PHILIP NOLAN’S TV REVIEW
Ireland’s Got Talent Virgin Media One, Saturday Inside Europe: Ten Years Of Turmoil: BBC2, Monday RTÉ News RTÉ One, nightly Danny Dyer’s Right Royal F amily BBC1, Wednesday
YOU might think that after The AllIreland Talent Show, The Voice Of Ireland, the frequent trawls here by The X Factor, appearances by Irish acts on Britain’s Got Talent and The Greatest Dancer, and last year’s launch series of Ireland’s Got Talent, the well has run completely dry. Up to a point, you would be correct, certainly if all you had to go by was the appearance of Alice and Noel on last night’s IGT second series opener. A husband and wife, they ‘sang’ Video Killed The Radio Star by The Buggles, while forgetting to actually show off their cardboard radio prop. Judge Michelle Visage spoke for the nation by slamming her buzzer to vote them off stage and when Louis Walsh asked why she had done so, she replied simply and accurately: ‘Because I have ears.’
Those two aside, there was talent on display, though nothing that suggested a breakthrough act that could go on to further commercial success. That certainly wasn’t going to happen for Donald Trumpet, an impersonator of the US president who spoke with what sounded like a Kerry accent and, when buzzed off, still insisted on trying to hand out Make America Great Again baseball caps to the judges before being escorted away. Thanks to Robert Mueller, life might imitate art soon. Hopefully.
There’s something pleasantly warming about IGT at this time of year. The judges are not mean, and even though Denise Van Outen is tough, she’s not cruel, while Jason Byrne is so softhearted, you get the feeling he’d let a rat gnaw on his big toe to save it from drowning.
It also is, as all these shows are, shamelessly manipulative, but for once I really didn’t care. The Sea Of Change choir was comprised of women who either have had cancer, are being treated for it, or have lost loved ones to the disease. As their spokeswoman said to much laughter: ‘Out of a possible 90, we have seventy-nine-and-a-half boobs between us, so if we dance lopsided, bear with us.’
They met while taking part in the world’s biggest skinny dip for charity, and arrived on stage to sing This Is Me from The Greatest Showman. It’s a manipulative piece of work all on its own, and has been adopted as an anthem of defiance by all sorts of marginalised groups, but still is undeniably powerful. As the women sang, a handful strode to the front and stripped down to their bras and pants, showing off every stretch mark, all the cellulite, and the bits that gravity drags down as we get older. When they turned their backs and whipped off their bras, it sent a powerful message of positivity, a two-fingered rebuke to those who think only perfect specimens should put it all on show.
I probably was more engaged than most. My own mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at 49, and had a mastectomy. Reconstruction wasn’t available then, and while she surely felt the loss of a breast, she never showed it. I asked her once, and she simply said: ‘I’m just glad to be alive.’
And alive she was, and very much so, for another 30 years, with no recurrence of the disease. In every woman on that stage, I saw something of her spirit, a refusal to be beaten and, yes, a stubborn disregard for the way women are judged
for their bodies and not for themselves. It doesn’t happen often, but when they finished, I leapt from the chair and applauded. Louis Walsh said he thought they would win the entire series. If that happened, I would be delighted, but first and foremost I wish them nothing more than the same happy outcome enjoyed by my mother.
Happy outcomes look far less likely when it comes to Brexit, which continues to maintain a stranglehold on the news. BBC2’s Inside Europe:
Ten Years Of Turmoil forensically dissected the events that led to the catastrophic 2016 referendum in the UK. European leaders, especially former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, could barely contain their contempt for David Cameron and what Donald Tusk called ‘this stupid referendum’.
The main take was that Cameron sacrificed his country to prevent a split in his party. It usually takes a generation or two for history to repeat itself, but Theresa May seems hell bent on getting that timeframe down to just two years.
At home, the RTÉ News came in a revamped guise, as Montrose unveiled its new €1.4million studio. It freed Catriona Perry and Keelin Shanley to stand up a bit more, though the immediate effect came when eagle-eyed viewers twigged Ms Perry had some news of her own and a baby was on the way.
The theme music has been modified, though I wish it had been changed – it drives my dog absolutely crackers. There were new titles too, but the news, sadly, was as depressing as ever all week, what with Brexit, the nurses’ strike and budget overruns at a children’s hospital that looks likely to cost more than the bank bailout.
All that said, if whoever gets that high-gloss sheen on the polished floor wants to do a nixer, please private message me on Twitter.
Finally, the second and concluding episode of Danny Dyer’s Right
Royal Family on BBC1 cracked me up again, as the EastEnders star tried on codpieces, learned how to dance gentle minuets, and found out about the rather ghastly way one of his forebears was killed.
There has been much criticism of the jokey style of the programme, but it was never meant as straightforward history, just a light-hearted romp through the centuries conducted by a man with no filter and a rather refreshing fondness for the F-word. Historians might be able to tell you a suit of armour weighed 100kg, but none surely could match Dyer’s perfectly understandable description: ‘It’s like wearing another man – whatever that feels like.’