A diverting encounter with Anne’s racier side

Keys To My Life RTÉ One, Sunday The Real Michael Jackson BBC2, Monday Putin: A Russian Spy Story Channel 4, Monday The Nest BBC1, Sunday

Maybe I misunderstood what Keys To My Life was all about, but from the promos that have been running for a couple of weeks now, I thought it literally was bringing celebrities back to their childhood family homes and having a good old root around. I know that when we left a flat in Dún Laoghaire to move to a council house in Ballybrack, my brother and I secretly wrote little notes and wedged them behind the sash windows, and while it’s unlikely they’re still there (it’s 49 years ago!), I’ve always wanted to revisit just to check.

That wasn’t what we got. They kicked the series off with Anne Doyle, which probably seemed like a good move, because everyone loves Anne Doyle – but the problem was that her family home no longer exists. And, as it happens, the scope of the programme is much broader, so we saw her and host Brendan Courtney drive a vintage Simca (Anne’s sister had one) to revisit her old school in Ferns (where one of the teachers popped by to snitch on her), and the bedsit she shared when she moved to Dublin.

A theme soon emerged. Anne had a gamey eye, it seemed, and so we learned about her old boyfriends, and how she would run to the train station during school lunchbreak to pick up love letters from a lad in Dublin. Once again, we were treated to the clip of her kissing Brendan O’Connor in a full-on lip lock that apparently got her into trouble with the mandarins in RTÉ. Throughout all these tales, she stayed playful and coquettish, and hinted that there is an even racier Anne when the cameras are turned off, but it all became a little too much.

The only serious interlude was the death of her mother at just 62, when Anne was on holiday in Spain in the time before mobile phones. How she was tracked down and had the news broken was a sad story but a welcome break from a sort of Jackie magazine photo love story. Hopefully, the remaining episodes (it’s Johnny Logan tonight) will focus more on the houses, and maybe someone might even find a hidden note they once wrote to themselves.

If there was a frustrating lack of anything meaty in Anne Doyle’s story, there was even less in

Real Michael Jackson, the fourth documentary Jacques Peretti has made about the tarnished late star. It seemed to exist for no purpose at all, simply rehashing everything we already know about Jackson’s own mentally abusive childhood, the Peter Pan analogy, the rise to superstardom and, of course, the child sexual abuse allegations that, though never proved in court, still have the weight of truth on their side.

Compared with last year’s Finding Neverland and its compelling testimony of abuse victims Jimmy Safechuck and Wade Robson, Peretti’s film had nothing new to offer.

When Jackson was on trial for the alleged abuse of another boy, Gavin Arviso, Robson gave evidence that he himself had never been abused, and his testimony, and that of Jackson’s superstar friends, led to acquittal.

You could tell that one of the prosecutors, Ron Zonen, still was sad he

Putin: Spy Story Putin doesn’t mind having enemies, but he loathes traitors had not secured a conviction, but he bore no ill will towards Wade Robson. Proving that even in the middle of that circus, there still was room for principle and decency, he simply concluded that victims of child sexual abuse have to tell their stories at their own speed, and not at his. It was a heartbreaking line, and one that of itself almost made the programme worthwhile. Much better was Channel 4’s ongoing Putin: A Russian Spy Story, the second episode of which dealt with the accident in 2000 that left a nuclear submarine, the Kursk, on the seabed, leading to the loss of 118 lives. Putin rejected offers of international help, and later told lies about when those offers were made, and he remained on holiday for 10 days, claiming he didn’t know how serious the situation really was. When TV presenter Sergey Dorenko, Russia’s Vincent Browne of the day as it were, called out Putin’s lies one by one on television, he promptly was fired, and Putin took control of the entire channel. He also took against its owner, his former friend and political ally, Boris Berezovsky, who ultimately was granted political asylum in the UK. The programme explained how Putin does not mind having enemies, but reserves a deep loathing for those he sees as traitors. Former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium in 2006, and Sergei Skripal and his daughter were targeted in Salisbury with Novichok in 2018. As for Berezovsky, he was found hanging in his home in Ascot in the UK in 2013. The coroner returned an open verdict, though I suspect the Channel 4 audience had a stronger view. Finally, I don’t often review the same programme here two weeks in a row, but BBC1’s The Nest, which started well, ratcheted into a whole new gear last Sunday, when we learned that teenager Kaya, acting as a surrogate for Dan and Emily, a wealthy couple unable to have children, murdered a pregnant woman and was imprisoned at just 11. An investigative journalist also from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, has recognised her. She also is investigating Dan’s murky business dealings and probing the link between him and a body found in the Clyde. It is absolutely riveting and, as is the case with all the best thrillers, I have absolutely no idea where it goes next. The third episode airs tonight and it all wraps up with a two-hour finale on Easter Sunday. Honestly, it is unmissable.

Keys To My Life There was a frustrating lack of anyhting meaty in Anne Doyle’s story

Real Michael Jackson A rehash of everything we already know