Why hate 'Panorama'? Where do I start . . .
Panorama BBC1 Stephen Gately and the Boyzone story TV3 hORIZON: dO I DRINK TOO MUCH? BBC2 ADDICTED TO MONEY rte1 Midweek tv3 The apprentice tv3
Once upon a time, Panorama was synonymous with all that was best about the BBC. First aired in the early 1950s, it evolved into an investigative current affairs programme of real seriousness and depth, its revelations setting agendas and sometimes even creating political and social change.
That was then, when the programme was fronted by such eminences as Richard Dimbleby, Robin Day, Charles Wheeler and Robert Kee. Now the frontman is Jeremy Vine, the running time has been chopped to a half-hour and the results are generally pathetic.
Last Monday night's show was as wretched as any I've seen recently. Subtitled Why Hate Ryanair?, it promised "to reveal the true cost of no-frills flying", but it revealed nothing other than its own condescending ineptitude. By the end of it, all any sensible viewer could do was applaud the amused insouciance of Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary, which is hardly what the programme intended.
From the outset, Vine was reduced to parroting out the old cliche about Ryanair as "the airline we love to hate" and gasping at its practice of "doing away with its check-in desks, forcing you to do it online" -- as if that was somehow news.
The programme degenerated even further when supercilious reporter Vivian White took over, informing us that Ryanair was "the pushiest airline in Europe" and that its policy "was not about being loved".
Then came the main "revelations". The quoted ticket price, White harrumphed, "may not be the end of the story", at which point he disclosed, for anyone who's recently been living on Pluto, the airline's dastardly tactics, including the mind-blowing fact that when you're checking in online "you're using your computer, your electricity, your printer paper and your ink" and that if you forget to do that, Ryanair will charge you €40 to print out your boarding card. "For a family of four, that's €160," he said incredulously.
Other gripes included the fact that the seats don't recline, that you have to pay for refreshments ("Nice little earners", White sneered) and that the airports are sometimes a long way from your desired destination.
These may indeed all be irritants, but the fact remains that they're not news -- everyone who flies in Europe (everyone except the Panorama boys) has long known all these things and millions of people each year still opt to fly with Ryanair.
In other words, this was nothing more than a tired hatchet job, a fact evidently recognised by Michael O'Leary who, confronted by White after a Ryanair AGM, blithely told him he could have an interview if it was screened uncut. "But the conversation we're having now..." White spluttered, before O'Leary interrupted with "will be cut to suit the Panorama agenda". White tried to argued the point, but the Ryanair boss used the occasion to hold up promotional brochure, grin at the camera and tell everyone what a caring, compassionate guy he was.
So what was Ryanair's secret, White asked in desperation. "There's no secret," O'Leary laughingly shrugged, "just that 67 million people will fly with us this year, far more than will watch Panorama or indeed the BBC."
Three days after Stephen Gately's death, TV3 rushed out Stephen Gately and the Boyzone Story, though the late singer's name had obviously been hurriedly tacked on to a programme that had been made some time ago and hadn't been intended to commemorate his sad passing. Indeed, he featured no more prominently than the other band members in this hagiographic film, which was most notable for the stream of self-serving cliches manager Louis Walsh was able to conjure up about the band's formation, rise and split. It was left to Hot Press commentator Stuart Clark to inject the only sceptical note into this love-in. "They wanted to renew the friendships?" he inquired rhetorically of the group's recent reunion. "No, they wanted to replenish the bank accounts."
In Horizon: Do I Drink Too Much? (BBC2), addiction expert John Marsden asked himself that question and went in search of answers. The appeal of alcohol, he was told, lay in the fact that it provides the initial calm one gets from tranquillisers, the anti-depressive feelings offered by seratonin, the buzz of dopamene and the high excitement of heroin.
Then he worried if he had a predisposition to drink and was informed that sometimes the cravings were in the genes.
After that he was given a drug that created the same sensations as booze, with the bonus that the sensations could then be promptly reversed with another drug. That didn't work for him, though, and he felt awful for hours afterwards.
At the end he asked himself three questions: What's it for?; Why do I do it?; Could I do without it? He didn't answer any of these and concluded by admitting: "I like alcohol but I have an uneasy relationship with it."
So, nothing learned then, though the programme was interesting in some of its details, and Marsden made for an amiable companion.
Simon Nasht, director of Addicted to Money (RTE1), assures me that, contrary to what I was led to believe from last week's credits, the snappy one-liners delivered by David McWilliams are all the man's own. Bully for David, who always has arresting things to say about the economic mess the world is in, but still no plaudits for the series, which continues to undermine the presenter's observations with deeply distracting visual trickery. What's wrong with telling a good story straight?
On Midweek (TV3), Colette Fitzpatrick showed tact and sympathy in her interview with Gemma Coleman, whose son Pat was stabbed to death a couple of years ago by a young teenager. And she was just as engagingly low-key in her conversation with undercover reporter Donal MacIntyre, who'd been attacked with his wife by thugs in Surrey earlier this year. MacIntyre's new series, Ireland's Crime Capitals, will be screened by TV3 in November, but the interview came across as more than a mere puff.
Jennifer was sacked in The Apprentice (TV3) but the problem with this year's series is that, apart from the feisty Geraldine, there's no one among the contestants you'd want to spend two minutes with.
jboland@independent.ie
Irish Independent
