Mattress Mick dispels social media backlash
Virgin Media One, Wednesday
RTÉ Investigates: Ireland’s Illegal Adoptions Wednesday The 78th Annual Golden Globe Awards RTÉ2, Monday Other Voices RTÉ One, Thursday Bloodlands BBC1, Sunday
When independent production company Animo.tv went fishing for candidates to appear on Eating With The Enemy, there was an immediate backlash on social media. This was hugely ironic, because the entire premise of the new Virgin Media One show is that people who wouldn’t ordinarily have any reason to meet instead would sit face to face and enjoy a more nuanced conversation about their beliefs and why they hold them, rather than attempting to do so in 280-character tweets.
Without asking how this would be staged and filmed, there was an outbreak of hysteria about the show even before anyone had seen it, which rather underlined the point; in our modern world, condemning before attempting to engage or to understand is par for the course. As it turns out, Eating With The Enemy proved provocative more for the title than for the content – what can be said from a computer or smartphone with no consequence is perhaps harder to utter in person.
My biggest criticism of the programme is that it is presented in much the same style as First Dates, with several conversations intercut, offering bite-sized snippets of the first, main and dessert courses of the chats themselves – I would much prefer to see an entire exchange gently unfold.
There were some fascinating chats to kick off the series, including the one I wrote about in this newspaper last week, between law lecturer Bashir Otukoyo, whose parents are Nigerian, and Luke O’Connor, a member of the Irish Freedom Party. The most heart-warming was between drag queen Bonnie Ann Clyde and Catholic priest Fr Joe McDonald, who actually found one thing they had in common was that people judged them by their appearance alone, and formed preconceived ideas as to how they thought and who they were.
There was one awkward conversation, between feminist Bekah
Molony and beauty pageant judge Michael Byrne, a man with a great welcome for himself who seemed to think he was God’s gift to women. He had so many tattoos, they blended in with the pattern on his shirt to the extent that even though he had left far too many buttons undone, he still looked like he was wearing a turtleneck sweater.
My favourite chat of all, though, was between Mattress Mick and libertarian Adam Keane, who argued for small government and advocated for the provision of healthcare, housing and education solely by private companies. I’ve seen Mick interviewed before and thought him a harmless bit of craic, but here he revealed a much deeper side to his personality, delivering a thoughtful defence of the role of the State in providing for all its citizens, thus undermining my own preconception of him. While he never in any way was my ‘enemy’,
I left the programme with newfound respect for him. And, that, surely, is all that Eating With The Enemy tried to do.
At the same time, on RTÉ One,
people who were illegally adopted were telling their stories on Prime Time Investigates, and it was heartbreaking. Astonishingly, one woman, Mary Dolan, was told by the child protection agency Tusla that she had a brother living in the United States. They made contact and were delighted, only to later take DNA tests that established they were not related at all. The incorrect information simply added another tier to their suffering.
Brian Webster, a 60-year-old man raised in New York by American parents and now living in Tipperary, found out only last year that he was adopted, and illegally so too. He originally was called Philip Joseph, and also was three weeks older than the date on his birth certificate, a familiar ploy in illegal adoptions to thwart any attempt by birth mothers to track their children. It was a quietly devastating inquiry by Aoife Hegarty, and another sorry addition to the litany of abuse that has shamed our country and the institutions that acquiesced with criminality.
The Golden Globes on Monday night on RTÉ2 were further proof that of all the shows that have had to adapt to remote presentation on Zoom or other video chat platforms, awards shows are those least suited to the format. Even Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, ostensibly presenting side by side but in truth on opposite coasts of the US, couldn’t save the day, given that the whole point of the Globes especially is to see stars’ reactions when they are being ribbed from the stages. There was, however, one bright moment, when newcomer Emma Corrin won a Globe for her performance as the late Princess Diana in The Crown. She honestly looked as happy as a kid who had just won first prize in a school contest, and her enthusiasm briefly injected life into a very dull affair.
Other Voices returned this week, with genuinely thrilling performances from Pillow Queens, Niamh Regan and the incomparable Hozier. I have no idea why RTÉ schedules this for 11.15 on a Thursday, especially since the preceding slot was occupied by a repeat of an episode of The Young Offenders. With live music cancelled for a year now, surely the recorded stuff deserves to be a little more front and centre on television?
Finally, I can’t let the ending of last Sunday’s Bloodlands pass without comment. Everything we learned in the first two instalments was turned on its head in one of the most jaw-dropping moments of any drama of the last decade. It takes a lot to make me gasp aloud but gasp I did. I have no idea where it goes from here, but I’m totally hooked.