THIS WEEK’S TV
Enda Kenny is no stranger to meandering slogs. As a politician, he took the long way round to power, becoming taoiseach only after many years of flatfooted wandering in the wilderness. His premiership was conspicuously lacking in oomph, more notable for sporadic lurches of purposeful endeavour than a coherent sense of direction. Folksy digressions and flights of fancy were trademark features of his public pronouncements, often resulting in bewilderingly labyrinthine rambles.
Given his penchant for circuitous routes and plodding detours, it’s hardly surprising that Kenny’s first foray into TV presenting should be a travelogue that goes nowhere fast. Even allowing for low expectations, though, Iarnród Enda is an uphill trudge.
The show’s propelling conceit is a leisurely excursion by Kenny — mostly on his bike — through the countryside and cultural hinterland surrounding some of Ireland’s long-abandoned railway lines. Local historians and train buffs are consulted along the way for an overview that is largely upbeat and occasionally dewy-eyed. Old times and timetables are fondly revisited. Loving admiration is given to train station memorabilia.
Kenny takes considerable pains to demonstrate the sincerity of his passions for the programme’s twin-track preoccupations: railways and social history. Waxing enthusiastic about what often amount to trainspotter-ish details, he seems almost touchingly eager to flaunt his inner nerd, the anorak beneath the Blueshirt.
The departure point for the series was the sunny southeast, as Kenny cycled across the lush landscape and elegant bridges of what used to be the Waterford to Dungarvan railway. Built in the 1870s, the line was once a crucial economic artery, pumping prosperity into an otherwise underdeveloped region. Its dismantling in the 1960s is still bitterly resented by many in the county — but, happily, the closure wasn’t terminal. The railway bed became the foundation for a greenway, with walking and cycling trails, that’s become a significant tourist attraction.
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Vintage trains and lines are popular hobbyhorses for retired politicos — and it’s easy to see why. Reverence for olden times is always a good look for an elder statesman. Respect for the underappreciated ingenuity of our forebears suggests extensive reading and scholarly reflection. Almost everybody agrees that the running down of Ireland’s once thriving rail network in the early decades of independence was a colossal mistake — but, conveniently, it’s not a blunder for which any recent generation of politicians can be blamed. Campaigns for the restoration of rail links now draw support from across the political spectrum, uniting right-wingers, left-wingers and environmentalists. Kenny dextrously climbs aboard all of these interlinked bandwagons. Celebrating “the golden age of steam” is his avowed goal, but in truth he makes plenty of space for reverential salutes to multiple varieties of hot air.
Irish language piety is a key component of the show’s complex mix of driving forces. Kenny’s voiceover and most of his interviews are conducted as Gaeilge, which does nothing to lessen the prevailing atmosphere of stiffness and sanctimony. Kenny’s spoken Irish is functional rather than mellifluous, and his evidently limited vocabulary adds an additional constraint to onscreen conversations that already seem laboured and insubstantial.
Funding for Iarnród Enda was provided by the Irish-language promotion unit of Northern Ireland Screen, and the series might not have been made without it. Far from enhancing proceedings, however, Kenny’s often stilted use of Irish simply adds to the programme’s jerry-built feel, the sense it has been assembled by a bureaucratic checklist.
Kenny is an amiable guy and appears to strike up a relaxed rapport with most of his interviewees. Before long, though, almost every encounter degenerates into a stagey meet-and-greet of the kind commonly seen on TV at election time. Kenny starts spouting platitudes and gesticulating in a robotic manner that’s supposed to convey gravitas but actually signals grandiosity.
In his political heyday Kenny had a notorious propensity for gaffes. His media minders devoted most of their energies to keeping him away from microphones and training him to stay on script, eventually turning him into a hollow caricature of himself. Sadly, a similar doctrine of timidity and overcaution seems to pervade his TV venture, with similar consequences.
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Kenny’s pace and stamina as a cyclist are consistently impressive, but the show’s most formidable feat of athleticism is the breakneck speed with which it swerves at the first sight of possible controversy. This obsessive avoidance of potentially contentious territory was most comically exposed when talk turned to Waterford’s history during the Irish War of Independence and ensuing civil war. “There were many tragedies in those turbulent years,” was pretty much the full extent of Kenny’s commentary on the subject.
Meanwhile, the curious formality of the English translations in the subtitles is a frequent source of clunky locutions. “The famous Mount Congreve Gardens entice me to rest,” Kenny declared as he dismounted outside the botanical resort, sounding more like a feeble dandy from Downton Abbey than a hardy son of Castlebar.
Iarnród Enda should really be called Múinteor Enda. Kenny was a teacher before he became a TD and his travel-guide persona reeks of chalk dust and classroom earnestness. The schoolmaster approach might make sense on paper, but it comes across as stuffy and condescending on TV.
Although unprecedented in Irish terms, Kenny’s railway series follows a well-trodden track. On these islands, after all, the most successful politician turned broadcaster is Michael Portillo, a former Conservative minister who has reinvented himself as an engagingly eccentric presenter of train-based travel shows. Portillo is renowned for his booming voice and even louder clothing — we should be grateful Kenny has not opted to emulate his fondness for canary yellow trousers. Yet if the former taoiseach wants to occupy a regular berth in the TV schedules, he should study Portillo’s gleefully unselfconscious screen demeanour. He draws us in because he doesn’t talk down and isn’t afraid to lighten up.
Travel journalism and political leadership are alike in only one big respect: to get anywhere, you have to learn how to take people with you.