What on earth made us lose our originality?
Eurovision Song Contest RTÉ2, Tuesday/Thursday
Back To Barrytown RTÉ One, Sunday
Mare Of Easttown Sky Atlantic, Monday
Well, there we went again. On Tuesday, hopes in certain quarters were high that Lesley Roy and her songs Maps would take us to the final of Eurovision last night, for the first time since Ryan O’Shaughnessy qualified in 2018, and only the second time since 2013. To be honest, I never shared their optimism, because the song was too generic to stand out.
Ireland’s recent history in Eurovision is a bit like someone who buys stilettoes the year everyone else has switched to wedges. We seem to look at the countries that did well the previous year and copy them, only to be pipped at the post by someone doing something fresh and new. There was a time we could be original and it paid off, not least in the Nineties, when two men in middle age sang a song about their rock’n’roll childhoods, and Eimear Quinn went the full ethereal Celtic queen and played into the Riverdance vibe established two years earlier.
The low point came when we sent Dustin the Turkey. It was a joke we all got but we could not reasonably have expected anyone else to share it, and it backfired spectacularly. It also underlined one of our key problems – we’ve forgotten how to stage a song well. Lesley Roy’s gimmick was to be filmed through frames with all sorts of stuff going on but the problem was she had a lot of running to do, and the casualty was the singing. She sounded out of breath half the time, and for the rest of it like a woman on the karaoke stage at a hen party. Everyone else either went spectacularly big, like trio Hurricane and their song Loco Loco, or kept it tight and intimate like Victoria from Bulgaria (by the time you read this, she might have won the whole thing).
As always, we fell between two stools, ending up being neither one thing nor the other, and it’s time to change the whole mindset if we ever want to win again. So I have a thought. Young Michael Moloney captured the heart of the nation on The Late Late Toy Show last year when he was surprised by Dermot Kennedy and duetted on Giants. On Friday, he released the single All That I Do, a tribute to his father, who died four years ago, and sang it on the Late Late on Friday night. It’s a lovely song, one he wrote himself, and at 14 years of age, he clearly has talent to burn. He’ll be too young next year (contestants must be at least 16 on the day of the final), but let’s tee him up for 2023. Nurture his talent, help him record a few more songs, get him as much experience of playing live, and let’s take the trophy home for the first time in 27 years.
That bit out of the way, Eurovision in general was a bit of a mess. Too much virtual imagery is being overlaid on live pictures, the forced scripts are getting ever worse, and the sheer ridiculousness of having four presenters was farcical. A great big splashy show probably was vital this year – we’ve all been cooped up long enough – but the world will accommodate plenty of post-pandemic adjustments. Toning down the extravagance and making this a song contest again should be high on the list.
Talking of rock’n’roll kids, there was a lot of nostalgia in Back To Barrytown, the first episode of which looked back on Alan Parker’s film version of Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments. Many of the key players shared their stories about the first international movie that showed Dubliners for who we are, a bit sweary (well, okay, a lot sweary), overly sentimental and always looking for a break. It was fascinating to learn of some of the tensions on set, notably between Parker and Dave Finnegan, who played Mickah Wallace, and Glen Hansard, who played Outspan.
Tonight’s programme looks back at The Snapper, but I won’t be watching. Given everything we now agree on about consent, I detest that movie for the way it pivots entirely on a teenage girl too drunk to give consent. To add insult to injury, the film then basically is all about her father and how he takes an interest in her pregnancy in a way he never did in his wife’s. I know it’s high on many people’s lists as one of the best Irish movies, but I honestly can’t stomach it.
Finally back to Mare Of Easttown, which is approaching its final episodes. If you haven’t seen the first five, I strongly urge you to catch up now, but also caution you to stop reading, because there’s a spoiler on the way.
There is an extraordinary bravery to this show in the way it has taken what ostensibly is a crime drama and made it a compelling study of small-town infidelity and betrayal. Every character is brilliantly drawn and acted, not least Mare herself, with Kate Winslet at her career best.
On Monday, we were led to believe that she and fellow detective Colin Zabel might find happiness together, and then writer Brad Ingelsby did the unthinkable. He had Zabel killed. In the scene that preceded it, when two kidnapped girls were banging on pipes to let them know they were in a deserted bar, the tension was so extraordinary I barely could breathe. It is a towering achievement in TV, even in this Golden Age, and it’s hard to see how anything else can top it.