No new talent anymore, just smoke and mirrors
Britain’s Got Talent Saturday/ Sunday, UTV/Virgin Media One
Super Garden RTÉ One, Tuesday
The21st IFTA Awards Ceremony RTÉ2, Monday
There are moments on television when something is so haunting, you can’t take your eyes off it. One of them came on the opening weekend of
Britain’s Got Talent, when a French-Canadian woman sitting on a stool vocally provided the sound effects for scenes from the natural world that were playing on a big screen behind her.
Effortlessly, she sang a hypnotic chant while also making the sounds of the birds and animals featured, and it was quite extraordinary. As I’m sure it was for the audience of Canada’s Got Talent, because this was not Geneviève Côté’s first time at the rodeo. Last year, she was Howie Mandel’s golden buzzer act on that show, and also one of his team this year on America’s Got Talent: Fantasy League. Oh, and she also appeared on La France À Un Incroyable Talent.
It was a reminder that all these shows have long since departed from the original idea, which was to showcase everyday people’s untapped gifts. Instead, researchers now trawl talent contests all over the world, and YouTube and TikTok clips, and invite people to participate.
Amanda Holden’s golden buzzer went to Sydnie Christmas, who sang a stylised version of Tomorrow from the stage musical Annie. The trouble is that Sydnie has been to stage school, was on a reality TV show on Channel 4 about theatre hopefuls, and even has been in Grease and Starlight Express in the West End. The South African opera singer, Nkululeko Innocent Masuku, who wowed the judges, was presented as an untapped talent practising in his bedsit while his fiancée brought the cash in, but he has performed with the English National Opera at the London Coliseum, and has received sponsorship to help him become a star.
This has been going on for a long time, so it hardly can be classed as deception, but it does leave a sour taste in the mouth when Holden and fellow judges Bruno Tonioli, Simon Cowell and Alesha Dixon rave about a performer they quite possibly have heard of before.
Of the acts who went through, I did enjoy magician Jack Rhodes, unusually so since I’m not a fan of stage magic, but his trick was ingenious, even if I saw it explained online afterwards. Social media is hilarious, with people complaining it wasn’t really magic. Well, of course it wasn’t, sweethearts, because there’s no such thing, but it still is entirely possible to enjoy what more accurately is called an illusion.
All that said, BGT was quick out of the blocks in two entertaining openers, despite the endless returns of a man with the head of a fish who was buzzed off stage. To be honest, he was so bizarre, I concluded it might be time to quit my weekend treat of a homemade cocktail.
Much more grounded entertainment, if you’ll forgive the pun, came on Tuesday, with the return of RTÉ One’s Super Garden. It never ceases to pull at the heartstrings when we hear the stories of the families whose gardens are being made over. This week, parents Keelin and Anthony wanted a space suitable for their autistic son Fury and his siblings Ellie and Jackson, and the contestant drafted in to help was Derry man Gary Hegarty.
Gary also has a son with autism, so he was wellplaced to know what might and might not work. When Fury started playing among tall grasses and appeared transfixed, Gary became emotional, and justifiably so. Some of it may have been due to tiredness, because he took on a lot of work single-handedly, involving many techniques he was picking up from instruction videos on YouTube, but it was very sweet. He battled through to the end and delivered a fine garden, though not one I think will be the winner. Nonetheless, you’d have to wish him well, because he put his heart and soul into it and made a family very happy. My only quibble with Super Garden is that, with ad breaks, there really is only about 22 or 23 minutes’ screen time, when I would happily watch an hour of it to get tips I’ll never use in a garden that probably always will look like the marsh it is.
The Irish Film And Television Academy Awards were shown on RTÉ2 on Monday night, two days after they were handed out, so there was no element of surprise. Nor, indeed, was there much of an element of name recognition. The problem is that the nominations and awards often go to movies we haven’t yet seen. The overall winner of Best Irish Film, That They May Face The Rising Sun, is a case in point, because while it won eight days ago, it opened in cinemas only this Friday. We all have favourites on awards shows, I’m sure, but it’s very hard to root for something you actually haven’t seen.
The award for Best Actor was presented to Cillian Murphy by Lily Gladstone, herself nominated for Best Foreign Actress for Killers Of The Flower Moon, but she lost, as was the case in the Oscars, to Emma Stone. Lily at least got a standing ovation, though she looked as bemused as I was, especially since the entire show, held in a new convention centre in Dublin, looked like it was taking place in a warehouse off the M50.