TV REVIEW: Charlie Bird's American YearRTÉ 1, Monday, The Good WifeChannel 4, Monday, Amanda Holden's Fantasy LivesUTV, Tuesday, Natural World: Chimpcam ProjectBBC2, Wednesday, ShamelessChannel 4, Tuesday
JANUARY 20TH, 2009 was a monumental day in history. As dawn broke over Washington DC, the streets were thronged with people, many wearing Obama badges and waving US flags, all thrilled to be part of this momentous event. There was a carnival mood in the air as the city prepared to welcome one very special person into its bosom. Yes, it was Charlie Bird’s first day in his new job as RTÉ’s Washington correspondent – let the celebrations begin.
In the first five minutes of Charlie Bird's American Year, his series documenting his new life as RTÉ's pointman in DC, he managed to take president Obama's big day and turn it into Charlie's even bigger day. Never mind the action on the steps of the Capitol building. The real action was going on inside Charlie's head, as he looked forward with trepidation to the next 12 months of exile, and wondered if he'd have the stamina to see out his term. The anticipation as the crowds waited for president-elect Obama to come out from inside the Capitol. The tension as he fluffed his oath. The collective intake of breath as his full name – Barack Hussein Obama – was read out. It was almost too much to bear. What if Charlie didn't make the news deadline for six o'clock Irish time? What if the laptop or the printer went down at a crucial moment? What if some crazed gunman leapt up suddenly and got in the way of Charlie's camera shot?
Luckily, the day passed without incident, and Charlie got his report in on time. “Day one finished,” he sighed with relief. “Probably the biggest day of my broadcasting career.” And a big day for some other guy, too, I vaguely recall.
It was, to be fair, a tough gig for Bird to take on. Here he was at 60, leaving family, friends and celebrity behind, and flying the bustling nest of the national broadcaster to become a stranger in a strange land. Back home, he reminded us, he could pick up the phone and get talking to any politician, and he could count on a big pool of contacts. Here in the US, though, no one gave a “fiddle” who Charlie Bird was. He might as well, he lamented, be a cub reporter all over again.
Still, he did manage to get an interview with secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and an invite to the White House for Obama’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations. It’s a start.
When he set out into America's heartland to explore the darker side of the US, however, it felt like he was going over old ground that nobody really wanted to tread anymore. He met disgraced soldier Lynndie England, who was convicted for her part in the notorious Abu Ghraib torture photographs – she turned out to be soul-crushingly dull. He went to a remote firing range in deepest West Virginia with a bunch of gun fanatics, but these guys proved disappointingly unpsychotic – they'd have welcomed Michael Moore and Bruno home for tea and cupcakes. He visited Guantanamo, which Obama had vowed to close by the end of last year, and was given a carefully stage-managed tour of the camp. A visit to Alcatraz would have been more exciting – and RTÉ could have used it on No Frontiers.
So, at the end of his first year, how’s the big guy doing? Well, Obama’s hanging in there, but Charlie’s not doing so peachy.
IN NEW USdrama series The Good Wife, ERstar Julianna Margulies plays lawyer Alicia Florrick, an older woman going back into the workforce carrying some unwanted baggage. Her state attorney husband (played by Big from Sex And The City) has gone to jail following a highly publicised sex scandal, so now she has to look after her two kids with only her bossy mother-in-law to help. After 13 years playing the good wife, she must prove she's got the moxie to make it on her own – not easy when people keep asking her, "are you the woman whose husband had all those hookers?" On her new boss's desk is a picture of Hillary Clinton. "If she can do it, so can you," reassures the boss. Alicia gets help from a young, sexy, confident associate whose evidence-gathering technique involves undoing the top buttons of her blouse ("these work better than a subpoena every time!").
Her first assignment is to defend a young woman accused of killing her husband. With a combination of clever deduction, women’s intuition, a mother’s instinct, bags of affinity and empathy – and a tip-off from her jailbird ex – she successfully defends the case and impresses her new boss – a pretty good start by anyone’s standards.
It all goes at the easy pace of a slowly unfolding drama – clearly we’re expected to settle in comfortably and let Alicia guide us through all the motions, orders and cross-examinations that litter the typical court drama series. Still, Margulies is a good enough actress to warrant her own series, although fans of ER might find the court chambers a bit stuffy compared to the operating theatre.
AMANDA HOLDEN IShaving first-day-on-the-job nerves. The Britain's Got Talentjudge has only 10 days to fulfil a lifelong fantasy – to dance at the famous Lido in Paris. "I can't do it," she moans. "My legs hurt." In Amanda Holden's Fantasy Lives,the actress and talent show girl tries her hand at various "dream jobs", including country singer and stuntwoman. For her first task, the slip of a girl has to slip on an elaborate feathered costume and learn to hoof it with a troupe of leggy showgirls on a Parisian stage. Ooh, la la.
The reality, however, isn't remotely tempting. As she moves robotically through the routines, her puffy lips fixed in a determined frown and the choreographer's gimlet eye fixed on every awkward step, you start to feel a sympathetic ache in your own legs – or is that an itching desire to turn off the TV and quickstep to the nearest pub? When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping, so a footsore Amanda heads for the chic emporia of Paris for a little retail therapy, buying shoes in the same shop that Kylie Minogue buys hers – sheesh, this is like Sex And The Citywithout the sex, the jokes or even the will to live.
Happily, Amanda made it through the rehearsals and fulfilled her fantasy, dancing live in front of an appreciative audience that included one of the judges on Strictly Come Dancing. In the dressing-room is a picture of Amanda's fellow talent show judge Simon Cowell. "Thank God he's not here," she says. Thank God I'm not there either.
IF YOU TOOK ANinfinite number of chimpanzees and gave them an infinite number of video cameras, how long would it take them to make Gone With The Wind?The makers of Natural World: The Chimpcam Projectwanted to find out what would happen if a group of chimpanzees in Edinburgh Zoo were given a specially adapted video camera to make their own movies. Would they shoot Jackass-style videos and upload them onto YouTube, or would they make their own version of I'm A Chimp, Get Me Out of Here? To find out, research student Betsy began by teaching the chimps how to use a touch screen, then getting them to watch footage of other chimps on a TV monitor. "What could they be thinking as they watch these other chimps?" ponders the narrator over a poignant orchestral backing. But the great experiment was interrupted by a political crisis in the chimpanzee colony. An ambitious young chimp made a bid to take over as the group's dominant male and recruited other chimps to join him in forming an opposition party. Apparently, chimpanzee politics are more complex than Stormont and have more twists and turns – and shouting – than an entire series of The Thick Of It.
Eventually, a power-sharing deal was brokered, but Betsy was running out of time. So she fast-tracked the experiment and gave the chimps the camera (in a specially made chimp-proof casing) long before they were ready for it. They sniffed it, they scratched it, they licked it and they bit it; they turned it over and tossed it around; they stared into the monitor and the lens and they took it in turns to carry it aloft. But not once did they seem to have the faintest idea what they were supposed to do with it, and the resulting short film was a random mishmash of images that made absolutely no sense. Bloody hell – they’ve made a Lars von Trier movie. The experiment may have failed, but never mind; there’s sure to be a job in ITV for this chimp camera crew.
Misfits muck it up Seventh series of ‘Shameless’ off to a bad start
Shamelessbegan its seventh series this week, and there's a new woman in Frank's life – it's Mrs Doyle. Pauline McLynn joins the cast of misfits and muck-ups in this latest chapter in the ongoing saga of Frank Gallagher, the King Lear of Chatsworth Estate. Frank (David Threlfall, with McLynn, right) is a crazed cocktail of Ozzy Osbourne, Liam Gallagher and Compo from Last of the Summer Wine. As his 50th birthday approaches, he's starting to get all reflective about life; when he meets librarian Libby (McLynn), he is smitten by her bookish charms, and vows to clean up his act and start afresh. If I ever felt any regrets about missing the first six series, they were gone by the end of this episode. This is Corrie on crack, an all-drinking, all-smoking, all-bonking chav-fest that is neither funny enough to make you laugh, nor dramatic enough to make you care. Still, they built a special set for the programme a couple of series ago, so they'll probably have to keep going for a few more. No rest for the wicked, eh?
