Review: A deference of opinion

Strange though his behaviour may have seemed, the young Garrett at least sounds like an interesting character. A programme called FitzGerald at 8, therefore, might have been an excellent idea. Unfortunately, the series with which we are actually presented offers a much different prospect, namely the self-regarding recollections of a retired and never very successful politician who, after two decades out of power, still seems to be canvassing for our support.

Afforded an opportunity to blow his own trumpet at interminable length by FitzGerald at 80, the octogenarian grandee takes to the stage with gusto and an unnerving determination to impress. Consequently, even his quirkiest tales of youthful eccentricity come across like something from a hustings speech, every quaint detail carefully deployed to convince us that he was always the erudite and courageous visionary his political supporters claimed him to be.

How else can you explain why this one-time serious politician could — with a straight face — characterise the burblings of a precocious eight-year-old as a credible attempt to “propagandise against the Germans”? After the controversies sparked by RTE’s botched series about Des O’Malley and somewhat less botched series about Charles Haughey, the national broadcaster has clearly decided to play safe with FitzGerald, another much mythologised linchpin in the political soap opera of the 1980s.

By constructing the series as four separate interviews with four different interviewers — John Bowman, Vincent Browne, Marian Finucane and Martin Mansergh — the show’s producers evidently hope to give a variety of angles on FitzGerald’s career while avoiding further accusations about the station’s political bias. Ironically, however, this choice of format only proves the existence of an enduring reverence within RTE for the man they used to call — not always sarcastically — Garrett the Good.

It is virtually inconceivable, for example, that any senior Fianna Fail politician would be given, as a birthday gift, a suite of television interviews by such an illustrious panel of media darlings. An editorial decision has evidently been taken by RTE to treat FitzGerald as a historical rather than a political figure, a venerable statesman who should be held in esteem rather than held to account.

The dangers of this elaborately deferential approach to a comparatively recent taoiseach were blatantly exposed throughout the first instalment, which was anchored by Bowman. The emphasis in this programme was on FitzGerald’s early life, the obvious intention being to chart the cultural hinterland from which the great leader would eventually emerge.

In reality, however, what we got was intense and fawning scrutiny of FitzGerald’s childhood, as a laughably solemn Bowman invited his guest to hold forth at length on everything from his schoolboy crushes to his adolescent playing habits. “I enjoyed firing arrows at cows,” FitzGerald explained. “You can’t miss them.”

Bowman’s treatment of his interviewee as though he were no more than a kindly old don who has occasionally dabbled in politics will have seemed especially fatuous to anyone who remembers the sheer wretchedness of life in this country during FitzGerald’s tenure as taoiseach.

Asked towards the programme’s end to assess his political contribution, FitzGerald had the gall to say he believes he was “unfortunate” to have been prime minister during an era of severe economic depression and social division. God forbid anyone should suggest that we were the unfortunate ones.

From a series that rewrites history to Cartai Poist (TG4, Tue), a show that yearns to rewrite geography. Of all the lame-brained programme ideas that have clogged our television screens during the silly- schedule season, this must surely be the most intellectually hobbled.

Each week, an Irish-speaking celebrity is invited to re-create a classic postcard by revisiting the featured locale and attempting to track down people who appeared in the original image. Most of the chosen postcards are creations of John Hinde, the late English photographer who specialised in colour-drenched views of rural Irish idylls, replete with red-haired colleens and happy, turf-bearing donkeys. Inevitably, as many of these photographs are more than 50 years old, the scenes they depict no longer exist.

In some cases, motorways and sprawling shopping malls have supplanted what were once serene valleys or lakesides. More often than not, though, the topographical changes have been more subtle, with time, progress and professional landscapers having performed facelifts on traditional beauty spots. Most of the colleens and donkeys, meanwhile, are no longer in showbusiness.

A few minutes into each programme, when the unfeasibility of re-creating the vintage postcards becomes obvious, Cartai Poist simply falls apart. The guest presenters run out the clock by chatting aimlessly with friends, shopkeepers or random passers-by. As everybody realises that Hinde’s depiction of the Irish countryside was entirely bogus anyway, nobody is either surprised or bothered that so few vestiges of his kitschy vision remain. And, eh, that’s it.

Tuesday’s guest was Eamon de Buitlear, the environmentalist and film-maker, who 20 years ago was producing wildlife programmes that rivalled the work of the BBC’s David Attenborough. In Cartai Poist, he found himself taking snaps of kids and dogs. Some people may have reason to feel nostalgic for the 1980s after all.