Fry's full Irish on 'Ros na Rún' puts the rest of us to shame

TV REVIEW:
Ros na Rún(TG4, Thursday) Dragon's Den(RTÉ1, Sunday) Toughest Place to be a . . . Midwife(BBC2, Sunday) Election 2011(RTÉ1, Saturday and Sunday)

ALARMING TO hear the quintessential Englishman Stephen Fry has better blás than most of us who endured 14 years’ compulsory Irish. And, yes, I know the

Ros na Rún

team wrote his script and coached his accent for his debut in the Irish soap. But, still, the great polymath sounded like he had a handle on, and even a genuine interest in, the cúpla focal, and his appearance as part of his new BBC series,

Planet World

, about minority languages, spiced up the Connemara-based soap.

Fry’s cameo was a gently comic turn. Playing a bumbling tourist, he arrived into the pub clutching his handy phrasebook to look for directions, where upon local barfly Seamus (Diarmuid Mac an Adhaistair) comments that he looks filthy rich and tries to stiff him for an expensive whiskey. In the end Seamus is left with the bill. Tadgh (Macdara Ó Fatharta), the cranky barman – a distant relation of David McSavage’s obnoxious publican – cautions Seamus not to speak English to the Stephen Fry character: “Less of the English, good man. You don’t have much.”

Over in the Dragon's Den(RTÉ1, Sunday) things seem to have shifted into a different gear. It's not so much about business any more or matching inventors with investors; it's more about four businessmen, their giant egos inflating in front of your eyes, trying to out-funny each other at the expense of the poor saps looking for their money. The new fifth judge, the publisher Nora Casey, not quite realising that it's all about the judges, tries to inject a bit of business acumen into the proceedings by asking sensible questions and appearing genuinely interested in the propositions on offer. If they could bottle smug the other four judges, Bobby Kerr, Sean Gallagher, Niall O'Farrell and Gavin Duffy, would have the product of the series. As it was, the ones on offer this week were a mixed bunch.

There was a woman who sells handmade chocolate; not, as it turned out, made by her own hands, and some of the judges didn’t like that, though they jammed enough of them into their gobs, which wasn’t pretty. Gallagher told her: “You bring together my two greatest passions, chocolate and Cork women.” Bet that sort of chat doesn’t feature too high on the syllabus of the Smurfit Business School.

Her not very original idea took up a quarter of the programme, reflecting its peculiar editing.

Next up was a man pitching his idea for a sports bag for hurlers. “You don’t look like a typical hurler,” said Kerr, with a giant grin, apparently delighted to have spotted that the man was black, but the editing made the pitch completely impossible to understand; you couldn’t even see the product.

All the men had a go at the electrician with the idea for a voice-controlled wiring system. “David, I really don’t think your antenna is picking up all the channels,” said Gavin, his eyes lighting up as he reflected on his own fabulousness.

The fug of smug in the den reached choking density after the man with security products finished his pitch. His lethal-looking gizmos looked horribly effective, and he came over as being professional and experienced: a pretty good combination. The most terrifying system in his range looked like something from Dr No’s perimeter fence, and it couldn’t be used in Ireland. It could be used in other counties, he said, and he was going after a global market. Duffy risked a nosebleed he was up so high on his horse: “Dave, if what you’re saying is that in countries and jurisdictions where they have a lower value on life and people’s safety this will sell quite well, then I’m out.”

The only other real invention of the night was from Galway: a new design for a bicycle, one of the holy grails of garden-shed inventors everywhere. Not that he got much credit for that. Admittedly, it looked rather eccentric, and I couldn’t understand a word the inventor said, but he didn’t deserve Gallagher’s “Did you happen to fall off the bike early on and knock your head or anything?”

THERE COMESa point in any radio discussion on the health service when someone fulminates, "You wouldn't see it in a Third World country", which usually makes some sort of sense in the heat of the moment, but when the reality of Third World hospital care is revealed in all its basic misery, as it was in Toughest Place to be a . . . Midwife(BBC2, Sunday), it doesn't stand up.

The cameras followed an experienced British midwife, Suzanne Saunders-Blundell, as she spent two weeks at Redemption Hospital in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia. There are 60 doctors in the entire country for a population of 3.5 million and midwives earn $60 month.

Idealistically, Suzanne had hoped to learn more natural birthing processes. “I really thought there’d be a lot more tradition, a lot more that these midwives could teach me, signs . . . of how a labour advanced, not having to intervene, and it’s none of that.”

Instead she found women brutally hurried through labour with no access to any form of pain relief or antibiotics in an overwhelmed, overcrowded system. One in 10 babies dies within 24 hours; one in 12 women dies in childbirth. Premature babies were wrapped in foil even though Unicef had, six months previously, donated a state-of-the-art incubator.

No one knew how to turn it on until Suzanne showed them. “They’ve got a woman with diarrhoea next to a woman who’s just had a stillbirth, straight next to a woman who’s got a live baby, [next to] somebody who’s just had an abortion.”

Back in Britain, and feeling changed by the experience, she found herselfimpatient with women loudly demanding epidurals. “We don’t know how lucky we are,” she said.

The final word goes to RTÉ for delivering the best TV of the week: the superb coverage on Election 2011,particularly all day Saturday but also on Sunday. Led by Pat Kenny and Brian Dobson, it was slick, informed and comprehensive. It didn't go for any complicated graphics – which are always useless anyway – just solid information delivered in a way that captured the excitement of the counts. Good also to see John Bowman, our Oireachtas oracle – he knows everything– back on TV.

One point that emerged time and again during the count was the many and varied ways of pronouncing Fine Gael – it isn’t only Willie O’Dea who rhymes Fine with Line, which I always assumed he did just to annoy them. It turns out loads of people do it. Then there’s Fweeana Gael and Feena Ghwaele and many, many other variations. Which is it? Handy to get a definitive pronunciation before Wednesday, because we’ll be hearing it a lot more often.

Will someone tweet Stephen Fry? He’ll probably know.

My choice For a laugh

Back on Friday for a new series and a guaranteed laugh at the end of the week, Ed O'Neill and Sofia Vergara star in the award-winning part mockumentary, part old-fashioned sitcom, Modern Family(Sky 1, 8.30pm)