IN a week without one home grown programme worthy of note, RTE trumpeted the arrival of Savannah, the latest offering from Hollywood's sultan of TV schlock, Aaron Spelling. Set in the deep South, it's a sort of Beverly Hills 90210 meets Dynasty on the set of Charlie's Angels, centring around three Southern belles, ostensibly the best off friends. Reese is sweet, blonde and virginal, and betrothed to Travis. But Travis is sleeping on the sly with bad girl Peyton, who secretly resents Reese's wealth. Lane, the third of the trio, has returned from New York where her career as a journalist isn't going too well ("I'm always hoping for that call from Tina Brown" was one of many mind boggling lines).
Reese's father turned out to be, Ray Wise, who played Laura Palmer's dad in Twin Peaks. In one memorable episode of that series his hair turned white overnight from shock, which looks on the cards again if the gals keep on the way they're going. I warmed instantly to Toni, as the only character who didn't have a surname for a first name, but even more so when he turned out to be a conman bent on destroying the whole darned lot of them.
Savannah marks an attempt to return to the glory days of 1980s soap, but camp just ain't what it used to be, and it's difficult to see audiences in the 1990s falling for this cheap looking stuff. Even the camerawork looked old fashioned - no shadows, no steadicam, no ridiculously fast editing. Back to the drawing board, Aaron.
THOSE prurient folk at Modern Times hit on a rich vein this week - couples who have a wide age disparity between them - but God only knows why these three unfortunate pairs agreed to subject themselves to the relentless gaze of a documentary crew. Veneta is 18, her husband Mike is 50; he's a soft porn photographer and encouraged her to become a stripper. In the cold, fluorescent light of a half empty working men's club, Mike watched approvingly as Veneta peeled herself like a ripe plum for the delectation of the bored looking punters. It seemed to confirm all our worst suspicions about dirty old men, but in comparison with the other two couples, Mike and Veneta didn't come out badly. They were both damaged people who seemed to be good for each other in their own peculiar ways.
Meanwhile, 28 year old Stephen looked like Charles Manson and claimed to have found marital bliss with 56 year old Virginia. At first you feared to Virginia, but as time went on it became apparent, that she knew what she was doing. The couple had cut off communications years before with Stephen's mother, who had expressed some tentative concerns about having a daughter in law older than herself. Whenever she tried to write to her son, Virginia promptly returned the letters unopened. Stephen seemed satisfied enough, in a potentially psychopathic kind of way, playing heavy metal riffs in his playroom while Virginia tinkled the pianola downstairs.
At first glance the most "normal" couple appeared to be cuddly, amiable Alan (44) and A level student Kathryn (17), who had worked out a satisfactory modus vivendi with Kathryn's family. Alan regularly slept over at the family house, to such an extent that her parents had asked him to buy a double bed for her room. It seemed that he was quite happy to settle into the bosom of this ready made family. "He sent me a card for Father's Day," said Kathryn's dad incredulously. It was only when you saw her at school that you realised how young Kathryn was, and wondered what the hell her parents were really thinking.
THERE'S a cross generational love affair brewing up like a nice cup of decaff low fat latte in Friends, where Tom Selleck has arrived to woo Monica (Courteney Cox). Poor old Courteney badly needed some plot development to liven up her underwritten character, perpetually in the shade of kooky Phoebe and cutesy Rachel. Monica is obsessively neat, she can't get a steady boyfriend and she's Ross's sister that's about all anyone can say about her. In this week's episode she found herself arguing with Rachel to use of the last condom in the house she lost, as usual. The condom gag, apparently, was regarded as pretty daring stuff for American television, inquiring umpteen script meetings and phalanxes of lawyers. The upshot of all that expensive advice was that you never saw the thing and you never heard the word mentioned.
It's difficult to believe two red blooded twentysomething heterosexual women sharing an apartment in Manhattan would not be fully equipped for battle in their own rooms, rather than having to squabble over shared contraceptives kept in the bathroom, but Friends exists in a strange parallel universe where New York is an all white city, there are no fat people and nobody takes drugs. It's easy to complain about the show's smugness, but in the past, each episode yielded one or two good jokes. Lately, though, both cast and script have started to descend into the self satisfaction that eventually does for every American sitcom (with the exception of Cheers) As Friends started off self satisfied, it doesn't have as far to fall as, say, Roseanne. Jennifer Aniston in particular is set upon becoming America's New Sweetheart, so, to use her own language, she's in a very Meg Ryan kind of place right now.
WHEN Gareth Southgate missed that penalty in Wembley a few weeks ago, seven men, threw themselves off the pier in Brighton. They were all rescued, but the young Russian student stabbed to death wasn't so lucky (his attackers thought he was German). Eurocops 96 followed the efforts of British police to prevent crowd violence at the European Championships this summer. It was a peculiar, unfocused film, which didn't seem sure what point of view to adopt or what narrative line to follow.
Chief Superintendent Linda Newman of the Metropolitan Police made an unlikely guvnor. "I suppose we can expect some trouble at the end from the losers, as it were?" she inquired brightly. As it were? This was hardly the language you expected from the toughest anti hooligan squad in Europe.
Outside the ground, armour clad policemen knew what the real score was. "I'm gonna be all over you like a orrible rash from now on," an officer informed one unprepossessing looking Eng-er-land supporter. The ritual of feint and counter feint between police and the "crews" from Stoke, Chelsea and Millwall was like some hightech version of a medieval battle, with the hooligans co ordinating by mobile phone and the police saturating every area with video surveillance.
THE Oxford English Dictionary defines a brick as either "a piece of brick, esp. when used as a missile" or "an uncomplimentary remark". The republican movement's self appointed television critics chose the former definition this week when delivering their verdict on SDLP councillor Hugh Lewsley's performance in Baseball In Irish History. Robert McLiam Wilson's polemical on punishment beatings in Northern Ireland pointed out that most of the victims of beatings are working class youths aged between 15 and 20 not a group noted for its articulacy or its popularity, so Mr Lewsley is a brave man to keep criticising the violent rule of republican and loyalist paramilitaries - he got his head, kicked in last year by a bunch of "volunteers" who announced they were "going to stop your effing television performances".
There is only one baseball team in Northern Ireland, the Belfast Blue Sox, but baseball bats are a popular purchase for other, reasons. Actor Alan McKee, crossed up as a caricature of a loyalist thug in leather jacket, sunclasses and Union Jack scarf, was, sent into a shop to see if he could buy one - no problem. Asking about a guarantee, he was told that it applied "as long as I didn't break, it on a wall, or something.
Baseball In Irish History wasn't one of those even handed current affairs documentaries, but an angry polemic by a young novelist, whose taste for smart aleckry sometimes got the better of his programme making skills. It was all the better for that - it's in the nature of current affairs programmes that anger is ironed out or made to represent extremity or unreasonableness. Doing what he described as his "very bad Roger Cook impression", Wilson pursued Gerry Adams through Belfast City Hall on the day of the election count, shouting questions about the beatings at the Sinn Fein president over the heads of two barrel shaped heavies. It's a familiar, cheap tactic, but it worked in this case because of the force of the moral argument. The strongest argument of all, however, was the photographs of appalling wounds inflicted on young bodies because of the unchallengeable decisions of a faceless kangaroo court. "This is fascism," declared Wilson at the end of the programme, and he was right.
