The spear and Shakespeare

TVReview: Don't boo. Nobody is to boo. Today sees captain Daniel Carter lead the All Blacks squad on to a fiery green pitch at Lansdowne Road, and despite scores to be settled and collar bones to be picked, the nation has been asked to show restraint.

Absolutely. Pas de problème. Restraint? They'll get it in bucketloads. Especially if Hector Ó hEochagáin has anything to do with it.

Chasing the Lions followed Ó hEochagáin's journey across New Zealand in the footsteps of last summer's disastrous and anticlimactic British and Irish Lions tour.

Tunelessly rousing as many of the 50,000 rugby fans as he could get his hands on with a loud and repetitive rendition of "Lions Lions", the hyperbolic ginger nut was accompanied from Christchurch to Auckland by cameraman Ross O'Callaghan and the very funny Risteard Cooper of Après Match fame. And somehow, despite Sky's exclusive deal with Clive Woodward's bloated entourage (not to mention 51 players) and the tour being surrounded by high security and a bevy of spin doctors (including the ubiquitous Alistair Campbell), Ó hEochagáin managed to blag and bully a highly entertaining hour and a half's television out of a sporting fiasco.

One minute and 17 seconds into the opening test, Brian O'Driscoll was down and out and the Christchurch carnage had begun. Ó hEochagáin, in a bid to understand New Zealanders' obsession with rugby, began with a team of under-eights (they start training them when they're five) that the Lions might have had a chance against - just.

"If [the under-eights] saw the All Blacks playing like the Lions, they'd give up and play soccer," said their coach, his head shaking in hypothetical horror.

Ó hEochagáin, in response to the relentless tide of defeat and O'Driscoll's appalling injury, had T-shirts printed with Tana Umaga's face under the word "Wanted" and sold them out of the back of a Hiace. Later, he dressed up as a dispatch rider and delivered one of the shirts to O'Driscoll, his resourcefulness rewarded with a night partying in the team hotel with the Irish Lions and their glossy-haired girlfriends, all of whom wore pink (the girlfriends, that is).

Cooper, meanwhile, was interlacing the journey with his cruelly accurate imitations: he does a better George Hook than George Hook, and his impersonation of a beleaguered and depressed Eddie O'Sullivan in a badly fitting blond wig was hysterical.

On a misty hillside before the final test, Ó hEochagáin met a friendly Maori who offered a loose translation of the haka. "I mortify your flesh," he growled, grinning. "If I catch you, I eat you." Undaunted, Ó hEochagáin stuck out his tongue and rolled his eyes around - he was less than scary. Oh well - as Hector conceded, "there's plenty of hakas in Limerick on a Saturday night looking for a snack box".

"Opportunistic rather than premeditated," was how former All Black Ian Jones described the spear tackle that ended O'Driscoll's tour; the same words could be used to describe Chasing the Lions, only this time the roar wasn't reduced to a miaow and the outcome was far more palatable.

THERE IS A common belief among TV producers that if Shakespeare were alive he'd be buckling up his hipsters and writing for television (okay, I made the hipsters bit up). If he were alive, it's safe to assume that he wouldn't be writing the sloppy, sentimentalised soup that David Nicholls (writer of Cold Feet) served up when asked by the BBC to modernise a Shakespearean classic for the box (strikingly original idea, that). Nicholls chose Much Ado About Nothing and constructed an inferior to-do about absolutely zilch.

Nicholls's contemporary rewrite was set in a Wessex television studio, into which our friend Martin Jarvis popped (presumably after the Countdown conundrum) to have a whirl at playing Leonard, a benign old daytime TV producer (adventurous casting). Jarvis's beautiful (if mildly dumb) screen daughter, Hero (Billie Piper), read the Wessex weather forecast and was the infatuation object of Claude (Tom Ellis), the square-jawed, curly-headed sports hack.

This was fine and dandy, as Hero fell peroxide head over kitten heels in love with him too. But then the nasty, chain-smoking bloke from graphics (whom Hero had once slept with out of pity) became demented with jealousy and screwed up the happy couple's wedding day by leading Claude to believe that Hero had shagged him the night before the wedding (I hope you got all that, because I can't repeat it).

That's couple one: naive and sweet, who believe love is an everlasting gobstopper, only to choke on it (metaphorically). Then there's couple two: Benedick, a kind of B-team Hugh Grant, a sleazy, vacillating and uninspiring chat show host with the sex appeal of a teapot, who co-presents the daytime TV show with Beatrice ("don't call me Bea"), a clickity-click, ambitious, high-heeled old pro who has been burnt by Benedick in the past (Mills and Boon, eat your heart out). These two, thanks to a bit of corporate matchmaking, eventually get together over a timely sonnet and a crisp Sauvignon.

It really wouldn't have been too bad, just a mildly soporific Four Weddings and a Funeral imitation, if Benedick and Bea hadn't slipped into a vacant trance to deliver soliloquies on the nature of their growing attraction for each other while hanging upside down over their futons. Oh, and the dialogue, which would have made even alas-poor-Yorick squirm. I swear: if Will ever wrote "it must be pretty lonely up there on the moral high ground", I'll eat my ruff.

'THEY'RE NOT A bunch of prancing, dancing nancy-boys," said commentator Phil Gifford proudly of the toothless lads in the All Blacks scrum. Maybe, Phil, but sexuality isn't always as clearly defined as a ruck on the try-line.

Real Families: My Husband's Secret Life was a moving and honest exploration of the effects on a marriage of the male partner announcing to his wife that he is gay. Eschewing the tabloidism of the title, the programme featured the stories of several men, all of whom had married in good faith, all of whom were desperately trying to conform, and all of whom were shattered by the realisation that their lives could not continue until they came to terms with their sexuality.

Central to the programme were Sam and Dave, who were married with two young daughters. During the early years of the marriage, Dave became increasingly withdrawn and started drinking heavily. When Sam sat him down and asked him what was wrong, he told her he was gay. Her response was gallant and unusual: she decided to stay with him and support him. The couple live together with their daughters, they have a loving (though now non-sexual) relationship, and they encourage each other to be independent and to find sexual partners. When Dave went on an overnight expedition to Brighton to check out the gay scene, Sam even packed his "lucky knickers" for him.

"I come as a package [ with wife and daughters]," Dave explained when talking about the possibility of meeting a new partner. He spoke of a childhood of being bullied because he was somehow "different" and of how, as a young adult, he thought he could choose to be "straight" so as not to have to live with fear and harassment.

Dave and Sam are open with their daughters, whose questions they try to answer honestly. "Society can like it or lump it," Sam said. "Our children's generation are going to be happy and be free to be themselves."

A TIGHTLY CONSTRUCTED Anne Robinson brought her facelift to brighten up The Brendan Courtney Show, which got off to a rickety start this week. Courtney nervously nodded his assent at every utterance of "the queen of mean" until she observed that he was only agreeing because he was frightened of her.

"I'm not frightened," retorted Courtney. "I'm just aroused." The quip was the most tenacious moment that the very long hour had to offer.

Courtney is an experienced broadcaster and doubtless he'll relax over the coming months, but the question is whether "downtown Dublin" has enough celebs to feed the voracious chat show beast.

Courtney's inaugural show featured the open and talkative Keith Duffy describing his Boyzone years (he was the big one in the back with the broken teeth), and then, lo and behold, Hector Ó hEochagáin and Risteard Cooper turned up to chat about Chasing the Lions - the deja vu would knock you sideways.

Apparently over the coming weeks "the show's comic sensibilities and irreverent attitude will ensure that we all have a ball" - maybe this is one ball we should pass gently to Umaga.