TOP CLASS TELEVISION
After one episode, this is the most compelling documentary on RTÉ in years
Great Lighthouses Of Ireland RTÉ One, Sunday Have I Got News For You BBC One, Friday T he Cry BBC One, Sunday
As feats of engineering go, the Fastnet lighthouse is one of the most astonishing in this part of the world. Built on a rock in the Atlantic, 13km from the mainland of Co. Cork, it was constructed between 1897 and 1904, it took 2,047 Cornish granite blocks to build it to a height of 45 metres – that’s 148ft in old money.
That makes it incredible sturdy and, boy, does it need to be. In the opening episode of RTÉ’s lavishly filmed Great Lighthouses Of
Ireland (cameraman Billy Keady, take a bow), we saw with our own eyes how waves smashed against it almost to the height of the light itself; indeed, last year during Storm Ophelia, the record wind gust ever in Ireland, 191kph, was logged there.
I don’t know about you, but if I was in the Fastnet lighthouse during a storm, I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep and would live in absolute terror it was about to be washed away any second; in some of the footage, it looked like a paper straw in a Jacuzzi. It is a testament, then, to the courage and dedication of all who work in Irish Lights that Fastnet and other lighthouses – most of which now are automated – for most of their working lives were inhabited by men and women who daily faced the ravages of wind and wave.
Great Lighthouses is, after one episode, the most compelling documentary on RTÉ in years, detailing not just the solemn duty of those who keep the lights lit, but also the loneliness and isolation that went with the three-month postings to lighthouses off the coast. One keeper told of how days were spent painting the outside of the lighthouse and by reading, but admitted that the seclusion wasn’t for everyone, and some left the service because of it.
A nun whose father manned a lighthouse within sight of the shore told how he couldn’t leave it to attend her First Communion, so she was made stand on a high road in her frock while he looked at her through a telescope from afar.
Wonderful as all this was, there were a few problems with the programme. The narration by Jim Norton was too portentous, and clearly written as much for an overseas audience as it was for those of us here – we really didn’t need to be reminded every five minutes that we live on an island.
The other problem was that it zoomed around the country telling stories of multiple lighthouses, and captions on screen for each would have been hugely helpful. There was no mistaking the one on the Skelligs, but others came and went without useful identification, and I ended up trawling the internet to find out that one particularly attractive example was in Blacksod in Co. Mayo.
It also suffered from the David Attenborough effect, which is to say that Hans Zimmer-style music often threatened to dominate in spaces where the sound of the ocean, calm on its good days and furious on the bad, would have been enough of a soundtrack all on its own. If Fastnet has been around for well over a century, it feels like
Have I Got News has been around just as long. In fact, it struck me with some force as the 56th series began on Friday that, with two series a year, it has been on our screen for 28 years, which is a little over half my life.
Team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton still are in the chairs, and on Friday were joined by my favourite guest presenter, Alexander Armstrong, and team members Josh Widdicombe and Naga Munchetty (stung by criticism in the early years of the show that it was too male, the BBC now ensures at least one woman appears every week on all its panel shows). In its almost three decades,
HIGNFY has become as middleaged as its panel, a flabby, beer-bellied reflection of its glory days. Perhaps it says a lot about the dullness of today’s politicians, but the barbs are less barbed than before, and Merton in particular looks like a man phoning it in rather than actually caring a jot about what he’s there for.
It does, however, do one thing right. On social media, I saw half the audience say it betrayed BBC bias against the Tories, and the other half say it was viciously antiLabour and Jeremy Corbyn in particular. It might not be on the same volcanic scale as before, but when you’re annoying all of the people all of the time, you’re still doing at least something right – and I’ll treasure Widdicombe’s line about Theresa May’s dancing at this week’s Tory party conference. She indeed did look like she was moving a fridge. Filling the slot left vacant by Bodyguard, the BBC drama that became the biggest watercooler event of the decade to date, always was going to be difficult, but The
Cry got off to a cracking start. Superficially a drama about a dad and his new wife travelling to Australia to seek custody of his 14year-old daughter from a previous marriage, it turned very dark indeed when their own infant son, Noah, was abducted. Jenna Coleman, who plays the queen in ITV’s
Victoria, was superb, delivering a hugely affecting portrayal of the confusion of a new mum adjusting to motherhood, leaving the path open to all sorts of intrigue. We already know she’s on trial, but we don’t yet know why.
The most terrifying thing of all, though, was that they took the baby on the 30-hour flight to Australia. Having sat behind one that cried all the way from Toulouse to Dublin, 10 days ago, I can assure you that had I been on Jenna’s flight, Noah would have been abducted long before the plane even landed.
The Cry Aiming to fill the slot left by Bodyguard this got off to a cracking start