MIKEY, WILL, Jamie and Noel are real gurriers. All chip and no shoulder. They're the sort who'd give you a smack on the gob as quick as look at you, writes PETER MURTAGH
They’re the sort of gougers you see wasting their time around the entrances to supermarkets or outside chip shops or on pavements where they talk too loud and push each other around and make life dark, dangerous and miserable for everyone else, especially old people.
They’re 15, Mikey, Will, Jamie and Noel. Except Noel. He’s 16. He’s a hard man from Dublin and is often at loggerheads with his parents. He’s got a problem with authority and has a hot temper.
Mikey’s from Westmeath and finds it hard to avoid street brawls. He can be verbally abusive at home and in school.
Jamie’s from Cork. He’s been suspended from school several times and he’s always flying off the handle with his Mum. Maybe his temper has something to do with him thinking he’s gay.
And there’s Will. Will’s from Castlebar and, like Mikey, he gets caught up in street fighting. His Ma worries that he’s going to get seriously hurt one of these days. Like Jamie, he’s been threatened with expulsion from school.
And that, like, is it. Four bad- attitude gougers. Long hair, shaved head, mohican hair, stud-pierced lip . . . all the signs are there: four guys straining at the leash and a few years down the road, like as not, you’ll be hearing how they’re “well known to the gardaí”, as the saying goes.
I’ve been watching Mikey, Will, Jamie and Noel for the past three weeks and I reckon I’ve got their number okay. And so, it seems to me, does clinical psychologist David Coleman.
Teens in The Wildis a four-part television documentary about what happens when you take four under-achieving, problem teenage boys (originally there were six but two dropped out) out of their environment and challenge them – physically, emotionally, intellectually. It's the brainchild of independent film producer Christine Thornton of Firebrand Productions.
The result is highly engaging – and highly informative – TV that has been pulling audiences of over 500,000 on Monday nights for the past three weeks. Viewers have seen these awkward, difficult and at times threatening youngsters squelching across bogs, up and down mountains and across lakes and rivers in Mayo, courtesy of Delphi Adventure Centre, and all the while Coleman probes them, gently peeling back the layers of their personalities.
In so doing, we have learned about the underlying character and personality of Mikey, Will, Jamie and Noel. Fundamentally, they are ordinary decent lads. As they are pushed during their 21 days at Delphi, they become less selfish, more caring and considerate of each other. Leadership traits are observed. There’s determination to succeed at the physical tasks they are set: they are stretched, challenged and they respond well.
The chips on the shoulders turn into character. In tonight’s concluding episode, they return to their parents and reflect on their experience. I haven’t see it yet but I’m told their self-esteem has been raised hugely, that they feel they have achieved something, were listened to and have developed an appreciation of the needs of others (notably their long-suffering parents).
At first viewing, Mikey, Will, Jamie and Noel were cardboard cut-out versions of the sort of young men who end up in trouble: self-harm maybe, or one of those weekend 3am drink- fuelled car crashes, or falling foul of the law – small offences at first but graduating into longer and longer prison sentences.
Teens in The Wildshows it needn't be that way. In countries better governed than ours, the sort of issues that are evident in the lives of Mikey, Will, Jamie and Noel are addressed through imaginative interventions involving education, therapy and outdoor activity. The Aspen Education Group in the US is at the leading edge of this approach.
There’s nothing like this in Ireland. David Coleman and Christine Thornton’s series prompts the thought: why not?
The final episode of
Teens in the Wild
can be seen tonight on RTÉ 1 at 9.35