Rights, and many wrongs

TV REVIEW: Prime Time InvestigatesRTÉ1, Monday, Would You Believe?RTÉ1, Sunday, Living with JadeLiving TV, Sunday, Right to Die?Sky Real Lives, Wednesday

HOLD ON, I just have to defrost my fingers before I can start juicing this keyboard. God, I'm cold. I'm beginning to take these metallic skies, and the wind that bites my quaking knees like shrapnel, a little personally. But my discomfort is of the entirely fey variety. Almost a decade into mankind's newest millennium, and I am one of the lucky ones. I can twitter on about my numb posterior, or get up off it and access heat, light and an environmentally crushing power shower at the flick of a switch. It's not always so simple.

For Prime Time Investigates, reporter Barry O'Kelly spent a couple of months last summer (remember summer, the wet season between arctic chills?) taking, as he said, "a snapshot" of the lives of Travellers, a much-maligned and often misunderstood section of Irish society - or so the common parlance goes. On the basis of his report, when it comes to the Travelling community we appear to use a veneer of tolerance and the language of inclusion to mask fear and distaste.

O'Kelly's documentary, which was absolutely riveting, revealed a diverse community that finds itself tarred with a single brush. On the one hand, we saw settled Travellers in modest estates, their mahogany dressers buckling under the weight of ornamentation; on the other, families living on unsupported halting sites without light, heat or sanitation, washing from buckets and defecating in fields where simmering rubbish tips spread like rashes across a broken muddy landscape. Either way, we are, it would seem, a long way from facilitating the Traveller culture, never mind assuaging the concerns of its antagonists within the settled community.

The report was littered with amateur footage of Travellers engaged in internecine warfare on the streets of Mullingar earlier this year, showing scenes of vicious rioting in which pitchforks and paving slabs were hurled by angry gangs. This rioting, O'Kelly reported, was often sparked by unresolved bare-fist fights, brutal contests that leave young men angry in defeat or baying for further victories. And when one articulate young Traveller asked O'Kelly if he would want members of her community living next to him, he answered her as honestly as he could. "I dunno," he said, "depends on the Traveller."

But many Travellers don't want to be penned into one of the country's endless vacant estates; they ask, simply, for running water, electricity and a place to halt. Even this apparently straightforward request, however, seems beyond our political capacity. Offaly County Council chairman Barry Cowen, brother of the Taoiseach, reluctantly waltzed across the mudbath of the well-named Kilmucklin, site of a stand-off between the council and the Travellers, the former refusing to collect waste or provide basic facilities, the latter refusing to move. Cowen, with his grim countenance and wary stance, looked like a symbol of official unease.

The most visually startling scene in the film followed a ringleted young bride, almost drowning in a sea of ruffled snow-white lace, as she was transported from her home on a site in Finglas in a Cinderella carriage shaped like a fairytale pumpkin, her many immaculate bridesmaids (sheathed in polka-dot by her wedding planner, Otto - now there's a documentary) cruising along behind her in a stretch limousine. On Otto's advice, the young couple had their wedding reception under an assumed name, as some hoteliers are not shy about exercising their power to discriminate.

O'Kelly's conclusion, however, was that the Travellers themselves are a culture in conflict, one that prides itself on family, religion and belief but whose traditions, in the current climate, contribute to unemployment, illiteracy and reduced life expectancy. Thought-provoking stuff.

MAYBE MARY ROBINSON, when she returns home from her current sojourn in New York, will sort us all out. To coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Would You Believe, a gently provocative strand described by its makers as a "spiritual documentary series", offered a portrait of the former president of Ireland, whose humanitarian work continues with a plethora of organisations, and especially as head of Realising Rights: the Ethical Globalisation Initiative.

From South Africa to New York and the Middle East, reporter Róisín Duffy had the enviable job of accompanying Robinson on a daunting round of meetings and fact-finding missions. Robinson, whose composure has often been misinterpreted as coldness, described how it became necessary to learn to cauterise her emotional responses to human suffering, in order to be the most powerful advocate she could be for people who are, essentially, powerless.

She described her childhood as a pensive doctor's daughter in Ballina and how, despite (or maybe because of) an education that included (briefly) finishing school in France and student days at Harvard, she was wholly unprepared for the wrath of holy Catholic Ireland when she came into conflict with it over the availability of contraceptives. Now, on the world stage, Robinson is described as a gift from our nation by admirers ranging from Al Gore and Archbishop Tutu to women living with the realities of poverty and war.

It was moving and nostalgic to watch archive of Robinson's astounding presidential election victory in 1990. When you saw her, flanked by a tight-lipped Brian Lenihan, a scowling Charles Haughey and a tender young Dick Spring, who looked a little stunned, you asked yourself how it ever happened.

Talking about climate change as she played with her grandchildren, Robinson, in her signature measured way, said 2050 is not looking good. It is time, she smiled, "to put abstract principles into action". This is a woman who reserves her emotions for issues worth fighting over.

OH, HELL'S BELLS, as my dear departed father would have said, from the sublime to the deeply, disturbingly ridiculous. Having resolved to take a leaf out of our Mary's book and replace my heretofore violent emotionalism with considered intellectual responses, I unfortunately stumbled at the first hurdle. Thanks to the wonders of technology, I flicked directly from Robinson to Living with Jade, a howling pit of television madness, a bedlam in the 'burbs, as Jade Goody, reality queen and basket case, played out her doleful role in front of a grainy camera. This was a kind of mental crucifixion, and if I had the balls to stick with a New Year's resolution, it would be this: I will never again lend my eyes to reality TV makers.

Okay, so Jade has been having a hard time: she hasn't had a gig for a year, she shot herself in the plastic stiletto by bullying Shilpa Shetty, her phone don't ring, her ex is in the slammer, and she and her two distracted-looking children are hoofing around an empty house in celebrityshire with an incontinent dachshund and nothing to do all day but clean the mirrors. Well, once in a while, she'd shovel herself into a frock and turn up at a Botox bash - until, that is she decided to go into the fitness business.

Having just viewed archive of Robinson visiting Somalian feeding stations, it was predictably galling to witness Goody's attempts to open a fat clinic staffed by corpulent blokes in fatigues barking orders at a couple of exhausted-looking Teletubbies in weep-proof mascara. It was shortly after that attempt at commercial viability, however, and while she was a surprise housemate on Indian Big Brother (don't ask), that, in a shocking twist of reality, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

Goody's treatment and tribulations, already the fodder of the tabloids, will continue to eat up the hours on Living TV. This barely articulate woman, who doesn't want "inherinated" wealth but wants to be remembered for achieving something, is scheduled to beat out her time with her illness on the box, while her fickle public yawn and stretch and scratch their bottoms. What a brutal fate.

THE TELEVISION STORY of the week was the assisted suicide of Craig Ewert, which was filmed as part of Oscar-winning director John Zaritsky's documentary, Right to Die?, shown on Sky's digital channel, Real Lives. The documentary showed Ewert, who suffered from motor neurone disease, swallowing a lethal dose of barbiturates at a Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. Having imbibed the dose through a straw, he fell asleep, went into a coma, and within 30 minutes was dead. He died in peace, in the presence of his wife Mary, with a Swiss doctor and with the film crew whom Ewert had invited to witness his parting.

There have been and will continue to be many miles of column inches on the rights of individuals to choose to take their own lives, and on the inherent risk of condoning assisted suicide. All week, from opposing viewpoints, disability rights campaigners and people with degenerative diseases have been filling studio chairs, seeking a clarification of the legal position on this extraordinarily complex and emotive issue. Both sides deserve the dignity and respect that was shown to Ewert during his final days in Switzerland, when he was preparing to let go of his life and explaining his reasons for doing so. Whatever one's view of his decision, this documentary was, in my opinion, a responsible, non-sensationalist contribution to an important debate.

I hope he has found the peace he sought.