witness to something. Spotlight's cameras may have distorted stag/hen behaviour somewhat, but they did expose a tawdriness that is more to be pitied than prosecuted. Anyway, so long as there's loot in it for some, the rest of us will, no doubt, just have to eh, bear it.
On the evidence of True Lives: Harvest Emergency, Dublin life in 1946 seemed rather more restrained. This documentary told the story of how, during the worldwide grain shortage in the year after the end of the second World War, Ireland faced a possible famine. Two weeks of torrential, late summer rain meant that crops might rot in the fields, if they could not be harvested quickly. The government appealed for volunteers and thousands left the towns and cities every day to work on the land.
Excellent colour footage from the time, recorded by film-maker Colm O'Laoghaire, provided the highlights. The Dublin and the rural Ireland it revealed seemed very spacious compared to the clutter of today. People, of course, had much less materially (some of the volunteers wore old pyjamas and gymslips to save their better clothes) and clearly, life was harsh for many. But the old film, the reminiscences and the raucous communality of the episode painted a sentimental picture of an, albeit poorer, less frantic, bucolic Ireland.
What it also suggested, though nobody dared say as much, was that the crisis was solved by five weeks of ad hoc communism. That is not to say that the young men and women filling the buses and open-top trucks bringing them down the country every day, were doctrinaire Marxist-Leninists or trendy Trots or stolid Stalinists. But, their response - communal, state-inspired and for practically nothing in the way of private gain - would have made excellent propaganda for the left. Mind you, De Valera, inspecting the work in his formidable, black coat, wouldn't have seen it quite like that.
Anyway, the Ireland revealed seemed to be a place where urban/rural divisions were not nearly so bitter as they would later become. Of course, a significant majority of the population were rural people at the time and many more were no more than a generation away from the land. But it is almost inconceivable to imagine that, for instance, 125,000 Dublin volunteers would similarly give their labour to farmers nowadays.
Then again, the harvest emergency struck just on the centenary of the Great Famine. There was no great public consciousness about this at the time. But privately, or within families or small communities, the memory of the horror must have had strong resonances. Intercutting the wonderfully luminous old footage with interviews with reminiscing volunteers, this one worked well. It might, however, have speculated a little more about why the episode became so quickly forgotten as the Cold War freeze set in. We're past all that now, aren't we? Aren't we?
Beside some of the Popes of the past, the Temple Bar stags would make for very small beer. Saints And Sinners, narrated by Anthony Clare, is, in parts, gloriously shot but too often stuck together in a cliched way. Nonetheless, it is visually impressive, if aurally less so because of the overuse of Gregorian chanting. Its principal problem, however, is a script, which is as difficult to follow as Catholic doctrine on sexual behaviour.
This week's second of six episodes was titled Between Two Empires. It dealt with the fall of Rome, the rise of Constantinople and the emergence of Charlemagne, whose coronation in Rome by Pope Leo III, in the year 800, marked the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire. The period covered was marked by all sorts of theological arcana as well as political manoeuvrings and that's fair enough. But the script never really conveyed any sense of what it might have been like to be alive at the time.
Instead, it was dry and academic in the worst, excluding, sense of the word. In fact, it was portentous (aesthetes might argue, I suppose, that it was appropriately pontifical) and this was a pity. It's not that we need a Papal History for Fools, but there was a jerkiness and a lack of clarity with this one. Perhaps on a second viewing, it would all fit seamlessly together. But, most people interested in the subject are unlikely to go to such bother. Then again, it's not quite fair to judge an entire series on just one episode.
And alongside the sumptuous visuals, there were some engaging snippets. One Pope gave a politically crucial harlot "a jar of wine from the wedding at Cana". How's that for showbiz? Another, John XII, "died at the age of 27 from a stroke while in bed with a married woman". In fact, monasteries full of monks had been praying for his demise for the best part of a decade. It's a pertinent series but it's a pity about the script.
Finally, Streetwise. The consumer magazine returned with items on mobile phones, petrol pricing, private third level colleges and train travel in Ireland. Sassy presenters Martina O'Donoghue and Fiona McCarthy usually appear to enjoy themselves and seem able now to be less intrusive during reports. It's a question of blend, of course. The subject matter of consumer shows can be quite prosaic so an injection of vim is understandable, though it needs to be controlled.
The report on private third-level education elicited the comment from one stung parent that there should be more to being a college than "renting out a fancy house in a fancy area and putting teachers in". So there should. Clearly, there is a demand for such colleges, but the government is almost criminally slow in introducing regulations. Streetwise is pacey and punchy, but now, in its third season, perhaps it ought to be become genuinely campaigning.
It doesn't necessarily have to take up cudgels for private third level students - there are much more deserving causes (being exploited by far bigger rip-offs) around. But it could make a seriously valuable contribution if it is prepared to risk some slickness for substance. Some people are becoming very wealthy in Ireland these years. A booming economy, naturally, attracts fraudsters. A Streetwise with studs showing should be able to dig up more bum deals than you'd see in a weekend in Temple Bar.