The young and the restless

TV REVIEW : How the Irish Have SexTV3, Tuesday My GenerationRTÉ1, Tuesday Dispatches: The Hidden World of Lap DancingChannel 4, Monday SeoigeRTÉ1, Monday to Friday

'YOUNG PEOPLE OF Ireland, I love you." On the occasion of Pope John Paul II's visit to Ireland in 1979, when, during a youth Mass, he uttered those famous words to the ecstatic throngs of eager, spotted youths littering the Phoenix Park, I was twiddling my thumbs in an empty hamburger restaurant, staring at the macho wall murals and waiting for the drip-feed of my hungry generation to make its way downtown for a Hawaiian burger and fries. Apparently, though, Ireland's youth were too full of sanctifying grace to bother with a quarter-pounder; tips that night were lousy.

I was reminded of that time while watching TV3's ambitious new six-part series, How the Irish Have Sex,an examination of Irish sexuality by means of the "real-life stories of real-life Irish people". That seminal moment in Phoenix Park (after which John Paul penned The Theology of the Bodyand his young communicants attempted to live virtuously) was a point of reference for a number of the programme's contributors, the fortysomethings who, along with reminiscences from older couples and blow-by-blow accounts from a couple of frothy youngsters, offered, for this, the opening programme, their memories of virginity; hoarding it, and losing it. The stories were told with commendable honesty, including (from the era of JP's emotionally challenging declaration) a recollection of a tryst up against the bathroom wall of a Parisian youth hostel (while on a school trip with some happily oblivious Sisters of Mercy) and one man's memory of the joys of discovering a sense of belonging in Dublin's pioneering Hirschfeld Centre, a mecca for Dublin's tentative, and heavily fringed, young gay and lesbian population.

Excavating sex and the Irish is a gargantuan task for any TV series, and this rather unflashy production initially seemed like a bit of an anti-climax (sorry), but cumulatively, with future programmes looking at sex education, monogamy and 21st-century sex (what?), How the Irish Have Sexmay add up to a worthy sociological document. Interestingly, bar contributions from a lively 21-year-old bisexual (who was filmed belting around a field in what appeared to be a souped-up lawnmower but was probably some cutting-edge boy toy), all the participants referenced religion. Some expressed feelings of alienation and bitterness towards a self-devouring Catholic Church, whose skewed mores complicated their burgeoning sexuality; others, the more devout (and older), talked of how the solemn and weighty commitment made in marriages before the eyes of God had led to a kind of peace and unity of purpose. From "truck-stop sex" to lifelong devotion, the series continues for the next five weeks.

SEX WAS CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENTfrom the other sociological investigation into the Irish psyche this week, RTÉ's My Generation, made in conjunction with the Irish Examiner, which commissioned an MRBI survey into the prevailing attitudes, beliefs, hopes and fears of today's teenagers. The first of two programmes saw presenter Anna Nolan hanging out with a bunch of Dublin teenagers to find out what it means to negotiate adolescence in the Noughties. Next week, thoroughly straddling the rural/urban divide, Roisín Duffy will report from Co Donegal.

Presumably my own malign preconceptions were getting in the way of what I was watching, but it seemed that the sample groups of teens featured this week were surprisingly mild-mannered, entirely likable and responsible young people. Their bottom line, regardless of which end of the social spectrum they were populating (Nolan interviewed girls from Stanhope Street School in Stoneybatter and boys from Terenure College), was that they all wanted an education, a chance to socialise without getting their heads kicked in, and a bit of luck to make it through the labyrinthine maze of the points system. Surprisingly, Nolan (who is usually not afraid to shine a light through the fog of Irish sexuality) didn't ask the teens if they were sexually active, while other possible avenues of conversation, such as depression, parental problems and suicide, also remained unexplored in the programme.

Filmed heading into Wesley disco with their leggy, peroxide-blonde girlfriends (who looked like they had just strangled the last drop out of the fake-tan bottle), one got a sense that the polite boys were actually revealing very little of their complex private lives, but I suppose it's one thing to fill in an anonymous survey, another to chat to the nation about what rattles your cage and rings your bell.

What did come across, though, were the stark differences between the classes. One sweet young South African child, who came to Ireland after the death of her mother, takes four buses a day to attend school from a flat in Blanchardstown, getting home at 7.30 in the evening, having shopped to cook for her sister and brother-in-law. "Education is everything," she decreed fervently. Watching the buoyant, infantilised youth kicking around my own neighbourhood, and listening to the Terenure boys describe the "hockey wars" that take place between rival girls' schools in communal discos (one pictures flying Ugg boots and splattered juicy tubes), one wonders just how much commonality a single generation really shares.

IT WAS KIND OFdifficult to avoid sex this week, especially if (purely for academic reasons, you understand) one tuned into Dispatches: The Hidden world of Lap Dancing. The programme sent an earnest young undercover investigative reporter called Peter off to find out what goes on in Britain's lap-dancing clubs, which, since the British government liberalised the licensing laws (in order, apparently, to encourage a cafe society), have been proliferating along its high streets.

Peter, who looked a little uneasy with the enormity of the task assigned him, bravely gelled his hair, smoothed his suit, swallowed his nerves and went to do his duty. During the course of his investigations, from Newquay to the West End of Londinium, he was sat on, swivelled on and simulated over (and no, despite what you may be thinking, that was just a hidden camera in his pocket). Peter was shocked: "It's a very strange experience." Things got (literally) a little too close for comfort, especially when the lad was offered any kind of sex he chose to indulge in by the European-sounding lass who grabbed his crotch with a kind of territorial ferocity (Peter even said "ouch").

It looked bleak, the awful lives of the women who pay the clubs for the privilege of swivelling their buttocks in some fool's face and who then have to work like panting clockwork dollies to get themselves into profit for their evening's labours. And yes, without doubt, Peter experienced "personal sexual encounters" of the most graphic and blatant sort, even though current UK licensing laws say that's not supposed to happen. But was it really necessary to repeat, again and again, the footage of simulated masturbation and posteriors gyrating a couple of centimetres from Pete's bobbing Adam's apple? There was more than a little bit of prurience going on here. I suppose it all seemed desperately hard-hitting in the editing suite, but it left the viewer strangely, voyeuristically, complicit.

SPEAKING OF HARD-WORKINGladies giving it their all, the Seoige sisters have been launched for the season on RTÉ. Seoige,their afternoon show, offers a daily dose of shiny hair, flawless foundation, pert ankles and unblemished chat. From the off, the sisters appeared to be brimming with confidence, and Gráinne, who saw off her former presenting partner, Joe O'Shea (apparently he had an allergy to Sunsilk), seems more relaxed with her subordinate, if somewhat more spirited little sister, Síle, by her side.

The show offered serious and sympathetic Seoiges when doing the human-interest, tot-survives-drowning slot, and sunny Seoiges when exploring the Fair City set with breathless exhilaration. The sisters also said "wow, that's incredible" quite often, especially when the gravely solemn studio astrologer discussed his aura-spotting. It's a dangerous business, the old aura revelations, let me tell you: once, Fergus (the astrologer) saw a black aura hanging over a schoolfriend, and that very night - hang on to your hats - the friend . . . died.

Not that such silliness would put a stop to the sisters' relentless march. No, no, these girls are as impervious to fickle fate as they are to shallow criticism. They've got the tresses, they've got the industrial confidence, the discipline, the ambition, and the Teflon-coated corporate sheen.

And you know what, even their auras get a blow-dry.

tvreview@irish-times.ie