Are they having a laugh?

TV REVIEW: Project Ha HaRTÉ2, Monday; This is NightliveRTÉ2, Monday; The Lucy Kennedy ShowRTÉ2, Tuesday; Five Women Go Back to WorkRTÉ1, Tuesday

BLOKE GOES INTO the doctor complaining about going deaf. "Can you describe the symptoms?" asks the doctor. "Sure," says the patient. "Homer's the fat bloke with the bald head, Marge has blue hair . . ."

Well, I thought it was funny. That's the thing about humour: subjective, innit? Irish television comedy is a bloodied old battlefield, strewn with corpses from decades of warfare between a sitting-duck audience in the wilds of RTÉ-only-land (anybody else just switched over to BBC or Channel 4) and half-baked comedy ideas that got fast-tracked through the corridors of Montrose, ideas soon roasted to a cinder by a bevy of unsympathetic critics, many of whom were sharpening their carving knives before the show had even aired, so certain were the scribes of the day that whatever popped out of RTÉ's steaming oven was going to be no more edible than the putrefied limbs of the station's previous attempts at humour.

RTÉ's problems with home-grown comedy is such a hoary old topic, such a pain in the neck to "deconstruct" (a word liberally splashed about by commentators like a giddy Sunday-morning gin and tonic), that when I hear of yet another new attempt to tap the nation's funny-bone, my reflex action is to ignore it and write about the perils of New Year dieting. On a personal level, I feel a bit like a rotisserie chicken when it comes to the national broadcaster and humour: when I was an actor (in the old days of paper punts and overflowing ashtrays), I spent many seasons in sitcom-land, having my hair done, hanging out with my mates, getting paid to speak other people's lines rather than having to bust my psyche writing my own, and not giving a toss what the papers said (oh, how the worm turns).

Those were the dying days of Irish sitcom, the days when the maniacal shadow of Leave it to Mrs O'Brienstill hung like a pinny-clad ghost over Donnybrook, while Channel 4 was nurturing the creative brilliance behind Father Tedand the blokes in the loafers were discovering the appeal of another kind of humour beyond the hallowed gates of Montrose: stand-up (which thankfully left us over-made-up thespians in the shade).

Stand-up offshoots don't always work on the box, however. Comedians can have you splitting your sides in Edinburgh's Gilded Balloon but leave you staring stony-faced at the ceiling when they debut on the small screen. And this seems to be the case once again in the opening gambit from Project Ha Ha, a kind of Opportunity Knocksfor aspirant TV humorists, which comprises four experimental comedy pilots. The first of these, Work, from the Dead Cat Bounce ensemble, was a surreal musical satire on officedom, including bottoms swivelling over photocopiers and a dead prostitute on the MD's carpet (a trifling nuisance which barely hampered the mustachioed executives' golf swings).

The programme's original music was appealing and the sketches were visually sharp, but the humour, which was vaguely derivative of The Young Ones, left me cold. Without wanting to sound like a bleating old nanny goat, I do think that certain kinds of comedy are hot-wired to age, and that, somehow, when you're on the wrong side of 40, hysteria in rubber toupees and one man's obsession with backsides just doesn't ring one's wrinkled ding-a-ling.

RTÉ2'S OTHER new comedy offering, satirical spoof news show This Is Nightlive, which premiered in a neighbouring slot, concerned itself with familiar material of a different kind. Perspiring journos, self-effacing weathermen, gossip pundits drowning in lip-gloss, sports reporters in gauche blazers, preening anchormen - all are familiar stereotypes, and from Broadcast Newsto Drop the Dead Donkey, newsrooms and their inky inhabitants have provided a fecund patch for comedy writers.

This well-tested environment is the chosen milieu for John Ryan's debut as an actor and TV writer. The debonair redhead and former doggy-mag publisher (never a dull moment) plays anchor Johnny Hansom, a self-described "Tiger giant fattened by hubris", whose team of co-presenters are pastiches of the various media types to be found liberally sprinkled over a screen near you.

There's glossy-haired journalism graduate Una Og Nic Ni Suillicaint (velvet eyes awash with bilingual irritation), sports presenter Trevor Corcoran panting over his charity golf classics, gushing entertainment correspondent Jackie Byrne-Daly, and Mike "Cloudy" Walsh, the modest weatherman, ever hopeful that he can soon forecast an end to his three-year trial separation from his wife and "best friend", Niamh.

I liked This Is Nightlive, its cheek and slick format. Although some of the show's humour sails close to the turbulent seas of distaste (a joke about Ryanair charging a three-eared Chernobyl victim for an extra seat made me wince), other gags were satisfyingly bleak. The Christian Brothers were described as "Ireland's best-loved oxymoron", while the line, "Bake a Child for Charity - providing fake tans for underprivileged children!" (about a charity golf event), also made me smile.

The risk for Ryan, who is an assured performer, is in tethering his wit to parodies of seemingly recognisable TV personalities, thus getting caught up in the kind of self-referential cannibalism that is too rife within our silted media pond. If Nightlivecan maintain the promise of its opening salvo and acquire a topical edge rather than relying on insipid media tribalism, the peripatetic Ryan just might have found himself an interesting sinecure back on home turf.

Speaking of which . . . .

WHAT IS IT with RTÉ and its insistence on giving anyone who turns up with a bit of dog-eared charisma their own chatshow? There are currently enough talkshows on the national broadcaster to silence the screeching Tower of Babel, though, crucially, not enough celebrities roaming our sullen streets to fill the endless vacant studio sofas or grease their starched antimacassars. The Lucy Kennedy Showis a case in point.

Kennedy has carved a solid career as a ladette in lippy: she's confident, she's bright, she's a bawdy billboard-filler. Now, having had the sense to escape the clutches of a pair of papier-mâché puppets, she's been rewarded with her very own expanse of cocktail couch to fill. And guess what: with an incestuous abandon that would make a Greek tragedian blush, the latest RTÉ chatshow hostess's cosy inaugural chat (feet curled up on the velvet) was with none other than an RTÉ chatshow host, Ryan Tubridy. Yep, let's keep it all in the family.

Anodyne would be too strong a word to describe the banter that passed between these two stalwarts of the entertainment industry. The frayed conversation, which ranged from omigod-you're-so-skinny stuff to Tubridy's penchant for aromatic Connemara turf, was reminiscent of eavesdropping over the Formica in the RTÉ canteen. This is one tired format - don't think I'll be back for more.

TIMES ARE TOUGH, with unemployment poking its head through the frost like a determinedly malevolent spruce. With the Tiger's offspring now being sent home to consider their futures, it seems barely credible that a year or so ago the Government was banging on about facilitating a mass return of women to the workforce (hold on, let me just snigger into my dusty creche bills).

So - a strange time to be launching a reality TV series about five women returning to work, called (with staggering imagination) Five Women Go Back to Work. The show evaluates the various women's employability in a publishing house, after years spent tethered to toddlers (either because they chose to, or because of exorbitant childcare costs), recovering from sickness, or pursuing other creative projects.

The women's efforts to create and launch a lifestyle magazine over a six-week period make pretty compelling viewing, but the premise, which attempts a sympathetic portrayal of their domestic circumstances while pitching them against each other in a humiliating battle for the prize of a single employment contract in the industry, seems as contradictory as The Apprenticein a Laura Ashley smock.

Oh, it's bound to be the next big thing, isn't it, having to audition for your job on the telly? Anyway, this horse goes into a bar . . .

tvreview@irishtimes.com