RTE’s new dark comedy needs to really let it RIP
Obituary RTÉ 2, Tuesday
The Great British Bake Off Channel 4, Tuesday Grá ar an Trá
Virgin Media One, Monday Grand Designs
Channel 4, Wednesday The Long Shadow UTV, Monday/Virgin Media One, Thursday
Even the most robust defender of RTÉ would find it hard to argue that comedy is a Montrose strength. From Leave it to Mrs O’Brien to Upwardly Mobile, the broadcaster has struggled, and while two of its genuine hits, Killinaskully and Mrs Brown’s Boys, have their fans, it’s safe to say that each in its own way is polarising.
That’s why Obituary is to be welcomed, though it’s a cautious one. The tone here is as dark as anything RTÉ ever has attempted, but the point of black comedy is that it should not just make you smile, but actually belly laugh. It should be so outrageous, bordering on offensive, that it challenges you to look in the mirror and ask yourself what kind of person you really are.
It’s the story of Elvira Clancy, played by the excellent Siobhán Cullen, so good recently as the buttoned, emotionally repressed sister in The Dry (an ITV production, that one, offering further proof that, just like Fr Ted, The Young Offenders and Derry Girls, British companies tend to make the best Irish comedies).
Elvira writes obituaries for the local newspaper, those saccharine profiles of the deceased that make them sound like angels returned to Heaven far too soon. With cutbacks at the paper, she is told she will now be freelance, and there was a genuine guffaw when it emerged she would be paid €200 per piece. The economics of local papers suggest otherwise.
Alas, when it appears all the townsfolk are in rather more robust health than anticipated, Elvira decides to take matters into her own hands and start bumping them off. It’s a fun premise, but it simply wasn’t dark enough. She pushed one older man off a cliff, and killed another by changing his epilepsy medication, which while playing into the narrative that she doesn’t want to get
caught either, lacked the sort of Gothic excess I had hoped for. It’s not The Omen, but a little more creativity wouldn’t go amiss.
That said, on the basis of the first episode, it has potential, and a good supporting cast, not least Ronan Raftery, who made a big impression as the puritanical Dessie Dolan in Moone Boy (another great Irish comedy made by, er, Sky). Hopefully, though, it gets even darker. Elvira promises herself that no one
she personally cares for will be hurt, but given her best friend is dating Raftery’s character when Elvira had set her own sights on him, I’m rather hoping that’s a vow soon broken.
The biggest laugh of the week came from one of the best innuendos ever on a show legendary for them. On The Great British Bake Off on Channel 4, back to bring us comfort through the winter months, the contestants were asked to make a showstopper cake in the shape of animal. When one of the woman sallied forth with her creation, Prue Leith’s request – ‘now, tell me about your beaver’ – sent Paul Hollywood, Noel Fielding, excellent new recruit Alison Hammond, and the rest of the competitors, into hysterics. Not to mention me and millions watching, who suddenly became 13 years old again, sniggering like idiots. Actually, I just laughed again. Maybe some day I’ll grow up.
I expected to hate Virgin Media One’s Grá ar an Trá, imagining it would be like Love Island if you ordered it on Wish. Instead, it turned out to have a certain charm, as five women and five men were paired off, the gimmick being that one in each couple is a Gaeilgeoir who has to help the other brush up on their Gaeilge. In the innuendo department, there were a lot of mentions of the old ‘focal’, even from the rather stern judge of their linguistic proficiency, Gráinne Seoige in full headmistress mode. I did laugh though, at the difference between this and UK shows. On Love Island, the producers usually buy in packets of condoms. Here, it was a bumper pack of Tayto. And, seeing as how they’re staying in a massive house on Woodstown in Co. Waterford, they surely missed a trick – they should have called it Casa Mór.
Grand Designs returned on Channel 4 and we saw young couple Rosa and Craig turn an old reservoir for a steam railway into a truly fantastic home. The only issue was that what they thought would cost £700,000 came to £1.2m. The fourmonth project was marked by the arrival not only of a baby, but also what appeared to be two fantastic sets of veneers. Craig and Rosa weren’t exactly smiling at the end thanks to their massive mortgage, but when they did, I had to slip the sunglasses on.
Much darker was The Long Shadow on UTV and Virgin Media One. I’m old enough to remember the reign of terror of Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, who mostly targeted prostitutes before his sick urge to kill saw him target women in the wider community too. The first episode focused on Emily Jackson, a mother struggling to make ends meet in the early 1970s. With her husband’s agreement, she starts to work the streets to make extra cash to buy her daughter a bridesmaid’s dress, and her first sordid encounter was hard to watch.
Worse, though was the final scene, when she got into a car with a man willing to pay her a fiver for sex. He is unseen, but we knew it was Sutcliffe. As the Ford Corsair slowly drove over the crest of a hill and disappeared, the scene was more menacing than if it had been graphic. Sometimes, you can have too much darkness, not too little.