I was faithful to the end of this spectacular show
The Traitors
BBC1, Wednesday-Friday
The Late Late Show National Song Contest Special
RTÉ One, Friday Masters of the Air
Apple TV+, streaming
Jackie & Coco
RTÉ One, Monday
Last One Laughing
Prime Video, streaming
What a finale! For three weeks now, The Traitors has had me in an iron grip, as I hoped in vain – spoiler alert coming – that Harry would be found out and that Faithful Jaz would triumph. In the end, it was so close. With just Traitor Harry and Faithfuls Jaz and Mollie left at the round table, she wrote down Harry’s name, then changed it to Jaz, handing Harry victory on a plate.
Poor Mollie was naive and maybe even a little infatuated with Harry and it clouded her judgement at every turn, a salutary lesson in how easily our trust can be misplaced.
As a social experiment, it was fascinating. In the early days, charismatic Paul was everyone’s favourite in the castle, despite being the most nefarious of all the Traitors and he would have been there at the end if his fellow Traitors hadn’t turned on him. Indeed, every Traitor was voted out only because the others understood the herd mentality so brilliantly and slyly coaxed them around to their way of thinking.
Faithfuls who expressed doubts about these popular people were despatched because the passion with which they expressed their opinions was seen as defensive rather than forensic.
None of this would have been half as compelling had the show itself not been so brilliantly assembled. Independent production company Studio Lambert made it for the BBC and every scene bore the genuine hallmark of genius.
Diane’s ‘funeral’, watched by her own son Ross (unknown to all the others), was the campest thing since Christmas, his knowing wink to camera in the car afterwards was spectacular.
Holding it all together was host Claudia Winkleman, whose goth-lite look is totally in keeping with the mood of the show. Fair play to Harry though – for a 22-yearold (at the time of filming), his understanding of human nature was incredibly sophisticated and his powers of manipulation peerless. The boy will go far.
I’m not sure the same can be said of Bambie Thug and their song Doomsday Blue, which was chosen as Ireland’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö in Sweden in May. I get the fact that it’s time to shake things up and Bambie definitely was the stand-out act of the night among a lacklustre field, but their brand of ‘Ouija punk’ still felt oddly dated. Tellingly, the international jury on Friday night’s Late Late Show Eurosong special didn’t rate it highly and they are representative of the voters who once again will decide our fate. Eurovision is not just about the performance in the semi-final and final. Every other country mounts serious PR campaigns in the preceding months and many of the songs become hits long before the night itself. Bambie Thug is a visual artist but, in the absence of that element, the song itself is not radio-friendly. Depending on the draw, Ireland might just escape the semi-final, but I equally would be less than surprised if we once again fell at the first hurdle.
Streaming service Apple TV+ launched Masters of the Air, an expensive new series from the same creative team, including Steven Spielberg, that brought us Band Of Brothers and The Pacific, which focused respectively on the US Army in Europe and the US Marines in the Far East during the Second World War.
This time, we are with the Bloody 100th, a unit of the US Air Force flying B-17 Flying Fortress bombing raids on Nazi Germany in 1943. Our own Barry Keoghan stars as Lt Curtis Biddick, co-piloting one of the aircraft with Major Gale Claven (Austin Butler).
In the first episode, there were horrendous casualties over Bremen as a raid on Uboat pens had to be aborted so the human drama is what made it compelling, notably the visceral fear of those under fire.
Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, who also made the most recent Bond film, it is dazzlingly accomplished television, clearly made on a massive budget thanks to Apple’s deep pockets, but emotional engagement might take a little while longer. For now, it is a drama to be admired rather than loved.
I did love Jackie Fox, the focus of a lovely RTÉ One documentary Jackie & Coco. Coco was Nicole, Jackie’s daughter, who tragically took her own life after being subjected to online harassment and bullying. Jackie’s campaign to made such behaviour illegal led to the passing of what became known here as Coco’s Law and the cameras followed her efforts to encourage the EU to make the same law apply all across the union. Her passion and spirit were admirable, but at the end of it, you were acutely aware that all she really wanted was to have her beloved daughter back and my heart broke for her.
I finally got round to watching Prime’s Irish version of its international format, Last One Laughing, which locks 10 comedians in a room and eliminates them one by one when they laugh, a pointless exercise that even host Graham Norton can’t cheer up.
Aisling Bea was the first to break and was given a yellow card. There were no such worries in my house, because it turned out it was me who was the last one laughing. I never even managed a smirk.