TV reviews: Red Rock; Hard Sun; Six One

Backstage indecision over whether the show worked best as light-hearted soap or hard-hitting drama led to multiple missteps, not least the ramping up of storyline sensationalism. Complex battles of wits between well-rounded protagonists gave way to generic shootouts between corny heroes and panto villains. Pyrotechnical effects were overused, frequently as a substitute for narrative fireworks.

Judging by last week’s long-delayed instalment, however, the serial seems to be regaining some of its earlier intelligence and poise. Unfortunately, this steadying of nerve may have come too late as the new run seems destined to be the last.

The lurch back to basics was most clearly illustrated by the renewed focus on Garda Paudge Brennan (Patrick Ryan), one of Irish TV drama’s most memorable characters. Paudge is the conscience of Red Rock but, as befits a series loaded with moral ambiguity, it’s a guilty conscience. Good cop/bad cop is a familiar double act but rarely before have both extremes been so deftly incorporated within a single uniform.

Paudge is small-minded, tight-fisted and deeply compromised. Lazy and cynical, he approaches his extracurricular scams with a madcap zeal that invariably backfires. When push comes to shove, however, Paudge is capable of valiant loyalty and remarkable kindness.

Much of Monday’s episode chronicled his off-duty efforts to find temporary refuge for Aoife (Lorna Meade), the troubled and troublesome daughter of a murdered prostitute. Social services looked the other way so Paudge took Aoife home to Mammy (Brid McCarthy), the only boss to whom he pledges genuine obeisance. We could have been set for mawkish sentimentality but Red Rock’s writers often remind us that no good deed goes unpunished.

Before curling up for the night in the Brennan household, Aoife couldn’t resist a spot of pilfering.

Other plot developments are no less blackly comic. Patricia Hennessy (Cathy Belton), big-shot patron of a drugs awareness charity, is falling for the cocaine-fuelled charms of Tom Callaghan (Barry O’Connor), a junior minister and major reprobate. Callaghan’s nefariousness may extend to the prostitute’s death. Fortunately for government stability, his old pal Supt Kevin Dunne (Conor Mullen), head honcho at Red Rock, is busily hiding the evidence.

Corrosion, rather than corruption, is the show’s central theme. Crooked cops wreak havoc but it’s the complicity of colleagues and friends that often causes the worst damage. One of Red Rock’s signature achievements is its ability to chart the wider fallout from garda misconduct. The society in which the saga unfolds is a recognisable and richly detailed world. Its obliteration would be a sad loss to Irish pop culture.

Patrick Ryan and Andrea Irvine star in Red Rock

MIKE CATHRO

Impending planetary doom is the backdrop to Hard Sun, an overheated cop show set during the countdown to a solar-flared apocalypse. Jim Sturgess and Agyness Deyn play dodgy London detectives who discover evidence that Earth faces destruction in five years — information that attracts the attentions of homicidal security agents and unleashes a wave of killings.

The Da Vinci Code casts a long shadow but so does Father Ted, with the growing centrality of laughably stereotypical Irish mystic Fr Dennis (Dermot Crowley). The end of the world may be nigh but, somehow, every moment spent following this heavy-handed hokum feels like an eternity.

Something akin to a brave new world is what RTE seemed to promise with recent changes to Six One, the weekday evening news bulletin now anchored by Caitríona Perry and Keelin Shanley. The all-female team was oversold as a feminist innovation of groundbreaking import. In truth, it makes little difference beyond highlighting the extent to which posturing and positioning have become preoccupations in the TV news business.

Perry and Shanley are accomplished broadcasters, so it’s no surprise they marshal an impressively wide-ranging production with calm efficiency. The so-called “new” format moves faster than its predecessor, but the biggest change is an awkward moment of sublime futility at the top of the show when Perry and Shanley stand in front of the desk for a few seconds before taking their seats behind it.

So far, the main difference between the co-presenters is their respective interviewing styles: Shanley favours a snappier, scrappier approach while Perry tends to hang back, pressing her interlocutor only occasionally but with considerable firmness. Both strategies have merits, and time will tell which is more effective. But there’s already reason to believe the show’s choreographed pieties are ceding an unnecessary advantage to political operatives and their handlers.

In an ostentatious show of egalitarianism, Perry and Shanley alternate their seating arrangements each day, so that neither colonises the screen-left position that, supposedly, designates the senior talent. But, because of the set design, the left-hand anchor conducts all of the in-studio interviews, usually including an encounter with a senior politician. Consequently, it’s never been easier for prospective guests to anticipate who’ll be asking the questions or how the questioning will go — a not insignificant heads-up given the brevity of a Six One interview.

While the journalists are playing musical chairs, there’s a danger the politicians will run rings around them.