The world is not enough

TV REVIEW:Would You Believe RTÉ1, Sunday

I See A Darkness RTÉ1, Monday

Horizon: How to Survive a Disaster BBC2, Tuesday

‘HI THERE, I used to be the next president of the United States.” Hey, as introductions go, it’s not so bad. A meeting in the US with environmentalist Al Gore, a man who has swapped political aspiration for personal credibility, was the inspiration for reporter Roisin Duffy’s exploration of Ireland’s eco-living alternatives in RTÉ’s longest-running documentary series, Would You Believe.

I’m pretty much a fan of WYB, and, having grown up on a diet of grim, monotonous and invariably humourless priests turning up on RTÉ every night at signing-off time to tell you to check under your bed for evil thoughts and to wrap your rosaries firmly around your stray imagination (well, that’s what it felt like to me), it’s a relief to see the national broadcaster producing such an eclectic and ecumenical series on ethics, faith and spirituality, Irish-style. Indeed, in these greening, new-age times, and given my immense propensity for neurotic wariness, I have to admit that “spiritual” documentaries or anything that even hints at raffia-weaving, whole-food-loving holiness (with or without an icon, talisman, guru or method) makes me deeply suspicious and a little twitchy. But back to WYB, a series I have approached with caution over the years but which is a sturdy, well-made documentary strand with a diverse palette.

So where were we? Duffy, who introduced the programme by speaking of her own desire to be more carbon-aware, began by garnering some alarming statistics from an ethically skinny-looking Friends of the Earth spokesman. Apparently Ireland’s transport emissions have risen by 170 per cent since 1990 and now, per capita, we are the sixth most polluting country in the world (it’s all those damn SUVs breeding in the supermarket carparks). Then, with Gore’s imperative ringing in her shell-likes (which is, more or less, that each citizen must make a moral decision about change and how they live their lives), Duffy took herself off to Co Tipperary to meet a bunch of eco-pioneers, the soon-to-be residents of Ireland’s first eco-village in Cloughjordan.

Over the next two years Cloughjordan will become home to 132 eco-families. The individually designed houses are state-of-the-art green, and the development has been planned to maximise a sense of community. There is a communal post area, an organic market and an almost baffling array of activities on hand, from Girl Guides to yoga, all within a pollutant-free walk from each well-insulated front door. The project seems absolutely laudable, and my predictably itchy alarm on observing it really has no business being directed at such an admirable scheme. However, the questions have to be asked: is the purchase of a bottle of duty-free Bombay Sapphire a no-no, can you wear your lippie down to the compost heap, and can you still be eco-friendly even if you’re a closet misanthropist? As Gore would doubtless testify, these people have overcome huge hurdles and displayed real moral courage in beginning to piece this community together. So let’s face it, my crumbling, heavily dated and frothy idiosyncrasies should probably be firmly planted where the sun don’t shine.

Interestingly, Gore began to focus his energies on environmental issues rather than the bear-pit of party politics after his then seven-year-old son was involved in a car accident, one of those moments when one wakes up to life’s fragility – luckily in Gore’s case as, with his son’s recovery assured, the jolt led to a positive and life-enhancing change. Not everyone is so lucky.

DIRECTOR ALAN GILSENAN, who has in the past produced moving and acutely observed films on various unseen aspects of Irish life (The Hospice and The Asylum are among his forays into veiled territories), is continuing his excavation of the stories behind the statistics with I See A Darkness, a three-part documentary series focusing on suicide. Approximately 500 lives a year are lost to suicide in Ireland, and the rate is increasing rapidly worldwide.

Stark and intimate, the first programme of the three was anchored at the kitchen table of Peter and Valerie Moroney, whose son Simon was among the grim statistics, having died by suicide in 2003 at the age of 16.

Simon’s story was heartbreaking: a violent sexual incident which may have led to his years of depression; missed medical opportunities to help this angry and vulnerable boy; relationships with professionals abruptly ended; periods of hospitalisation; and, eventually, a diagnosis. “You are fine,” a consultant in a local hospital told him. “There is nothing wrong with you. Go home.” He later left his home in a black body-bag. He had taken an overdose, maybe, according to his mother, because he was so exhausted from sleepless, anxious nights; maybe, she hoped, he took the pills simply to get a little rest, a little relief.

After Simon’s wake, his coffin, borne by his brothers, was carried to the parish church where his classmates waited. The Moroneys’ youngest son, Lee, explained why, after the funeral, he found it difficult to visit Simon’s grave: “When I leave the graveyard, I feel that I am turning my back on him.” I cannot imagine what kind of courage it must take to talk about the death of your child with the grace and equanimity that the Moroney family showed. But if the intention, both of the programme and of the family, was to provoke a higher level of debate on the issue of suicide, then, in these painful, frank and poignant conversations, they have managed to lift a corner on this ravaged taboo. One would hope that their dignified contribution succeeds at some level in focusing attention on this terrible blight.

AS I’M HERE, I might as well elucidate on How to Survive a Disaster. Horizon, that aching old documentary horse, once more pulled its rheumatic joints over the cobblestones, this time to deliver an entirely pointless programme designed to show us shrieking, terror-frozen fools what to do if our aeroplane crashes, our ferry sinks, our car whacks into a wall at 60mph, or our hotel turns into a towering inferno. Right, let me see, what was it the man said? Oh yeah, extensive research, years and years of laboratory intelligence and all sorts of mechanical thingies have been distilled into the earth-shattering message that if one is to survive disaster (woggles to the ready), one has to be prepared. Surprise surprise! Oh, and always book a hotel room no higher than the sixth storey (because the fireman’s ladder has its limits, apparently.) You’ll have to forgive me if I can’t enlighten you more comprehensively, but around the time that a dull-looking man in a Marks and Sparks tie was demonstrating his shiny home-made fire hood and earnestly telling the reporter how he insists his wife takes hers to bed with her, I started to drift off.

Look, the bottom line is this: when and if disaster strikes, there are two kinds of people: those that get tunnel vision and focus solely on their own survival, and those who accept their fate in a kind of grim torpor. There are the fire-hood enthusiasts who line up the oxygen mask next to their bunny slippers, and there are the rest of us, the ones who fall asleep on the couch just when the important, the crucial, the life-saving bit of information is about to be . . .

Through a lens darkly The short, sad and all-too-real life of a TV creation

The bizarre life of reality-TV star Jade Goody continues to be documented on Living TV, the channel's monicker beginning to sound like a bad cosmic joke as the former dental nurse (who found fame and infamy on Celebrity Big Brother) faces the end of her struggle with terminal cervical cancer. Goody's short life, largely played out in the public arena, has taken on a prophetic, desperate quality with the sinking realisation that her death, too, appears earmarked for public consumption.

But before death takes its share of Jade, robbing her young sons of their mother, she has chosen to celebrate life. This week's programmes recorded her recent marriage to 21-year-old Jack Tweed. For the occasion, Jack had his post-release prison tag removed, while Jade had a morphine popsicle and diamonds studded across her eyelids.

It was extremely sad, not least because in her short life Jade has had little opportunity to grow outside of the relentless glare of the tabloids.

A few days before the wedding, she was barely able to read her proposed wedding vows.

"Its not that I'm sick, I just don't understand what's written down," she told the camera. Then she asked the clergyman by her bedside (who, incidentally, looked like a Thunderbirds puppet) which one was better, eternal love or everlasting love?

"I'm dying," she told him, decorative eyes shining. "I'm dying. Which one is better, eternal love or everlasting love?"

Even the glamorous priest in his maroon frock couldn't answer that conundrum.

tvreview@irishtimes.com