Killer Net (Channel 4, Tuesday)
Short Cuts (Network 2, Wednesday)
Father Ted - the last episode (Channel 4, Friday, May 1st)
Booked (Channel 4, Wednesday)
Sex 'n' drugs 'n' computers - the cutting edge trinity of television drama? Clearly, Lynda La Plante thinks so. Her latest series, Killer Net, a four-parter, began this week. Like a home computer, it was irritatingly slow to warm up. Mirroring a computer's tiresome preamble about copyright, base memory and virus checks, which is invariably screened to a soundtrack of electronic burps and farts, director Geoffrey Sax presented La Plante's lechers, buzz-addicts and nerds against the discordant sounds of "clubbing" and cyber guff.
The device might have been clever if it weren't equally annoying. Sure, it was stylish and as flashy as a computer game, but some of us sad, obviously deluded, old geezers still believe that characterisation is the most important element of drama. And here was the problem: Killer Net's central characters were, albeit in varying degrees, about as human as the prats beamed at us by TV advertising. The plot, such as it's been so far, centres on Scott (Tam Williams), a young psychology student becoming besotted by Charlotte, aka Rich Bitch (Cathy Brolly), a sinister, sneering, sadistic, nymphomaniac junkie.
Now, it may well be that sinister, sneering, sadistic, nymphomaniac junkies (especially a sinister, sneering, sadistic, nymphomaniac junkie with a huge tattoo of the Virgin Mary on her back) are cool this year. But Rich Bitch isn't so much a character as a caricature. Scott meets her after a brief flirtation on the Internet. It's clear to anybody with a titter of wit that she's pure poison (so much for Scott's psychology). But, justifying his idiocy on the grounds that he's currently researching a thesis on the psychology of cruelty (a la Stanley Milgram) he's in like Flynn.
The action flips between garish interiors, Brighton by night and computer screens. It's all ominous shadows and harsh lights. There's lots of breasts and chests too. Anyway, Rich Bitch dumps Scott for a thug disc-jockey, so, having being tutored by his lost love, he takes to interactive porn on the Internet. He finds Sexy Sadie, who looks about as sexy as a railway sleeper. Still, whatever Sadie may lack in eroticism, she makes up for in her appetite for credit card numbers. Eventually she offers Scott "the ultimate thrill" - interactive murder.
Here at last - about 10 minutes from the end of the opening episode - is a standardisation of dramatic plot: a femme fatale paving the way for a hitherto innocent to engage in murder. Well, well, there's not a lot new in that. Instead, however, of watching, say, a film noir, we are watching a screen on which people are watching a screen. Perhaps this is exciting for younger people (allegedly, there have already been Internet-related murders in the US). But, while acknowledging its contemporary relevance, it still seems like clutter to me.
La Plante says that Killer Net is "very moralistic" in attacking the profusion of porn on the internet. Maybe it is and with three episodes still to run, it's not quite fair to judge it yet. But there are problems other than unbelievable characters. Who is it aimed at? Older people tend to be less excited by sex and computers (well, most older people) and younger people, if this is a fair representation of their lives, will be either engaged in rumpo, surfing the Net, getting stoned or doing all three at once.
It's fair enough that television should address new media technologies and it is true that regulation of TV was much simpler than regulating the Internet. For mass appeal however - if TV drama is to be informative - it does seem reasonable to expect more explanation and less flash 'n' flesh. In spite of the hyperbole spoken about the Internet, the truth is that most people are still not online. The net remains mysterious and off-putting. Killer Net, with its rather boring characters flitting between glare and paranoia, will only reinforce the exclusivity of the cyber community.
Exclusion, not exclusivity, was the theme of this week's Short Cuts: Before I Sleep. With echoes of Joyce's Ulysses, it featured Brendan Gleeson as John Harte, a recently unemployed, middle-class businessman traipsing the streets of Dublin. The title was taken from Robert Frost's poem Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening (which includes the line "And miles to go before I sleep").
In conversation at the barber's, on the DART, on a bus, Harte is prodded to pretend that he is working. "Are you busy?" asks the barber. "Kept going," he replies. "Where are you working?" Effecting casualness, Harte says: "In town." And so it goes - the spurious generalities of the person with something to hide piling one upon another. Next it's onto suburban streets and across a golf course, where golfers with mobile phones and Jackson Five outfits provide contrast with the hassled Harte. "I'm having a bad day," says one golfer in the rough.
Bad days are relative, of course. Harte visits the bank manager, where, after an exhibition of severe, bank-managerial gravitas, his request for a loan is turned down. "I'm sorry, Mr Harte. A bridging facility is out of the question in the absence of appropriate security." The bank-speak - "facility" instead of loan - emphasises the corporate inhumanity of usury. The hassled Harte moves on to visit his father in hospital, his glumness contrasting starkly with the forced bonhomie of an orderly.
In a dole queue and in a shopping centre, we see Harte through the lenses of security cameras. Always, it seems, someone is watching, not communing - just watching, watching, like some precursor world to cyberspace. Throughout the day, Harte uses public phones, suffering fob-offs and talking to answering machines. This is the impersonal world of the tiger economy, in which smarm has replaced manners and access is denied to those who need it most. It's lonely for those left on the outside.
Finally, having travelled miles (by hitching a lift because he can't afford his car insurance) following a friend's job tip-off, Harte is told that there is nothing for him. Repeatedly, we have seen shots of snow-topped hills above the city. Prompted by a bizarre Tom Hickey on the DART, the idea of heading for the lonely hills has lodged in Harte's mind. So, off he goes. Trudging through snow, he slips the burden of middle-age responsibilities by making a snowman. Briefly, he is a child again.
This was an imaginative and timely little film. Perhaps it overdid the symbolism a little. But when our contemporary Ulysses tells his snowman: "You're on your own, Mr Harte" it is a moment more existential than mawkish. Written by Paul Mercier, Before I Sleep echoes the increasing atomisation of Irish society. Like Killer Net, it is something of a cautionary tale. But it is lyrical too - a sad quest to belong in a world where the size of a person's bank balance determines the extent of their belonging.
Saddest scene of the TV week was the final minute of the final Father Ted. Having barely escaped taking up a posting to a Los Angeles ghetto parish, Ted is told by Dougal that now he'll be with his Craggy Island housemates "for ever and ever". In a sense, of course, he will, for in the public memory, Dermot Morgan's early death will freeze him as Father Ted. Dougal, Jack and Mrs Doyle may grow old but Ted will remain Ted - a human if vain incompetent now preserved for posterity.
As well as the overblown characters, the slapstick, the catchphrases, the satire and the sheer wackiness of it all, there was a kind of joy in Father Ted. It was, it should be said, often an uneven series - especially in the early days - but even its weaker episodes were never joyless. Morgan's character, though regularly smug, bumptious and patronising was never dislikable because he was so vulnerable. In tiger terms, Ted was a loser; in human terms, he was a winner.
Much has already been written about Dermot Morgan's relationship with RTE and, indeed, it is a sorry story. It would be easy to allow sentimentality blind us to the fact that Morgan wasn't always brilliant. But some simple and stark facts remain. RTE still cannot provide a quality sitcom. And, OK, the station was never offered Father Ted, so, in that sense, it did not turn it down. But because RTE, characteristically corporate and timid, has feared satire, it has suited the station's big-wigs to foster the notion that Irish people cannot produce funny TV comedy drama.
Morgan and the rest of Father Ted's Irish cast and writers have shown this notion to be nonsense. Even though it has been said before, it's still worth repeating, because watching Dermot Morgan's final performance reminded you that RTE, partly poisoned by cliques and careerism and, save us, "stars", could remain timid "for ever and ever". Dermot Morgan's death put the story in sharper focus; his final TV scene resurrected old ghosts.
It's not about using him to bash RTE for the sake of it and it should be recognised that, given its size, the station regularly does well. Fair is fair. But agendas, which not only sidelined Dermot Morgan, but do the licence-fee paying public a disservice, remain in place in Montrose. Morgan was of my generation. We saw Sean Lemass tell RTE (then Telefis Eireann) it was "an arm of government"; we saw an RTE Authority sacked; we saw Section 31; we saw Scrap Saturday and Nighthawks scrapped. That's public service broadcasting? Thanks for reminding me, Ted. Thanks.
Finally, Booked. A special Wednesday edition saw David Aaronovitch interview Gitta Sereny about her controversial new book on the child child-killer Mary Bell. It was not the most satisfactory of interviews - a half-hour (with ad break) being rather tight to cover all the philosophical and psychological ground between good and evil. Still, it did raise a number of vital questions, not least among which was the behaviour of the rat-pack press in turning Bell (now 40) and her teenage daughter into fugitives.
In a week in which British TV drama focused on the dangers and threats of new media, Booked made you realise that old media can be equally pernicious and, at present anyway, more influential. Sereny's defences for writing and agreeing to the publishing of the book are not watertight. Naivety cannot be considered an adequate defence in such a serious case. But the perverts in the press screaming about "blood money" and populist New Labour politicians, such as Tony Blair and Jack Straw, joining the chorus were truly sickening.
When you see how elements of the traditional mass-media can sanctimoniously destroy lives, maybe the cyber-nerds have good reason to remain cliquish and exclusive.