Craving the day we can be normal people again
V Day RTÉ One, Wednesday
Dermot Bannon’s Super Small Spaces
RTÉ One, Sunday
The BAFTA Television Awards BBC1, Sunday
Who will ever forget Liam and Maureen Finlay? Eleven years ago, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and when it became impossible for Liam to continue to mind his wife at their home, in 2013, she went to live in a nursing home. Mostly non-verbal, Maureen still responds to him when he sings and makes dance moves in front of her – by swivelling her shoulders along in time.
The pandemic meant Liam could not visit in person for over a year, but once the two of them had been vaccinated, in-person visits resumed. When Liam walked into Maureen’s room at the home and started to dance, she started to dance too, a big smile breaking out on her face. I was going to say ‘I don’t know about you’, but I suspect I do. Like me, I’m sure, you ended up in a puddle of happy tears.
Theirs was the most joyous story on V Day, Ross Bartley’s timely and heartwarming documentary on the rollout of the vaccination programme. Logistically, it has been one of the biggest operations ever mounted in this country, with vaccination centres popping up in sports stadiums, racecourses, exhibition centres, anywhere big enough to facilitate the administration of thousands of doses a day.
We saw the army run the centres like military manoeuvres, the Air Corps delivering phials by helicopter to remote islands, drivers traversing the country with supplies, warehouse staff working to deadlines involving mere seconds to make sure the vaccines were kept at minus-70-degree temperatures and, above all, the doctors and nurses getting those needles into arms.
There have been many cock-ups at the top, but no doubting the dedication of all these brilliant people at the coalface, most of them as happy to be doing positive work for the good of the nation as those attending were to be vaccinated. As one nurse said: ‘It’s great – no one is sick.’
In a feelgood programme, and one that was all the better for maintaining that singular focus, there was no room for the flipside of the rollout, but there are blanks to be filled in. Like many others of a certain age or underlying vulnerability, and frontline healthcare workers, I got AstraZeneca back in early April via my diabetes clinic.
That same week, the blood clot issue arose, and the gap between the first and second doses was pushed out from 12 to 16 weeks.
From tomorrow, given the relatively poor protection offered by a single dose against the Delta variant, the gap will be shortened to eight weeks.
Also tomorrow though, it will be 10 weeks since I had my first shot, with no word of when I can expect the next. There has been no vaccine bonus, because I have done nothing I couldn’t have done anyway just by waiting for my turn based on age – and if I had done so, I now would be fully immunised either by being double Pfizered or
single Janssened.
So I imagine that, just like me, the forgotten cohort who got the yellow pack vaccine, the people in their sixties, or with medical vulnerabilities, and even frontline workers, watched in delight for those now immunised, but also maybe just a little bit jealously too.
There was more uplifting content in Dermot Bannon’s Super Small Spaces, the main focus of which was on the McCarthy siblings in Co. Cork. Tragically, their father took his own life last year, and to busy themselves, siblings Thomas, Anna and Rachel bought a doubledecker bus for €2,500 and set about turning it into quirky accommodation to be located on the family farm. Working on it gave them a shared sense of purpose and brought them closer together, and for once, they even took Dermot Bannon’s advice, and changed their original plans on foot of his clever suggestions.
There’s something very soothing about seeing Dermot back on Sunday night television, the slot in which he usually attracts massive
viewing figures on the temporarily paused Room To Improve. In its own way, his return was as much a sign as mass vaccination of a return to something resembling normality, and that’s something we all can cheer.
After months of virtual awards ceremonies, it also was nice to see a live audience at the BAFTA Television Awards, even if they were so spread out in a small theatre, it looked like one of those cheap afternoon matinées at your local multiplex.
The deeply smug and unfunny Richard Ayoade hosted, and most of his jokes fell with a resounding thud, though I’m not sure an audience of a couple of thousand in the usual Albert Hall venue would have made a huge amount of difference.
I was disappointed Daisy EdgarJones didn’t win for Normal People – I’m not sure the judges realised just how phenomenal her accent was, maybe the best ever Irish accent delivered by an English actress, Minnie Driver notwithstanding in Circle Of Friends.
But I was genuinely delighted for her co-star, Paul Mescal, whose performance was a terrific mix of fake machismo overlaid on a core vulnerability. He seems like a really decent young fella as well, and his award was richly deserved. That said, I still look forward to a day when these ceremonies return to their full, excessive original formats.
We’ve all had enough of paredback lives filled with virtual experiences on Zoom.
The full vaccine bonus can’t come quickly enough – if I ever get a second-dose appointment.