I was tempted to throw a shoe through the telly
He’s watching what you’re watching!
Stephen: The Murder That Changed A Nation BBC1, Tues/ Wed/ Thur Healthy Appetite RTÉ1, Wed At Your Service RTÉ1, Sunday Britain’s Got Talent TV3/UTV, Sat
THE murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in Eltham, southeast London, in 1993, might have been another footnote to history had it not been for two extraordinary people – his parents, Doreen and Neville. Doreen especially was a fighter, a woman who never gave up the fight to see justice for her son. In that aim, she was thwarted at every turn, most especially by the London Metropolitan Police, which later stood in the dock itself, found guilty of institutionalised racism.
Many of us are old enough to remember all the twists and the turns of the case – the failure of the police to arrest the five men accused in multiple anonymous tip-offs of being the killers; the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service (their DPP) not to proceed; the private prosecution that failed; the seismic Macpherson Report into how the case was handled; the brave decision of our sister newspaper, the Daily Mail, to accuse the five, on the front page, of being murderers; and, ultimately, thanks to new forensic tools available, the successful conviction of two of them, Gary Dobson and David Norris.
Even forearmed with all the facts, nothing prepared me for the emotional wallop of Stephen: The Murder That Changed A Nation, a spine-tingling, three-hour documentary spread over three nights that told the entire story chronologically and turned into what might yet prove the year’s most compelling drama.
I cried many times throughout. Tears of sadness for Stephen’s parents, whose grief seems as raw as ever, and who lost their marriage in the abyss of pain into which they found themselves plunged.
Tears of rage at the attitude, even today, of the police who investigated the case. One odious former detective claimed Doreen was manipulated by a left-wing cadre seeking to discredit the Met, and that her refusal ever to smile in public was ‘her gimmick’. I all but threw a shoe through the television.
Tears of relief when a proper cop, a salt-of-the-earth Londoner called Clive Driscoll, went through the evidence a second time and found the glaring holes his predecessors had missed, leading to the convictions of Dobson and Norris.
And tears of admiration and respect when reminded of the roar that went up in the stadium when Doreen Lawrence, now a Labour life peer, was announced on the PA as one of the eight people carrying the Olympic flag during the opening ceremony of London 2012.
In straight-to-camera interviews, she held it all together until the very end, when she broke and sobbed, and while that reminded me the past still is close and palpable, so too is the resurgence of the sort of racism that killed her son. We must be ever vigilant, and ready to spot the signs of what lies beneath the surface.
RTÉ One has assumed such a puritanical attitude to food, it should call itself the Táblaban. This week, in the footsteps of What Are You Eating? and What Ireland Eats we got
Healthy Appetite, a new show in which celebrity chefs are asked to look at their signature dishes and see if they can recreate them with less fat and sugar. Fine dining is a rare treat for most of us, so there seemed little merit in showing us how to reduce the calories in a chicken liver brûlée with blue cheese ice cream. At least Operation Transformation shows us real-world ways to cut down on foods that are bad for us. Trying to make us feel guilty for splurging on special occasions quite frankly is ridiculous.
Much more reliable were Francis and John Brennan, once again dishing out no-nonsense advice in Kiersey’s, a bar/café/guesthouse in Kilmacthomas on the Waterford Greenway. Francis may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he’s the man you need if you’re trying to sell pots of it, and the fruits of his advice paid dividends on At Your Service. Kiersey’s emerged from the Seventies into millennial bloom, and looked ten times better for it.
Britain’s Got Talent returned last Saturday night, too late for these pages, and never has a show felt more like it’s just going through the motions. There was the usual selection – acts that defied death (and my attention), a very dull magician who somehow got Ant and Dec’s golden buzzer, and a dance ‘crew’ – gotta get down wiv the yoof – who turned out to be trained and choreographed by Diversity’s Ashley Banjo, which seemed an unfair advantage.
The standout star was a singer, 10-year-old prodigy Calum Courtney, who Simon Cowell said had ‘soul’. No he didn’t. Soul comes from experience, and Calum might yet achieve it, but he’s a child.
Calum cried in glorious HD closeup when he was praised, and it was hard not to feel emotionally manipulated. If you really want me to cry while watching TV, just tell me the story of a boy who didn’t make it, a boy left bleeding on the path by a pack of racist savages, and a mother who fought to get justice. That’s what gets me, every time.