TOMORROW night's Bertie opens with a sequence leaving no doubt that the episode intends to deal with the former Taoiseach's "bizarre" financial affairs. Ostensibly, 15 minutes of the programme are given over to it. Ostensibly, I say, because, really, the entire episode is informed by it. In fact, as Ahern had feared, I suspect the four-part series itself is dominated by the issue of Ahern and his money.

I suspect this because, at the end of tomorrow night's episode, we are offered a teaser as to what the third episode will contain. A suitcase stuffed with cash is shown. The fourth and final episode, by necessity, will concentrate on Ahern's evidence to the Mahon tribunal, and ultimately on his downfall.

The Bertie series, therefore, is really about Ahern, his money and his ethics, with, it seems, his stellar leadership of Europe, his superb handling of the peace process and his remarkable healing of Fianna Fail mere bit fillers between the impression created -- as now accepted by the media in general -- of Ahern as a ruthless, overly ambitious politician on the make, surrounded by a bunch of self-styled mafiosa-type figures.

By the end of this crude little series, it follows that Ahern will, I believe, come to regret his spontaneous decision to participate in this programme; his supporters in Drumcondra will regret their naivete as they rushed to stake their claim for posterity, only to make fools of themselves, and Celia Larkin will come to regret her silence.

She will regret it, not only because the programme makers, for dramatic effect, selected the soundbyte contributions of two of Bertie's pals hostile to her -- because she had come to supplant them in the pecking order -- which only serves to offer what I believe to be an inaccurate and, therefore, unfair impression of her role in Ahern's life, personal and political; no, she will regret it because, if she were still there, if she had taken control of this Bertie project, an entirely different, more rounded story of her former partner may have been offered to the programme makers.

It is no coincidence, I suggest, that Ahern's career began to unravel shortly after his relationship with Ms Larkin had come to an end.

The second half of tomorrow night's episode leans heavily on evidence heard, so painstakingly, at the Mahon Tribunal; evidence which did not prove that Ahern did favours in return for the money he received around the time his marriage to Miriam ended; that is, evidence which did not prove that Ahern is corrupt, despite what his detractors still insinuate, despite vast sums of taxpayers money put aside to try to prove those claims.

Commentary is provided during the second half of tomorrow night's episode by three journalists, Frank Connolly, Matt Cooper and Colm Keena, each of whom has been a harsh critic of Ahern's handling of his financial affairs; one of whom, Connolly, has been openly hostile to him.

A contrary view is offered only by a few Drumcondra mafia-type figures, which, in the first episode, through their machoism and bravado, quickly lost the public's sympathy and understanding.

When Ahern offers his explanation of the money, the camera focuses close up on his face; this makes him look uncomfortable, as he may have been, but also, he looks meaty and sweaty and untrustworthy.

Connolly, Cooper and Keena, particularly Connolly, are offered as independent experts when they are anything but. Like the rest of us, they have formed their own opinions on Bertie and his money. In large part, their opinions differ from mine.

Unlike most people, Connolly, in fact, seems obsessed with this story. So, too, is the commentator Eoghan Harris. Harris, a supporter of Ahern, is a persuasive advocate of the

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big picture, so persuasive that, on the Late Late Show before the last election, he convinced the nation. Last week I checked with Harris, and he confirmed he had not been asked by Mint to take part in the series. If he had, I have no doubt, he would have offered some balance.

The contributions of Connolly, Cooper and Keena are shot with darkened lighting; one of the pubs, owned by a friend of Ahern, in which Ahern's friends gave him a relatively small sum of cash, is shot at night; a scene is reconstructed showing Ahern taking the money in a brown envelope -- the colour is powerful symbolism -- and Ahern is seen hiding the envelope in a newspaper. All the time, there is sinister music in the background. A further reconstruction is offered showing Ahern lodging the cash in a bank. It could be right out of Crimeline, shot from above, as if from a security camera.

Earlier in the episode, Mint deal with the 1993 tax amnesty introduced by Bertie Ahern when he was Minister for Finance and when Albert Reynolds was Taoiseach. Ahern did not whole-heartedly support the amnesty, but Reynolds insisted upon it. That was known at the time.

Matt Cooper seeks to link the amnesty to Fianna Fail's drive to reduce its massive debt, at the time over £3m. I had never heard this conspiracy theory before, but then, maybe I am out of touch with such conspiracies.

No evidence is offered that those who availed of the amnesty -- let's say, Fine Gael's Michael Lowry -- gave a penny to Fianna Fail. Neither does the programme deal with Fine Gael's fundraising efforts around this time, its begging letters to Larry Goodman and Ben Dunne, or with its settlement with the Revenue Commissioners for the manner in which it paid some of its staff, that is, under the counter.

The point is, no context is offered.

Instead, we get footage of Des Richardson, Fianna Fail's fundraiser at the time. Richardson is shown in a montage of grainy black and white photographs, sporting a sheepskin coat and a dodgy moustache. He worked from an office at the Berkeley Court Hotel. The hotel is also shot in darkened tones.

Frank Connolly tells us Richardson is a "key person" in "all of this"; he says that Richardson, Bertie's pal, got a "grip" on fundraising for the entire Fianna Fail party, and that he "feverishly" set about the process of clearing the debt.

"Grip" and "feverish" are loaded words: I am not sure exactly what Frank Connolly means by "key person" and "all of this", but I suspect he is implying that Des Richardson was up to no good.

Nobody sought to point out the obvious, other than Richardson himself.

What else would fundraiser do only approach wealthy people to raise funds to pay off a massive debt? That was his job. He was good at it. So good, in fact, that he maintains if he really wanted to raise loads of cash for Ahern, he could have raised £100,000 in a week.

All political parties fundraise -- even the PDs , who discarded the identities of their donors in a skip. At the time, all parties did it much the same as Richardson did, but with varying degrees of success.

Richardson though, in his sheepskin coat, dimly lit office and little moustache -- he has since shaved it off -- is portrayed as dodgy, an unfortunate occurrence not helped by techniques of editing, lighting and camera work.

The tax amnesty section concludes with old footage of an interview Ahern gave to RTE. He says it would give him great pleasure to see non-compliant taxpayers go to jail. Cut to Cooper. Fifteen years later, Cooper says, Ahern himself could not prove that he was tax compliant at the time he gave that interview.

In fact, Ahern did not have to prove he was tax compliant at that time, or at any other time. It is for the Revenue Commissioners to prove he was non-tax-compliant. Ahern's advice was that he was compliant at the time, and he still believes he was. We await the taxman's verdict.

Tomorrow night's programme ends with an old Pat Kenny television interview of Ahern. At the time, 1994, Ahern had just become leader of Fianna Fail. Cut to footage of Bertie with his mother outside her Drumcondra home on his election. Pat asks Ahern what she had said to him. Among other things, "Make sure you do everything honest," she had said, and the credits roll, suggesting that Bertie would lie even to his mother.