TV & RadioReview

Brianna Parkins reviews Rose of Tralee’s first night: Firefighters, reattached fingers and – OMG – the first woman host

Television: Where else would you get this kind of entertainment except in a sports hall in Kerry?

Rose of Tralee 2023: San Francisco Rose Katie McFadden with hosts Dáithí Ó Sé and Kathryn Thomas. Photograph: Domnick Walsh

Brianna Parkins's face
Brianna Parkins
Tue Aug 22 2023 - 00:36

We’re back for the annual festival of making ourselves feel inferior by watching incredibly accomplished women in ball gowns talk about their careers. But some things about the Rose of Tralee are a little different this year.

It’s the second time the festival’s televised final, which began on RTÉ One on Monday night, has forsaken the specially constructed Rose Dome for Kerry Sports Academy, at Munster Technological University – which had some traditionalists upset until they realised the dome was actually just a tent in a car park with some lights strung up.

It’s also the first time a woman has been allowed to host the contest, with Kathryn Thomas joining Dáithí Ó Sé to present the programmes. Next they’ll be letting us fly planes and vote.

This is the first time, too, that the televised event has taken place when X, aka Twitter, has been in operation with its new algorithms and blue-tick systems. “It is all about them tonight,” Thomas says at the show’s kick-off, pointing to the Roses. But she’s wrong. It’s about seeking the approval of strangers online by making the pithiest crack via a tweet. Or it once was.

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Although the ceremonial reading-out of social-media posts remains a feature of the broadcast, the engagement online seems to be down. While the #roseoftralee hashtag is trending on Monday night, the usual Irish Twitter personalities don’t seem to be watching just to tweet about it, as they used to. Maybe Elon Musk’s changes have driven away users – which could spell trouble for Rose of Tralee viewing figures down the line.

The chemistry between Thomas and Ó Sé is the comforting, friendly if slightly forced bantering of two holiday reps about to lead karaoke night at the all-inclusive bar. They start off with Ó Sé demanding to check out Thomas’s “Kerry credentials”. Luckily, she’s able to rattle off family connections that include an impressive “six generations from the Blasket Islands”.

And so we’re treated to a culchie-off live on stage. But they don’t talk about how much of a rip-off hole of a place Dublin is, so we may never know which of the presenters deserves to emerge victorious. Here’s hoping they pick it up on Tuesday evening.

[ Kathryn Thomas shrugs off criticism of Rose of Tralee festival saying it's all about choice ]

When they introduce the contestants, the hosts take them on one at a time, which is disappointing for those of us expecting a good cop-bad cop dynamic to extract confessions from Roses about how much they love Ireland and/or their hidden pasts as drug smugglers.

Naysayers waiting for Thomas to slip up in order to prove they were right to say that having a woman host would ruin things must be disappointed. Like Ó Sé, she is protective of media newbies who’ve been shoved on to live TV. The contestants are in safe hands. You won’t see taffeta gowns being ruined here by Roses being thrown under the bus for a cheap laugh. Thomas, like Ó Sé, has the same understanding that all good interviewers have: she knows she’s the least important person on stage and leads her subjects with questions that show them off at their best.

We laugh along with the Cork Rose for failing her driving test and the Boston Rose for packing flip-flops to go stand in the gaps on a muddy Irish farm for the first time.

Then the Arizona Rose reads out a children’s book with an interactive soundboard. This is the best time for any international audience member to tune in and see loads of women in glamorous ball gowns yelling “Choo-choo!” with no explanation.

Next the San Francisco Rose tells Ó Sé that her father’s fingers were surgically reattached after he cut them off two years ago and that’s why he’s holding his hand up in a particular way. “That wasn’t on my card,” Ó Sé shoots back, accidentally body-shaming a would-be amputee, which was not on anyone’s Rose of Tralee card, admittedly. Luckily everyone laughs.

Sadly, they won’t let Katie McFadden, the San Francisco Rose, who’s a firefighter, set the Kerryman alight and put him out in record time as her party piece – that’s insurance-claim culture for you, ruining everything as usual. So we have to make do with her challenging him to see who can put on their firefighter gear the fastest. There seems to be evidence of foul play, with McFadden crying, “You guys messed with my gear!” But, like the hero she is, she persists anyway.

[ Brianna Parkins: Ireland, you can slag the Rose of Tralee all you like but it’s not really for you ]

There are further signs of sabotage when the Offaly Rose reveals she was nearly taken out of the competition by a stiletto heel to the foot via the Longford Rose. The lesson is to always be vigilant on tour.

We get some insight into just how overwhelming that dressing up for the races every day and being permanently switched on socially can be for the weeks of the Rose tour. The Philadelphia Rose describes how, as a woman with late-diagnosed ADHD, the strict scheduling and room-sharing of the Rose process can become extra obstacles to deal with.

The entire tour can be a sensory nightmare at times – it was for me when I took part, anyway, with the constant singing and socialising – so it’s heartening to see a contestant make that point instead of just sucking it up because she thinks she has to.

Combined with the delightful Limerick Rose, who talks about her autism with matter-of-fact pride, and the open discussion of their diagnoses by two other Roses, South Australia 2023 and Toronto 2022, it makes you wonder if there’s a link between the competition and neurodiverse women. I think there must be, given my knowledge of fellow Roses diagnosed postcompetition.

I don’t think I would have been comfortable talking about my diagnosis in 2016, so it’s comforting to see multiple Roses of this generation flying the flag for the neurodiverse tiara-and-sash-loving community. With the awareness of and education in neurodiversity that an hour of the programme delivers, it should be sponsored by the HSE.

In related news, Thomas quips to the Queensland Rose that there “wasn’t a whole lot of silence” on the Rose tour. “Oh naurr,” the Queenslander says in her distinct drawl, with the weariness of a fellow Aussie who has realised that a group of Irish people cannot allow a conversation to go silent in case one of them explodes. For no apparent reason they then give her two dogs to hold.

The talent section of the evening ends with the Laois Rose, who gives us a poem about her move from New York to the buzzy metropolis of the Midlands. Her line “from the city that never sleeps to the fields with sheep” reminds us what the Rose of Tralee is all about. You wouldn’t get that at Miss Universe now.

Brianna Parkins, an Irish Times columnist, was the Sydney Rose in 2016; The Rose of Tralee International Festival continues on RTÉ One at 8pm on Tuesday

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