The Irish Empire (RTE 1, Monday)
Questions & Answers (RTE 1, Monday)
Oliver Twist (ITV, Sunday)
Green And Pleasant Land (Channel 4, Sunday)
Among the many talking heads interviewed, only Richard Kearney has expressed unease at the inclusion in the title of the word "empire". In Ireland it is, of course, a charged word which traditionally evokes - because of Irish experience of the British empire - memories of oppression rather than conquest. Still, there is, undeniably, an ironic cleverness in naming a series about the Irish diaspora (another dodgy word, the franchise on which was held until recently by the Jews) The Irish Empire. But there is an obvious provocation in it, too.
It is provocative because it deliberately seeks to diminish the conventional, nationalist notion of Ireland as the victim of an empire rather than the perpetrator of one. No doubt we could be too thin-skinned or pedantic about this but in the context of this highly ideological series, the point is pertinent. Kearney didn't say precisely why he had reservations about the "empire" conceit. He could understand its appeal to the programme-makers but it was clear that he could discern that it also signalled a particular agenda. That agenda, for better or for worse, was plainly revisionist - in the contentious Irish sense of the word.
Well, in many respects that is fair enough and valid from the viewpoint of 1999. But it's still subjective and like the more (rightly or wrongly) aggrieved view it seeks to supplant, it is politically and historically doctrinal. No surprise then that Kerby Miller, a history professor at the University of Missouri, should feature prominently. Miller is best-known for his scholarly Emigrants And Exiles: Ireland And The Irish Exodus To North America, published back in 1985.
The book's central thesis is, in his own words, that "Irish-American homesickness, alienation and nationalism are rooted ultimately in a traditional Irish Catholic worldview which predisposed Irish emigrants to perceive, or at least justify themselves, not as voluntary, ambitious emigrants but as involuntary, non-responsible `exiles' compelled to leave home by forces beyond individual control, particularly by British and landlord oppression."
That is quite a mouthful but, boiled down, it seems to me to be essentially an academic way of suggesting that far too many Catholic Irish emigrants to America have been deluded, self-pitying, self-indulgent, nationalist whingers. Indeed, Miller may be right but balance would have been served by inclusion of an opposing view. After all, huge numbers of people were compelled to leave home by British and landlord oppression. They didn't all just imagine this to carry chips on their shoulders. It was their experience and if the anger of that experience has regularly been used to fuel extreme Irish republicanism, it doesn't mean that it wasn't a genuine experience.
The Irish Empire has been suspiciously keen to stress the fact that, in America particularly, Catholic Irish immigrants have appropriated the story of Irish emigration. This is true but there are understandable reasons for it. Protestant Irish immigrants, though for the most part they predate Catholic ones, did face less discrimination there, as they have traditionally done in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. That is just a fact of history and not merely a figment of a "traditional Irish Catholic world-view".
Anyway, the five episodes (four of which have already been screened) of this major series are titled The Scattering, Building The World, A World Apart, Keeping The Faith and Dreams Of Home. Made for RTE, BBC Northern Ireland and SBS Australia, it has used three directors - Alan Gilsenan, David Roberts and Dearbhla Molloy. Certainly it is well-produced, shows impressive research and is moody and evocative. However, despite its intelligence and other merits, it is, deep down, rather condescending and ideologically didactic because, at its heart, it lacks balance.
As a consultant to and participant in the series, Fintan O'Toole, for whom I have considerable admiration and who seems to me to be right about most things, with the spectacular exception of the (hopefully fizzling-out) conflict in the North, not surprisingly shares Kerby Miller's view. It's not as though a rabid Martin Galvin were required to balance this series, but there are legitimate reasons to consider that moderate Irish nationalist views might have been included. Even if such views are deemed by viewers to be wrongheaded, the omission of them lays the series open to the charge that it is propaganda.
Still, the themes selected - a world overview of Irish emigration; building, in the literal and myth-creating senses; the experience of female migrants; religion and the Irish abroad; (and next week) myths and realities of home - are fair and comprehensive. The thematic structure is, for programme makers, clearly superior to a geographical (one episode per destination) or historical (one programme per period) structure.
There is an irony in the fact that Gilsenan directed the two most obviously ideological episodes: the first and the last. Gilsenan, whose trademark device is to bombard viewers with highly-charged images, establishes mood at the outset by assailing our senses with shots of sea, sky, sunsets, sails, ships and seagulls. These evoke the grandeur of epic and they work. In fact, they work very well indeed. The irony is that, while talking heads invite us to be calm and rational about the story about to unfold, Gilsenan's splendid images invite us to feel more than think. The third episode (dealing with female migration) rightly raises the subject of Irish racism at home and abroad. Without question, there is a strong racist strain in Irish culture - you can see it in Dublin any day of the week - and we cannot afford to be sanctimonious about this. Whether it comes primarily from forces of human nature or nurture, including, crucially, the historical experience of being discriminated against, is another day's argument. But The Irish Empire is right to highlight it, even if it is uneasy about where a significant proportion of the blame may lie.
I have given this series an extended review and in a rather more solemn tone than usual because it seems to me to accord suspiciously neatly with a politically correct view of Irish identity at present. It's true too that, as a general principle, politically correct views are morally correct, except at the absurdist, totalitarian extremes, which are often disingenuously and mockingly highlighted to support unjust power agendas. But still, there's the question of balance.
It is fair to say that the old, traditional, nationalist dogma about Irish emigration and Irish identity was ideologically partisan. It is equally fair to say that the old sense of these matters, based on religion and nationalism, is dying and no harm. Notions of Irishness are, as Fintan O'Toole argues, increasingly based on a cultural, rather than a political, identity. The troubling aspect of The Irish Empire is that it makes its arguments and reaches its conclusions in a polemical manner which is just as deeply and nakedly political as the traditional views it censorially omits.
ANYWAY, there was more ideological rancour on this week's Questions & Answers. Not surprisingly, it was Charlie McCreevy's Budget which caused the intense squabbling as Mary Harney took the brunt of the abuse. Voices from De Valera's Ireland of the Holy Family clashed with those from McCreevy's Ireland of the Sacred Economy. But most of the noise from the audience seemed either to miss or avoid the true nastiness of McCreevy's enterprise.
One woman, a mother of seven children, felt severely discriminated against and it was clear that stay-at-home women weren't going to stay at home on this issue. Fair enough. But, as with the farmers, it's absurd to pretend that all women working in the home (yeah, I know there are some men doing it too) should be in the same category. Like small farmers and ranchers, there are martyred, old-style, housekeeping and child-rearing Irish mothers (albeit almost all with labour-saving devices compared to previous generations) and there are pampered "ladies who lunch" efforts.
There are, too, parents who dutifully (according to their own beliefs) produce big families and there are those who do so, rather self-indulgently, not altruistically. All the selfishness is not on the side of career or even "slogging away to pay the mortgage" women. It is a minefield of an argument. But the audience seemed more interested in bashing about on this, largely gender, aspect of the Budget than they did in addressing the vicious class bias which it displays. Still, it made for a lively Q&A even if it left you despairing about so many people's view of the big picture.
Meanwhile, the Bleasdaling of Dickens continues with ITV's Oliver Twist. Even by the opulent standards of contemporary costume drama, this one is sumptuous and powerful. Whether, given the dearth of topdrawer contemporary TV drama, it's necessary, is another matter. It is, of course, possible to make relevant points about the current state of culture, politics and society through reworking the classics. But this Oliver Twist, even allowing for its virtues, will not have anything like the same impact as Bleasdale's seminal Boys From The Blackstuff had during the early years of Thatcherism.
It is sometimes argued now that TV drama (soaps, with their addictive natures, excluded) cannot easily compete with the sheer, hysterical melodramatics of so many other genres of TV. This is probably true, because a generation reared on the visual pyrotechnics of Hollywood and the orchestrated lunacy of Jerry Springer/babe-intensive/reveal-all/smut-rich/sensation-saturated television shows is not going to be greatly stimulated by social realism or humanly-drawn characters.
Anyway, Robert Lindsay's Fagin is a highlight even though we know, pretty well, what happens next. What is particularly clear from this version of the story, however, is the way in which social hierarchies characteristically operate through systems of exploitation. Of course, the process is gross and thoroughly dehumanising in Dickens. But you look at McCreevy's Budget and wonder how far we've travelled. Perhaps this reworked classic can still speak to us down the decades. It's entertaining, too.
FINALLY, Green And Pleasant Land. This generally excellent series about life in 1930s Britain focused on Gamekeepers And Poachers this week. The practice of "blooding" fox-hunting child rookies was recalled. Sometimes the "master" would cut the liver from the corpse of the mangled fox and make a sign in blood on the child's forehead. Or the animal's head might be severed, whereupon said master would dip a hand into the still warm skull and smear blood all over the child's face. This was supposed to be the height of civilisation. I just thought you'd like to know.
An obvious provocation? An image from the second programme in the series The Irish Empire