Bitter pills to swallow

TV REVIEW: Growing Up GayRTÉ1 Monday
Arts Lives:Gilbert O'Sullivan RTÉ1 Tuesday
Louis Theroux: America's Medicated Kids, BBC2, Sunday
The PrisonerUTV, Saturday
My ShowhouseRTÉ1, Tuesday
The Ricky Gervais ShowChannel 4, Friday

IT’S A CURIOUS and depressing coincidence that this, the first generation born after the decriminalisation of homosexuality, is also the one that has hijacked the word gay to use as a catch-all negative.

Badminton is gay, a certain kind of bicycle helmet is gay, dad's favourite shirt is gay – anyone who has had the chance to eavesdrop on a gang of pre- and early teens, particularly boys, can add any amount of random descriptions but the common denominator is that "gay" is used as just another word for bad. And that's just the tip of the ignorance iceberg faced by teenagers coming to terms with the feeling that they actually are gay, as in their sexual orientation. In Growing Up Gay, director Aoife Kelleher's superbly made documentary, four teenagers talked about the challenges of life in school (hellish), coming out ("you worry that the wrong people are going to find out") and parental reaction (ultimately positive for all of them).

The teenagers who took part were astonishingly brave in their honesty, particularly Zoë and Patricia from Ballybeg in Waterford who were both 16. Living in a small town is never easy for anyone who is different – the young people in Dublin had more opportunities to see that they weren’t the only teenage gays in the urban village.

Michael Barron, a director of BeLonG To, a support organisation for lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender teens – explained that the average age people get an inkling that they might be gay is 12 and that the average age for coming out is 19. That corresponds to the years spent in secondary school, yet he has mixed success gaining access to schools to give the sort of information talks that might just stop the confused and most likely bullied kid down the back of the class from feeling so alone. Filmed over 18 months, Kelleher used a mix of direct interview, observation and video diaries and it made for a very personal, intimate and sympathetic film. The trust in her shown by the teenage participants and their parents, who presumably had to give permission, was well deserved.

AND IF YOUdon't think trust is the pyrite-free bedrock between any documentary maker and his or her subject, consider the chilling remarks made by Gilbert O'Sullivan, who came over as thoroughly unlikable and bitter in the excellent Arts Livesfilm about his life. In the final minutes he reflected on the process of taking part in the documentary.

“If I don’t like what you’re doing, you’ll have a hard job getting it shown. You’ll see the fiery side of me, if it ain’t good.”

LOUIS THEROUXis the modern master of the observational documentary and this week for Louis Theroux: America's Medicated Kidshe was in Philadelphia to explore a troubling but increasing US phenomenon of diagnosing children with psychiatric disorders and then medicating them.

“At what point does a personality trait become pathological?” he wondered as a clinician reeled off a list of conditions from ADHD to bipolar. “Six. That seems quite young to be on an anti-depressant,” Theroux remarked in his brilliantly effective tone which manages to be non-judgmental – even when faced with demonstrably bonkers situations – but questioning at the same time. Few of the psychoactive medications are actually approved by the manufacturers or the US Food and Drug Administration for use in children under 18, but both parents and prescribers seemed happy to carry on regardless. “She’s much nicer when she’s on her meds, she’s my best friend,” remarked one mother of her teenage daughter, a comment that raises more questions than it answers. The family who spent most of their time on screen were the Kellys and their heavily medicated 10-year-old boy Hugh, who seemed more precocious than mentally ill. The perky mom remarked that the only one in the house who wasn’t on medication was their teenage daughter. “Even the dog takes anti-anxiety medication.”

THERE AREN'T ENOUGHserotonin blockers to calm the cranky chorus building up on fan blogs about the ITV/AMC remake of The Prisoner, where there's a great deal of nit-picking about how different and vastly inferior and – shock horror – Americanthe new series is when compared to the original. The new version, starring handsome in-a-shaving-ad sort of way Jim Caviezel and acting royalty Ian McKellen, is apparently a shocking affront to fans of the original 1960s series which starred complex action man Patrick McGoohan as the former secret agent trapped in a mysterious village. That 17-part series is looked on as a seminal drama in British TV history – maybe we'd be horrified if The Riordanswas transplanted to Beverly Hills and Benjy was played by David Beckham, though come to think of it . . . That's the thing about The Prisoner– it's so all over the place it's difficult not to find your mind wandering off on bizarre tangents.

The basic premise is the same as the original. A man is transported out of his everyday life into a mysterious village where he is given a number just like everyone else and his every attempt to escape or discover what has happened to him is foiled. The new version was filmed in the desert in Namibia (not eccentric Portmeirion, the location for the original) and the village is a cluster of pretty A-frame houses that could be one street over from Wisteria Lane. The place appears to be run by the sinister Number Two (McKellen), in a crumpled linen suit and followed everywhere by a pretty teenage boy. This first episode (of six) featured many flashbacks to Number 6’s (Caviezel) life in New York as his brain tried to compute his new reality.

As someone who never saw the original series, this one seemed expensive, stylish (AMC also made Mad Men) and just about engaging enough to tune in for the second episode. Though unless you're a Lost fan who likes this sort of dislocated sci-fi tinged mystery you'd be exhausted trying to figure out the meaning of the heavy-handed clues and symbolism, not least the shimmering twin towers that shine in the distance and which Number 6 is advised to head towards as a means of escape.

WITH PROPERTY-RELATEDprogrammes as rare as a housebuyer on a ghost estate, it was a little surprising to see Neville Knot back with My Showhouse, a tweaked version of his pervious series. I probably should declare some previous in this as I co-presented RTÉ's first interiors series Beyond the Hall Doorway back when rag-rolling was in fashion. My Showhousebegan with two interior designers vying for the job of making over a couple's Dublin house.

The winning designer Ciara Drennan, who weirdly opted for a Victorian hunting lodge look for the lovely couple’s 1950s semi-d in Drumcondra, was full of confidence. “This is the Ciara Drennan signature colour,” she beamed, looking at a wall painted a shade best described as newborn baby poo. The losing interior designer was asked to give her opinion on her rival’s design and she didn’t hold back. Drennan, observing the savaging via a video link, remained dignified, saying only: “Hideous is such a strong word”.

Three cartoon men in a pub:  Gervais and friends get together for an animated discussion

Ricky Gervais's podcasts of his rambling chats with two mates and collaborators Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington where such a hit when they were launched in 2005 they made it into the Guinness Book of Records for notching up three million downloads in just three months. The material is used here again in The Ricky Gervais Showto voice an animated comedy that looks old-school Hanna Barbera, with the cartoon Gervais looking like Barney Rubble's first cousin. Made by HBO, the first series is starting on this side of the Atlantic – a second has already been commissioned.

It’s a simple concept. The animated versions of the three sit around a table and chat pointlessly for half an hour and it’s like overhearing three mates in the pub with Merchant and Gervais as the smart cynics reacting to Pilkington’s surreal musings. In the first episode Pilkington, who is the butt of his pals’ jokes, rambled from the role banana-trained monkeys played in early space exploration to his theories on dinosaurs. It’s impossible to describe how funny the whole thing is but it is, very.