This week we go to the ballot box with a skip in our step and hope in our hearts. Elsewhere in The Irish Times you will read detailed analyses of particular parties, politicians and policies. This is a more a vibes-based column that skates across the top of the zeitgeist, so today I am looking at political television shows through the ages and what we can learn from them before we vote.
HR Pufnstuf
Jimmy, an eight-year-old, finds himself living on an island run by a large-faced politician with a shock of red hair who is tight with the police, has an adversarial relationship with an outspoken woman (Witchipoo) and has a friend called Freddie the Flute. I’m pretty sure I voted for Freddy the Flute at some point. He is, in the world of HR Pufnstuf, an actual flute and not, as he would be in Ireland, a local busybody who has made “flutes” his policy focus. The insularity of HR Pufnstuf’s domain is familiar. If HR Pufnstuf was Irish he’d definitely be in Fianna Fáil. Lesson: local politics is everything.
Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones, if you didn’t know it already, is a very serious-minded, political drama about the nature of power. That’s what nerds who love the show say so we don’t bully them. And they’re sort of right. You can just about see the power plays behind all the dragons and violence and bums. Oireachtas TV would get a lot more views if there was a bum in the foreground at all times. This is my job application to be in charge of Oireachtas TV. Lesson: more bums!
The Irish RM
Somerville and Ross’s literary tale of a go-getting professional who gets up early in the morning (Peter Bowles) and is forced to reckon with a feckless and whinging populace of quipping layabouts with straw behind their ears and a pig under each arm (the Irish people). “Oh, if only we could have an Ireland without these louts!” thinks Peter Bowles while overseeing their hilarious and drunken shenanigans. It’s unclear how Somerville and Ross so accurately predicted Fine Gael’s very particular relationship with the electorate, but they did, and 80 years later RTÉ and Channel 4 made a TV show about it.
Read this before you vote: Patrick Freyne’s vibes-based guide to Election 2024
Patrick Freyne: My favourite corporate psy-ops of the season – or Christmas ads, as they’re called in the suburbs
Doctor Odyssey’s core message: just imagine Pacey from Dawson’s Creek holding you tight and saying, ‘Shhh, it’s okay’
Rivals: The thrusting bum is intercut with spurting soap and overflowing champagne. We are in safe, if filthy, hands
Okay, I have just been told that the Irish RM is actually about Anglo-Irish relations in our years as a colonial outpost. Sadly, as you can see, the newspaper is printed now so I can’t retract my description. I stick by it. Intended or not, The Irish RM is the best dramatic depiction of Fine Gael’s role in Irish public life. Lesson: Peter Bowles + HR Pufnstuf = the Irish political status quo.
Star Wars Holiday Special
The ill-advised Star Wars TV variety show made between the first and second Star Wars films is a more accurate depiction of Ireland’s years under British rule than The Irish RM. It involves a visit to Chewbacca’s home planet, where his hairy, growling and house-proud clan are subject to intimidation by an occupying empire with effete British accents.
Han Solo and Chewbacca turn up and throw a policeman (well, a stormtrooper) off the top of the Chewbaccas’ suburban treehouse in front of Chewbacca’s hirsute and now traumatised child “Lumpy”. Then they go to a religious ceremony and happily sing a song. “The crack we had the day we died for Endor*,” the wookiees sing (or something to that effect. It’s hard to make out the exact words because of their thick midlands accents). If you want a less jovial take on resisting imperial occupation in the Star Wars universe, check out Andor on Disney+ (*with apologies to Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly). Lesson: One person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist. And I am specifically talking about Chewbacca here.
Teletubbies
A bunch of gibberish-spewing aesthetes engage in joyful low-stakes high jinks in a world of rolling hills and lush greenery, overseen by a benign sun with a chuckling baby’s face. This is how the government parties want us to see Ireland. It’s shot on location in Dalkey with actual residents. Lesson: One person’s Dalkey man is another person’s Teletubby.
Aidan Gillen through time and space
Think of the great television leaders of our time: Mayor Carcetti in The Wire, John Boy from Love/Hate, Frank in Kin, Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, Charles Haughey in RTÉ’s hilarious romp Charlie. All are great, corruptible, compelling, sulphurous and entirely fictional leaders. (I’m a “Charles Haughey didn’t exist” truther.) But do you know who isn’t fictional? Aidan Gillen, that’s who. Picture the actor’s handsome face glowering down upon you from a blue-and-red campaign poster that says, “I am very disappointed in you”. That’s the sort of thing we like here in Ireland. “He’s right. We’re some shower,” we’ll say sadly as we vote for him. Lesson: Aidan Gillen should be in more stuff.
Fireman Sam or Bob the Builder?
This is ultimately the choice that faces us: Fireman Sam’s calamitous, flammable nanny state, Pontypandy (at the mercy of anarchist ne’er-do-well and devil child Norman Price), or the cold, low-regulation, can-do-it-ness of Bob the Builder (with his anthropomorphic, AI-enabled vehicles). Do we want the big-government bureaucrat or the disruptive tech entrepreneur? Why not both! Fireman Sam has just commissioned Bob the Builder to build Pontypandy Municipal Children’s Hospital. And what’s on fire now? Money, that’s what. Lesson: Bob the Builder + Fireman Sam = the politics of failure. However, we should try it one more time just to be sure.
The Wire
If Bob the Builder and Fireman Sam’s pragmatic realpolitik is too much for you, try out The Wire, a show in which the writer David Simon depicted the decay of American institutions and infrastructure a full decade before the American people decided they liked the way everything was crumbling and voted for more of it. Lesson: Everyone should watch The Wire.
Battlestar Galactica
The last survivors of the human race bicker over whether to have autocracy or a representative democracy while being attacked on all sides by killer robots. It’s a surprisingly relatable and prescient show, really. When I asked ChatGPT about Battlestar Galactica, it watched the whole thing and said, “Thank you, Flesh Patrick. This has given me a lot to think about.” Lesson: It’s interesting that ChatGPT called me Flesh Patrick. It has never called me that before.
The West Wing
Smug end-of-history liberals walk-and-talk along corridors quipping about geopolitics and mocking the lowborn hicks who dwell in flyover states*. They stop sometimes to bring tears to each other’s eyes with impassioned, heart-warming speeches about the true meaning of democracy with references to Hobbes and Rousseau as a string section swells into a crescendo.
As well as being a pretty solid description of life here at The Irish Times, this is also a good summary of most episodes of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing, a show that was, in retrospect, about the last days of the liberal world order. The summary? Sorkin: “Shush, child, a wealthy baby-boomer is patronising you.” The rest of the United States, with bibs on and holding cutlery, “Yes, sirree, I can’t wait to eat that smug and wealthy baby-boomer!” (*Everything outside of the canals.) Lesson: the end is nigh.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis
- Sign up to our Inside Politics newsletter to get the behind-the-scenes take direct to your inbox
