An intimate portrayal of life

TV REVIEW:
Stuart: My Life, My Death,RTÉ1, Monday Blood Sweat and Tears: The Alex Higgins Story,RTÉ1, Monday O'Gorman,RTÉ1, Sunday Help! My House is Falling Down,Channel 4, Tuesday

SOMETIMES home movies make the most poignant TV. Slightly wobbly, a bit out of focus, too many zany close-ups – it doesn't matter because they can have an intimacy and a truth that's difficult for real TV programmes to achieve. The home movies at the start of Stuart: My Life, My Deathwere heartbreaking in their vibrant happiness because the late Stuart Mangan's story is by now familiar and most viewers will have known what was coming next.

They showed a handsome, fit young man in his early twenties, not just living but grabbing life; playing sport, laughing, flirting, skitting around as a student in Paris and on holidays in exotic locations with an impressive tan and a body in top condition. That, we were soon shown in this powerful and deeply thought- provoking documentary, was the “before” and the “after” was Stuart paralysed from the neck down following a rugby accident. And how he dealt with his cruel new reality was the engine that drove the story.

He was 24 when a catastrophic accident left him completely dependent on a team of carers and the documentary followed him as he left hospital after eight months of treatment to begin his new life in a London apartment. Even as he was being wheeled into the van that was taking him home from hospital he was giving instructions – a sign that the driven young man was determined, against considerable physical odds to take back some control over his life. And he tried, with a pragmatic optimism that was deeply inspiring.

The film-maker had good access to Stuart and his family so she was able to show just how dependent his injury had left him as he fought to gain some independence. There were some days she didn’t film because, as the voiceover said, Stuart wasn’t up to it either physically or emotionally but for the most part he was startlingly positive. He recalled that on that fateful day he had a puncture on the way to the match as he cycled across London and thought he wouldn’t get there on time – the only vague hint of a “what might have been” in the documentary. He talked of waking up every morning and for a split second expecting to feel his body move as it did before the accident and then reality would kick in.

“You just have to pick yourself up and get on with your day,” he said.

He was very much the star of this documentary but there were others – particularly his mother, exhaustion and worry etched on her face and who moved to London to be near him, and his team of professional carers whose genuine sense of care was striking. It gave an insight into quite how expensive it is to provide a dignified life for someone with such a high level of dependency. Standout moments included his visit to the spot on the rugby pitch where the accident happened on the first anniversary of the event and his visit home to Fermoy where he sat in his chair in a field while his horse licked his face. A chest infection killed him 15 months after the accident.

This film was first screened on BBC3 last December last and it was called Stuart: The Day My Life Changed,a more apt title perhaps than RTÉ's Stuart: My Life, My Death,because despite his perilous physical condition in the months charted in this documentary, he didn't really consider his death – he was too busy planning his life.

Curious how scheduling can alter your response to a programme. I remember watching Blood Sweat and Tears: The Alex Higgins Storywhen it was broadcast five years ago and don't recall having any particular reaction to it. This time was different. The documentary was shown directly after the Stuart Mangan film and after an hour of seeing how a young man dealt with the dreadful hand fate dealt him, Alex Higgins's self-pity, belligerence and careless waste of his own incredible talent was hard to stomach. Filmed in 2005, it was essentially an extended, soft-soap interview between the one-time snooker great and Des Cahill who seemed nervous of his interviewee. It did at least capture how huge Higgins was in the 1970s and the 1980s.

There was no exploration of Higgins’s alcoholism – bizarrely the word wasn’t mentioned in the programme, though there were plenty of references to drinking and shots of him drunk – and Cahill padded his script with the accepted platitudes: Higgins was about to “press the self-destruct button”, he was “on the slippery slope”. He didn’t challenge Higgins on his more shocking behaviour, such as his threat to Denis Taylor that he would have him shot if he walked down the Shankill Road or the time he urinated mid-game in front of officials. All mentioned but not explored.

Recalling the time he was sanctioned after headbutting a snooker official, Higgins appeared to blame the officials for his subsequent lack of income. The “Hurricane” rarely gave interviews and this one appeared so keen to please it became a missed opportunity to examine that most classic of sporting themes – the champion who fought hard to win his place at the top and then who fell from a great height.

On the strength of Paddy O'Gorman's trip to Ballyjamesduff for the first programme of his new series of O'Gorman, the man with the hat has lost his inexplicable appeal for the ladies. Where was Paddy the mammy magnet as he strolled through the Cavan streets with his dog Snoop?

In the entire programme he only managed to interview one woman – a Chinese woman who opened a bakery. Otherwise it was all cute Cavan men at the mart and an elderly exile from Dublin.

It’s always been a bit of a mystery how O’Gorman gets women to open up to him – but as his radio fans know, he can and in a most extraordinary and honest way. Not the Cavan women, though, who maybe know better. During a long interview with a local shopkeeper (and model for the town’s statue of Percy French) three young women passed by, walking briskly, laughing among themselves. The camera and Paddy’s eyes followed them longingly down the street.

Gender balance aside – and this after all is a harmless cheap-as-chips summer filler and not the Dáil we’re talking about, so who really cares – it’s hard not to warm to this programme, despite the overlong interviews with too few people. O’Gorman makes approaching people in the street for an on-screen chat look and sound like the most natural thing in the world and that takes considerable skill.

The elderly lads at the mart, encouraged by O’Gorman to give a bar of the local anthem, obliged and one of them joked “Come back Paddy Reilly to Ballyjamesduff, she wasn’t pregnant after all.”

Help: Sarah Beeny’s on the case again

THE FIRST programme in Sarah Beeny's new series Help! My House is Falling Downdid exactly what it said in the title. Nick and Becky bought a pretty-looking period house in one of those chocolate box English villages.

Three years on they had veteran property presenter Beeny around to advise them on what to do with their galloping rot, death watch beetle infestation, crumbling brick work and flooding basement.

How the young couple didn’t cop that having an ancient well – a proper round stone job, brim full of water inside their house in the basement wasn’t the best idea in the world when they paid over a quarter of a million for their home is anyone’s guess. In keeping with the downbeat times we’re in, Beeny looked as though she couldn’t be bothered to even brush her hair, let alone wash it, and in a lacklustre sort of way sorted the couple’s problems out with the help of some experts. The whole lot was accompanied by the sort of ominous music favoured by horror movie makers and there was lots of DIY advice – again a nod to the straitened times. All those people who have been harrumphing about “property porn” should be pleased with the grim unattractiveness of it all.

Though mind you, what is it with that expression? It’s usually said by people thrilled by its cute alliteration and in a smug tone to suggest they couldn’t possibly be interested in watching or reading anything about houses or interiors. Mostly a lie of course. And porn? Really? If you get that excited about a tv presenter telling you that duck egg blue is a good colour for a hallway or that high gloss kitchens are the last word in style then you need help.