Big Women (Channel 4, Thursday)
World Cup Football (Network 2 & ITV, Tuesday)
Debut (Network 2, Wednesday)
Questions & Answers (RTE 1, Monday)
`A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," proclaimed the posters. To the strains of John Lennon's Power To The People, the opening scene of Fay Weldon's Big Women sought to recreate the mood of liberal, progressive, 1971 London. The verdict of the OZ trial was banner headline news; Carnaby Street remained en fete; hashish, hookahs and Hare Krishnas were still cool, even if, by then, they had mercifully entered a post-groovy phase.
Women's Lib (a flaccid and flabby phrase even back then, not nearly as gutsy and fibrous as "suffragettes") was gathering momentum. Feminism was fuelled by anger, middle-class Marxism and careerist revolutionaries like Germaine Greer. Football - more about that later - was beautifully uncool, even if, in the summer of 1971, genuine visionaries could see that Charlie George was artistically, if not in terms of social and political influence, superior to Ms Greer.
Anyway, having established period mood with the pop (T Rex, Mungo Jerry, Jefferson Airplane would follow) and posters of the period, Ms Weldon sought to flesh-out, in every sense, her characters. Her Big Women - as opposed to Louisa May Alcott's Little Women - led by feminist publisher Layla (Daniela Nardini; Anna in This Life); diehard Stephie (Anastasia Hillie); efficient, ordered Nancy (Kelly Spry); academic Alice (Anabelle Apsion) and bullied wife and mother Zoe (Clare Holman) turned out, however, to be as cardboard as their posters.
Really, these were characters-by-numbers, constructed to cover a range of relevant female types. There was also Daffy (Jayne Ashbourne), an airhead sex-kitten, who rather undermined the female solidarity of the project by engaging in rumpo with Hamish (Tom Mannion), Stephie's errant, chauvinist husband. "All women are traitors," said Hamish as he and Daffy got their kits off. "That's why feminism will never work," he added, with a sigh of impending sexual satisfaction.
Time has proved Hamish wrong, of course. Feminism has achieved much of what it set out to do, even, after cross-fertilisation with 1980's yuppyism, producing obnoxious power women, every bit as hideous as traditional power men. But, back in the early 1970s, there was a revolution to foment. A "consciousness-raising evening" at the trendy London home of Stephie, Hamish and their two sons, mixes wine and Marxism "Once women learn that the personal is political, all things will change," says Alice.
Right! Very good! Next, this suburban seminar gets so high on idealism and plonk that the women throw off all their clothes, dance around in the buff and found a feminist publishing house, naming it Medusa, having rejected Maenads and Artemis. Ah, isn't familiarity with classical culture a great thing for revolutionaries? Still, it was difficult to square the lecture about the sexual exploitation of women with the sight of five buxom females dancing around in the nude. Dramatic irony, I suppose. Well, dramatic, anyway.
There are three more episodes of Big Women to come. The naked idealism of the 70s will develop into the slick career culture of the present, reminding you that naked capitalism has been the real winning ism of our era. But, while this drama has the superficial appeal and populist gloss of a mini-series, its characters seem contrived to cover a large canvas. It's easy to understand their beliefs but it's hard to believe that we are expected to be understanding of them as real people.
SO, from feminism to football - one zeitgeist for another. This week, at least, the compelling drama was with football and that epic World Cup clash between England and Argentina. Like feminism, of course, football has been terribly corrupted by the flagrant pursuit of money above all else. But on the pitch, the game, when it's not destroyed by fat, controlling bullies in suits, inadequate referees and faking players, can remain rivetting and engrossing - a sometimes sublime antidote to the effeteness of what nowadays passes for civilised life and the vulgarity of what regularly passes for art.
There's always an added edge here when England are involved. Infused with much of the derision heaped upon British, especially English, football is the nauseating whiff of soccer snobbery. The Premiership, with its vulgar, wham-bam excitements - often, it is true, at the expense of technique and subtlety - might be alright for uncouth muck savages like you and me. But the appalling would-be connoisseurs, affecting spurious knowingness and sophistication sneer pompously at the English game. They are sport's equivalent of suburban wine snobs: inflated, pretentious and overbearingly boring.
Of course, for Irish viewers, it's easy to cheer on England's opponents. There's history; England's tonally spirited but lyrically ludicrous anthem (eulogising a queen who was sufficiently concerned about the national mood not to know what time the match would kick-off); a high proportion of repulsive, thuggish fans and too many insufferably arrogant and, frankly, rather stupid, cliche-spewing pundits.
It is true that no country which permits discourse about "the boy X (add `y' to the end of this surname) using his left peg to hit the back stick" should be allowed win the World Cup. Language, after all, to rework Bill Shankly's overquoted dictum about football, often really is a matter of life and death. But the courage, skill and commitment against Argentina of England's Premiership players - the blokes good enough for many of us, if not for the chancers, to watch throughout the season - exposed the ignorance of the snobs.
Liam Brady, a former star of England's and Italy's top divisions, thereby displaying characteristic positional nous, predicted on RTE that England would beat Argentina, seven of whose first eleven play in Italy. So, it was a draw and England lost on penalties after a night of splendid television drama. But Brady was vindicated and the tiresome wine-bores of our sporting press were made to look like the dregs. The Brady-Giles combination on RTE is not, to borrow Brady's phrase about Nigeria, an explosive "circus team". But it's got enough perception and, better still, bubbling animosity, for me.
Mind you, RTE sport needs a winner. Introducing The Sunday Game this week, Michael Lyster told us that Louth were playing "the All Ireland champions Meath". It must have been a shock to the players and people of Kerry. So, it was just a slip, albeit an unforgivable slip. But then there was the captioning of Paddy Clarke, manager of the "Lough" team - some new, sub-aqueous county, perhaps? This is too sloppy, as, regularly, are the sports results on Sundays after the Six- One News. Anyway, watch out for Lough coming from the deep next year.
There was a more gentle kind of drama on Debut this week. Opening with Freesia Of Eden and concluding with To The Mountain, these short films were in sharp contrast to the raucousness of Big Women and the thrilling football. At times both of them, particularly the opener, veered towards undue sentimentality. But they had merits too - reminding you that quiet, thoughtful television drama still deserves a place in the schedules.
In Gemma Mullen's Freesia Of Eden, a dying grandfather supervised a child's tending of a beloved garden. Competitive to the last, like, whether people like to admit it or not, England's football team, the grandfather wants his garden to better his neighbour's. But, with time running out, he hits on a means to pass on his mantle to the boy. He tells the child that he's had a phone-call from God, instructing him to take over the job of heaven's gardener. Soppy, perhaps, but not spuriously soppy in New Man mode. A shot of the dead grandfather's folded wheelchair, his tartan blanket draped over one its arms was splendid.
Jean Pasley'sTo The Mountain was set in a retirement home. There, an elderly man and a woman with cancer dream of escaping. Their mountain, though inspired by literature, is not literal. It is the home itself. So, they climb up on the roof, celebrating life for a final time. Curiously, they used a small anchor instead of climbing equipment to do this. But that's just a detail. With their ascent, they, and we, were young again. Oh, there was corniness if you looked for it. But there was celebration here too. Good stuff.
Finally, Questions & Answers. Kevin Myers and Nell McCafferty clashed over language on the rather diverse subjects of Drumcree and prostitution. He attacked her over "the kind of vocabulary" she was using in speaking about Drumcree and Northern politics. She told him to "sensitise his language" in relation to his views on prostitution. It was an interesting confrontation which pointed up how people's use of words, even on a visual medium like television, is crucial.
McCafferty - with her studied, pretension-busting plain-speak, and Myers - with his studied, mock-Victorian pomp-speak, reminded us that the way you say something can be as determining as what you say. When he spoke about the Good Friday agreement "bringing joy to my heart" and about a young woman being "wickedly murdered" by the Grand Canal recently, they sounded like the sort of phrases used in Jack the Ripper's time. With feminism and football dominant in the schedules, even without Questions & Answers, words were always going to have a hard enough time of it this week. Enough said.