TV Review/Shane Hegarty: The people at Fox News are confused, a little hurt even. They can kind of understand why those dreadful Iraqi and Chinese journalists ask the wrong questions at the Qatar Central Command briefings, but on Wednesday there was a guy with an Australian accent hounding the US military spokesman over the Baghdad marketplace bombing. "An Australian accent!" repeated the news anchor. Of all the darn things for a journalist to have.
War coverage, all channels
The X-Files, BBC2, Sunday
2003 Academy Awards, Network 2 and BBC1, Monday
They watch the news briefings with a look of puzzlement that sends cracks through their make-up. The front row at these things is always made up of American journalists. Good journalists, who ask good questions and get a pat on the head and a treat in return. Behind them, however, sit the other journalists - Arab journalists, British journalists, journalists with Australian accents - and they are not asking good questions at all.
The media was promised a McWar. A war they wouldn't have to wait for, that would be quickly finished and with minimum guilt. The army even brought the journalists along for the ride so that they could see it happen. Now that they're there, though, they're reporting on how the swift attack isn't so swift and the "liberated" don't look so liberated. The allies waited until the mess and mud and blood to point out that it would be messy, muddy and bloody and now face the one thing that the media does very well: a backlash.
If the people at Fox News start watching British television they will want to declare war on it. There is more than a hint of distaste not just among the usual suspects on Channel 4 and Newsnight, but on the prime-time BBC bulletins too. There are as many pieces questioning the tactics and spin of the allies as there are straightforward reports on the action. Many of the BBC's top correspondents were schooled in the insolence of Newsnight and it is showing.
While Sky News still indulges itself in its war fetish, its correspondent in Qatar, Geoff Meade, is frequently found posing the more awkward questions at news conferences. In the studio there is a military analyst, Francis Tusa, who is forthright and dramatic in his naysaying.
"That is not at all going according to plan!" he gasps, while strafing the Skystrator map with arrows and tanks and little mushroom clouds.
RTÉ has proved an increasingly good bet too. That it lacks immediacy is actually proving an advantage during a conflict in which the 24-hour channels feel the need to convey every rumour and speculate about every bang. Reports contain disclaimers about sources. Its bulletins are uncluttered by unnecessary graphics. Richard Downes's dispatches from Baghdad have been excellent and tinged with a gathering gloom about what awaits the city. Mark Little's patience in northern Iraq is paying off, and in the meantime he has filed informative reports from an area with less of the flash and bang that diverts attention elsewhere.
Charlie Bird, meanwhile, is still in Kuwait City. When he leaves you will know that the war is either over or that it will last a very long time. Last week, he admitted that his information comes from the US and UK military briefings. Charlie, his tan lit by the neon skyline, could be as well informed at home on his settee. The drama, of course, would not quite be the same.
In this part of the world, the marketplace bombing was the main story of Wednesday. On Fox News and NBC it was mentioned only so that it could be dismissed. NBC gave it no more than 20 seconds. Fox News spent the day calling the story "a lie", suggesting that the Iraqi government may have fired on its own people. Its Operation Iraqi Freedom graphic, by the way, includes a jet firing off a missile before transforming into a golden eagle. Fox News mocks Iraqi TV's constant rotation of poems to Saddam and newsreaders in military uniform. Then it turns to a reporter dressed in fatigues who tells us how much the troops love George Bush.
Across all channels, however, the reasons for the war are still treated as an impediment to the unfolding narrative. On Wednesday, every channel carried live pictures of George Bush's rabble-rousing speech to the troops in Florida, including the prayer that preceded it and Bush's invocation of god's will ("We thank god that liberty found such brave defenders)."
Later that night, only CNN and BBC News 24 brought live coverage of Kofi Annan's speech to the UN Security Council about the impending humanitarian crisis. The United Nations? Is that old thing still around?
The finding of chemical protection suits was treated by US networks as the evidence of chemical weapons that they had almost forgotten they were looking for. They should search the US army supplies too. They'll find plenty of evidence there. Meanwhile, by the end of the week we were being shown more pictures of Iraqis being given aid than we ever saw of the 10 years of sanctions that made these people so desperate and hungry in the first place.
Last weekend, BBC2 screened the final episode ever of The X-Files, reuniting Fox Mulder and Dana Scully after a year apart. Within moments of their meeting, Mulder was searching for the truth at the back of Scully's throat.
There was a time when the question of whether Mulder and Scully would ever kiss preoccupied the western world, but then The X-Files used to preoccupy the western world. Media professors wrote treatises on the show. Books were published that picked at it, episode by episode, in an effort to understand its popularity, its message, its significance. It spawned spin-offs and a movie. It made stars of Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny. It influenced the look of television drama. For a few years no new show could be made unless it featured a telepathic detective and was lit by a 20-watt bulb.
Then the calendar went and ruined it all by flipping over to a new century. Never has a show been made so instantly irrelevant. All that pre-millennial tension suddenly seemed so pre-millennial. The obsession with conspiracy and apocalypse was an embarrassment to be consigned to the bookstore bargain bins and TV nostalgia shows. People just didn't get abducted by aliens as much as they used to.
The final episode had Mulder on trial for murder, giving a chance for major characters to reappear and for the script to tell you what it was about all along. On the off-chance that you still wonder, it had to do with a pre-Ice Age virus that called home and invited the rest of the family to come and join it on Earth. The US government stamped the alien passports at Roswell in 1947 before helping them create a human/alien hybrid slave race ruled by immortal super-soldiers. The final invasion is scheduled for December 22nd, 2012. That information should save you a small fortune in Christmas presents.
Ultimately, The X-Files came to a halt with the grace of an old car running out of petrol while carrying a puncture. Both script and cast seemed keen only to get this thing over with. Nothing about the episode suggested that behind the ghosts, goblins and geeks it was once a smart, self-aware piece of work with real style. It ended with Mulder and Scully snuggling on a bed and discussing the end of the world. "Maybe there is hope after all," suggested Mulder. Only through cable TV re-runs.
RTE's imported 2003 Academy Awards package didn't show Michael Moore's Oscar speech ("Any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up"). Instead he was shoved to the closing credits medley of all the categories you're not interested in, alongside Best Hair and the like. You could just catch him mouth the word "war" as he waved his Oscar with all the impudence of a man who will probably bring it home and use it as a book-end in the downstairs toilet.
The highlights, though, found plenty of room for the 59 previous winners wheeled in on a giant, portable platform and introduced one by one. If that platform had gone out of control it would have plunged theCalifornian cosmetic surgery industry into deep crisis. Waving at the cameras with all the exuberance of Late Late Show audience members, the elder stars had character and experience written in their faces. They should get that fixed. The younger stars have all their character and experience tucked somewhere behind their ears. Some of those who received awards in the 1980s look younger now than they did then. Mary Steenburgen is a waxier, bustier, ever-so-slightly more surprised version of the woman who charmed us all in Back To The Future III. Barbra Streisand is recognisable only by her nasal records. Nip and tuck, it's the American way.