Symptoms include constant talking about your plans, becoming a bit hyperactive come Wednesdays and long lunch breaks spent shopping for clothes. It's all to do with "weekend obsession" a (perhaps) tongue-in-cheek condition that is the subject of this week's documentary €1 next week in RTE's slot allowing six new directors a chance to film their obsession of choice.
"I choose the weekend, because it's so common," says Something For The Weekend director Donal Scannell, "and also I wanted to show what really happens at the weekend for some people, not in an Ibiza Uncovered sort of way but in a way where you show people what goes on in pubs and nightclubs around the place."
Selecting two people who "only live for the weekend", this revealing documentary charts the exploits of two young Irish people at play. Kerry Fleming (25) is a hairdresser from Tralee, Co Kerry, who spends his week snipping away in his ever busy salon, Technohedz, but as an "up for it" clubber, every Friday he makes his way to Dublin for a spot of recreation. Carrie Doran (21) works with Aer Lingus and lives in Dublin but goes home every weekend to Carlow to sample the local delights. "It's real Ireland, close up and caught on camera," says Scannell.
Describing Kerry Fleming as a "high octane sort of person who wears four-inch Baby Spice style heels and sports a sleeveless mohair top", Scannell and his camera accompany the exuberant hairdresser as he goes to a 1970s retro club at Dublin's Olympia Theatre (The Brutus Gold Love Train) and later catches up with him at a Sunday afternoon Bingo session at the George pub. Kerry, a veteran of club nights in New York and London, declares the Brutus Gold show to be "the best night out I've had", and though "totally wrecked" the next day, he manages to make it to the George for a bout of "alternative bingo". Kerry's mother and father in Tralee put in cameo roles, and particularly worth watching out for is his mother trying on his Baby Spice heels. Thankfully, for the producers, Kerry isn't the sort of person to mind being filmed when in a "relaxed" state after a bout of socialising. Carrie Doran, according to Scannell, is a "glamour doll type, who likes to go out and have a few drinks and chase the fellas. Even though she lives in Dublin, she prefers to go home to Carlow for the weekend, and we captured her at the local Foundry club, a great place that holds about 2,000 people."
By happy coincidence, the weekend Carrie is being filmed, her "best ever friend" Ellen is home from Liverpool - cue much screeching of greetings and very detailed planning about what they would be getting up to on their nights out - what to wear, who they fancy, who they don't fancy, etc.
Despite Scannell's protestations, the programme does at times tilt towards Carlow Uncovered but enjoyably so in its coverage of Carrie Doran's weekend. "It just worked out really well with her. In Carlow she lives on this farm in the middle of nowhere but most of the footage was shot in the nightclub, where we did manage to catch her being quite intimate with someone."
Carrie says on camera that she's "only interested in men who are not available" - men with girlfriends - and much fun is to be had watching her progress through the night. She looks on enviously as Ellen manages to "get to know" two men and there's an interesting subtext concerning her flatmate back in Dublin, Murt. One bit of footage which didn't make it to the final cut involved Carrie getting to grips with a young man in the club. "It would have worked well," says Scannell, "because what nobody knew was that the man's girlfriend was standing about 15 feet away from where he and Carrie were, and when she found out what was happening there was a bit of a row. Unfortunately the man wouldn't give us clearance to use the scene, so it had to be cut." There was in both Kerry and Carrie's cases an explanation that anything they got up to would possibly end up being shown in the documentary, and Scannell doesn't know if this worked against him or in his benefit. It's always going to be difficult getting a "naturalistic" feel when there's a camera pointing in your face, but to his credit Scannell manages to put everyone at their ease and gets as accurate a picture as is possible under the circumstances. Perhaps the main surprise of the programme is that it's going out before the watershed on a mainstream station as opposed to a late-night slot on Network 2.
Scannell selected the people after putting an advertisement in the paper looking for recruits and was particularly impressed by Carrie Doran's approach to the ad. "Kerry Fleming I knew personally before and thought he would do a good job. Carrie replied to the ad in the paper and the phone number we put in the ad was wrong so Carrie rang the paper, got through to the editor and asked him for our number. We were really impressed by her determination to appear in the programme so she more or less selected herself. I think we're going to be hearing a lot more of her . . ."
Something For The Weekend starts the Obsessions series, RTE1, Tuesday, 8.30 p.m.
