Reality reaching its limits

TV REVIEW:TV's fascination with the insides of people's bodies was something of a step too far, while RTE's strengths continued to lie in news and current affairs.

TELEVISION, A LITTLE like your simmering turkey risotto, is made up of decent meaty bits, irritating stringy bits, bits that you'd like to secrete under your napkin, and occasionally, surprisingly tender and memorable mouthfuls. Here then are a few titbits, a few television memories from an unpredictable year, a year in which we watched the Celtic Tiger getting smoked out of his lair, in which we witnessed enough rain to drown Dr Gloucester, and during which we sat back and watched in wonder as the US elected a black man to the White House.

I should warn you, though, that the following is an entirely personal and idiosyncratic view, given that the compiler (that would be me) has a deep-seated antipathy towards sci-fi, shaggy-dog dramas, football and anything to do with time travel, forwards or back. Oh, and I also cannot stand David Tennant, so anything he was in remained on my cutting-room floor (basically almost the BBC's entire oeuvre).

2008, like the rest of the millennium so far, was dominated by reality TV. The fad is no longer a fad, the whimsy is no longer so whimsical. Channel 4, it would appear, is almost wall-to-wall reality. Don't ask me what the programmes were called, but over the course of the year I've not only watched hundreds of boob-jobs, imploding, exploding and front-loading, but have also witnessed vacuous mothers and their gormless, dewy-eyed daughters (a camera crew tethered around their stringy necks) rattling their hair extensions in excitement as they queued up for matching vaginal reconstructions. My telly has hosted sheaths of human tissue crisping under shiny yellow antiseptic, as an army of wannabes had every orifice realigned and redesigned, all diligently filmed for our voracious consumption. It seems there is no end to TV's fascination with the inside of other people's bodies.

MEANWHILE, ON THE external self-improvement front, Gok Wan, who grows increasingly sinister and even a little sadistic, led the charge against artificiality (give me a break) by dumping a bevy of lovely girls in a dilapidated empty swimming pool and hosing them down with a water cannon to remove their slap. Also on the reality merry-go-round, Big Brother, certainly the genre's elder sibling, slumbered unnoticed in the corner, while in I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, yet more kooks in khaki sucked up maggot juice in the outback and Robert Kilroy-Silk's dentures retrieved plastic stars from dishes of frenzied rats, tails whipping.

On the cryogenic front, Bruce Forsyth is still thawing. His current sinecure, Strictly Come Dancing, saw John Sergeant revolting in his tuxedo as he eschewed dancefloor notoriety by cleverly volunteering to leave the series before the everybody-loves-a-loser public voted him king of the linoleum. The other gargantuan TV juggernaut, The X Factor, saw Cheryl Cole visibly shrink as, week after sopping week, she leaked great big splashy tears all over the judges' console, winning the hearts of Simon Cowell and the great big weepy British public.

Elsewhere, in the kitchen, Gordon Ramsay washed his mouth out with carbolic soap and led us all in the communal Cookalong Live. Finally, on Living TV, Jade Goody obliged her producers by getting cervical cancer while filming Living With Jade, which somehow stretched the reality genre, for me, about as far as I could bear to witness.

On the drama front there was, in my humble opinion, really only one new series to blow one's socks off, and that was Mad Men. Created by Matthew Weiner, of The Sopranos fame, Mad Men is a beautifully written and crisply visual evocation of Madison Avenue in the 1950s, when the American dream was cobbled together by a bunch of "creatives", Brylcreemed ad men propped up by neurotic girls in dirndl skirts and roll-ons while their back-combed wives smouldered in the suburbs.

Mad Men remains one of the only programmes I will set the recorder for, although recently Wallander (starring Kenneth Branagh and based on the work of bestselling Swedish detective novelist Henning Mankell) has come to the BBC. It's a visually fresh and well-acted series that has again got my fingers twitching over the record button.

I'm afraid the latest helpings of Heroes, Lost and Spooks have left me pretty cold. After a while, the plots of these epics begin, like neglected plasticine, to roll into one another, creating a dun-brown space in my psyche. Hey, it's an occupational hazard.

As usual, the Beeb rattled out a few Sunday-night classic dramatisations, of which the best, and darkest, was Tess of the D'Urbervilles, memorably beautiful in its painterly way. But it was ITV's Lost in Austen that extended this genre's possibilities, with the punky Jemima Roper almost bagging Mr Darcy by falling through a cupboard in her bathroom (and yes, I know I said I can't bear time travel . . .)

And speaking of time travel, one of the television casualties of the year was Keeley Hawes, an actress with all the allure of a coat-hanger, who pretty much blew it for the rest of the cast of Ashes to Ashes, a lame and painfully self-conscious follow-up to the successful Life on Mars.

Closer to our own hearth, in a fallow year for home-grown drama, RTÉ produced the moving and intense Whistleblower, a two-part dramatisation of the Michael Neary case, and an intelligent adaptation of Eugene O'Brien's play, Eden. Less successful, although with some balls, was the raunchy if irritating Raw, which looked pretty good but was badly in need of a script. Oh, and there was Bitter Sweet, a carbuncle on the arse of our affluence, which dissected the lives of three thirty/fortysomething women as they overcame the travails associated with libidinous home helps and needy toy boys.

RTÉ'S STRENGTH CONTINUES to reside in news, current affairs and documentaries. Its US election coverage was terrific; Prime Time Investigates remained a seriously good strand; and my particular favourite, Arts Lives, continued to provide poignant and provocative insights into the lives of contemporary Irish artists. The Arts Lives film which has stayed with me is Patrick McCabe: Blood Relations, a wry, evocative perusal of the writer's life and work.

Oh dear, there really isn't enough paper to mop up the spillages from this year's crop. TV3 bravely banged out an Irish version of The Apprentice; Vincent Browne stuck with his ship and steadily continued to pull his Nightly News through the fog; Pat Kenny survived another year of The Late Late Show without total atrophy; and Ryan Tubridy insistently plied his banality across a year of Saturday nights.

One good-news story that must be mentioned is TG4, in its entirety really. In particular, the Irish-language channel distinguished itself again for quality documentaries and films, from both established and novice film-makers. I am inundated with DVDs from this sharp station, and get to review little more than the tip of the iceberg from a body of work that reveals consistent professionalism and commitment to new ideas. If you routinely flick past TG4, make a New Year's resolution to check it out - and if, like me, you struggle with the lingo, don't be put off, just read the subtitles.

As for home-grown comedy, er, let me just find my notes . . .

tvreview@irishtimes.com

THE BEST AND THE WORST ON THE BOX

THE FIVE BEST

Mad Men (BBC)

As good as TV drama gets: crisp script, nicotine sticks, the superb David Hamm.

Wallander (BBC)

Kenneth Branagh in fields of rape without his razor - welcome escapism.

Arts Lives (RTÉ)

A consistently excellent strand illuminating the spirit behind the works.

Life in Cold Blood (BBC)

David Attenborough bids farewell to life on earth.

Imagine (BBC)

Alan Yentob's strange cornucopia of stories looking at the world through the power of art.

FIVE TO AVOID

Supersize vs Superskinny (Channel 4)

A festival of vomiting and gorging, camping on the shores of madness.

The Rose of Tralee (RTÉ)

It's 50 next year - I'm already experiencing sleepless nights in anticipation.

The Duchess in Hull (ITV)

Sarah Ferguson roughing it up north. Best-ever line from a narrator: "When asked whether they'd rather sleep with the princess or a goat, 82 per cent of men questioned chose the goat." Cruel.

I'd Do Anything (BBC)

Lord Lloyd Webber looking for his Nancy.

Bonekickers (BBC)

Dumpy archaeologists with all the charisma of a trowel lose themselves in a plotless farce.

FIVE BOX-SETS

The Wire

Pure Baltimore genius.

The Complete West Wing

Watching this worked for Barack Obama - who knows what it will do for you.

The Tudors

Sex'n'drugs'n'pox'n'roll and Johnny Rhys Meyers (right) in tights.

Mad Men

The perfect pitch.

The Jane Austen BBC Collection

Love in a bonnet, chick-lit with shelf-life.