When jokes aren't funny

TV REVIEW: The Late Late ShowRTÉ1, Friday The Troubles I've SeenUTV Tuesday Storyville: When Borat Came to TownBBC4, Monday Little DorritBBC1, Sunday

SPOOKY: Tony Curtis in two places at the one time and Pat Kenny transmogrified into Gerry Ryan. Due to Kenny suffering a family bereavement, Ryan was at the helm of The Late Late Show. Looking like a nervous but determined groom, he kicked off with a somewhat obsequious interview with "Hollywood legend" Tony Curtis. Now in his 80s, with a rotund belly, a snow-white Stetson and a rather fiercely competent-looking wife (the kind who could mix a Martini with one hand and administer a bed-bath with the other - would that we could all attract such devoted attention when the arthritis kicks in, the abdomen slackens and the medical cards run out), Curtis is, of course, on a book tour, with American Prince: A Memoir.

Doubtless, by the end of the worldwide promotion, there won't be a potential reader from Kansas to Kinnegad who hasn't heard the tale of the costume designer on Some Like it Hotwho told Marilyn Monroe (one of Curtis's former lovers) that, of the two, Curtis had the cuter ass (Monroe apparently retorted by showing the designer her voluminous chest and suggesting that Curtis certainly didn't have one of those). Oh, har har.

Anyway, I heard the story twice, once as told to Ryan and, 10 minutes later, when I flicked over to naughty - nay, suspended - Jonathan Ross. That's the problem with having too many buttons on the remote: it leaves one feeling duped, the intimacy created between host and guest for the delectation of your little ears is, one realises, nothing but a scripted, promiscuous game.

Personally, I wanted Mrs Curtis to sit down on the swivel chair and tell us what 20 years of marriage to an ageing "legend" was like. Does she lie awake at night dreaming of having Monroe's attributes, or does she just curl up with a bowl of tacos, a Labradoodle and a box set of Love Boat, relieved that her Hollywood prince is snoring away peacefully in his brush-cotton pyjamas.

There was a strange underlying thread of continuity to Ryan's confident Late Latedebut. During the programme he also interviewed Richard Madeley, the more debonair half of Richard and Judy, who is also on a book tour. I have no idea what his oeuvre is called (Richard and Richard maybe, or Truly Madeley Lovely?).He gave a well-rehearsed account of his childhood with a temperamental, occasionally violent father, and once again politely disentangled himself from speculation that he and Judy are two halves of a competent business arrangement.

The matrimonial bliss didn't end there, however. Studio Four couches, hot with connubial curiosities, also hosted Daniel and Majella O'Donnell, flawlessly made up and lovingly coiffured (and Majella looked very nice too). I jest, but you know what I mean. Ryan was in his stride by now, cosying up to the priestly Donegal tenor and his briskly self-possessed bride. Unfortunately, the producers had clearly told Ryan to behave himself, and he was obedient: it was all dull, clean fun, and (don't let your excitement get the better of you) we heard all about the proposal! Didn't Daniel tell Majella to go-away-off and phone her Mammy, for 'twas Christmas Day, and didn't Daniel take the phone off wee Majella and tell Mammy to go-away-off so that he could drop to his saintly knee and propose to her lovely wee daughter. Ahhh.

You can go away off with yourself and speculate up your ratty, snivelling sleeves from here to Ballybanana about what happens in other people's marriages, but it ain't nobody's business, no how.

Anyway, Ryan surely rattled a few cages with his virgin run, one suspects though, in the light of the Beebs Ross/Brand controversy, (with the great British blue-rinse brigade eking out their revenge on the over-confident, over-paid presenter and his over back-combed mate), that Ryan could have lived without Tommy Tiernan's truly vile gag about sexual intercourse, Travellers, and batting away flies.

This is not the first time, and won't be the last, that Tiernan misses the mark with a brand of humour which somehow, I suppose, attempts to call into question our notion of political correctness. It was a crude story yes, and wholly inappropriate. I have a sense though that the comedian's motives are not to polarise communities, but are a blighted, misguided attempt at candour. Our temporary host, grinning through his anxiety struggled to get Tiernan back in his box. Nevertheless, Ryan was a competent and, dare I say it, lively host, and it could be that his penchant for a little bit of anarchy is what this struggling forum needs.

EAMONN HOLMES IS ONE of those UTV light-entertainment faces who, over the years of the Troubles, was endlessly required to throw themselves, grinning, into an approaching camera and squeeze the happy human interest story out of the morass of dreary offerings from windswept Ulster. UTV's anchors took a battering over those years, newscaster after newscaster looking drained, weathermen drowning in their predictions of more bleak rain, and presenters tripping over the rictus of their weary grins.

Initially, Holmes seemed like a banal choice to present The Troubles I've Seen, a documentary in which various Northern Irish celebrities reflected on what it was like to live through those years of conflict. Early in this intelligent documentary, however, the hackneyed cobwebs of Mr Nice were swept away as Holmes conducted measured, often moving, interviews with his contributors. There is a significant body of opinion in Northern Ireland, Holmes explained, who see little value in raking over the polarised past, but it does not include his roster of interviewees, among them Jimmy Nesbitt, Patrick Kielty and Charlie Lawson.

Lawson, possibly the most starkly original speaker, who was a loyalist paramilitary supporter in his teens, was visibly panicked, even now, to drive with Holmes down the Falls Road. "I don't belong here," he said. "I'm sorry if that's depressing. I'm just being honest." All the stories were dramatic, and the telling of them modest. Kielty spoke of the murder, 20 years ago, of his father, gunned down in his office purely for sectarian motives. Nesbitt described how he and his sister, tots both, fell asleep in the back of their father's car, which was parked outside the courthouse, and how they narrowly escaped death when the car next to theirs exploded. And Barry McGuigan, the man who came as close as anyone, for a while, to uniting Ulster, talked of being extended the protection of a group of men from the Shankill when, as a novice (and Catholic) fighter, he fought there in a loyalist working men's club.

There is a veneer in the North now of Starbucks and sushi bars, the programme concluded, but it will take generations before the dark pulse of the Troubles ceases to beat, before a unifying cultural identity can be forged. This was a superb documentary, and what a relief for Holmes not to be grinning away in the parlour while the kitchen is up in flames.

CULTURAL IDENTITY, this time being hijacked by a bunch of smart-ass film-makers, was also the subject of Storyville: When Borat Came to Town, a poignant tale about how the residents of Glod (which translates as "mud"), a dispiriting town in rural Romania, were used in the making of the film Borat.

Glod and its inhabitants became Kazakhstan in the movie, and it was Glod's depressed donkeys, automobile carcasses and illiterate old ladies that made all us well-fed, well-educated Europeans howl with laughter in its opening section. It was Glod's residents who were paid three or four euro apiece to stand around in their ugly jumpers and have Sasha Baron Cohen describe them as abortionists and zoophiliacs (that's less per cameo than the inflated cost of your popcorn). And it was the people of Glod who were further manipulated by a bunch of opportunistic lawyers, who decided that the villagers should take Borat'smakers to court, win back some of the box office and clean up their home place.

"We could have a playground, we could have a computer centre, we could have a beautiful village," cried Ionela, a young Glodite, whose father, a self-styled leader of the community, would later suffer a heart attack and take to his bed after being dragged around London by the now disinterested lawyers, only to return home with empty pockets to face the suspicion of his fellow villagers.

There was an uncomfortable voyeurism in once again watching the Glodites negotiate with the rest of this manipulative old world, but at least this time the film crew brought a translator and the villagers were given a chance of redress. I really wonder, though, how the translator got his or her bilingual tongue around the response from the makers of Borat. Apparently, the film was "a message of tolerance through satire". Yeah? And that donkey over there pulling the car with Sasha Baron Cohen in it has a turbo-charged engine in its . . .

Lastly, Andrew Davies's 14-part adaptation of Little Dorrit has made its nest on the BBC1 schedules for the remainder of the pre-Christmas season: Claire Foy in a bonnet, Tom Courtney in his element, faultless storytelling, and a selection box of starry turns from the casting files. I know it's not fashionable to like Auntie's costume dramas, but what the Dickens.

tvreview@irish-times.ie