by David Kenny
The appeal of The Apprentice is not that it offers an insight into the inner workings of corporate Ireland, but that it is, in fact, a Clown College filled with clown people. Its alumni do not end up working for Goldman Sachs or KPMG, they end up on Celebrity Salon or volunteering for medical experiments or selling their underwear on eBay.
The other giveaway is the fact it happens each year. Any job-seeker with a survival instinct would ask: why does Bill need so many apprentices? Obi Wan Kenobi just had the one. What is Bill doing with them? Well, I suspect they end up like childhood pets that Bill forgets to feed. Each new season starts with his other half Jackie Lavin finding last year’s winner stiff as a board under the couch, floating listlessly at the top of Bill’s aquarium, or completely vanished save for some bloody fur left in a neglected hutch (‘We need to go again,’ mutters Jackie down the phone to TV3. ‘We think a fox got the last one’).
And so this year’s specimens gathered like puppies at the pound – the girls all business suits and wasp-chewing scowls and the boys all faux-masculinity, aftershave you can smell through the television, and heavily-greased hair (as the series progresses and Bill’s megalomania grows, I assume he’ll try sticking them to the ceiling). Bill begins with some cautionary praise. ‘What you sixteen have accomplished is no mean feat,’ he says. ‘You beat off 16,000 other applicants to prove you were the best business brains in Ireland.’ (Now, there’s an accidentally rude double entendre there which I won’t spell out, but if it’s true, then it really was a pretty gruelling application process.) Then he sends them off to pick team leaders and to think up team names.
‘I was thinking of Team Synergy,’ says one lady. ‘That sounds like a makey-up word to me,’ says another. In the end, the girls’ team pick ‘Fusion’ which also sounds like a makey-up word but isn’t. And the boys pick ‘Elev8’ ‘because there’s eight of us’, forgetting that next week they may have to call themselves ‘Elev7’.
Bill seems impressed by the team names, but then decides to shake things up by telling the leader of the boys, Cathal, that he must lead the girls’ team, and the leader of the girls, Ciara, that she must head up the boys. ‘So Team Elev8 and Team Fusion ... we now have some confusion,’ says Bill and the apprentices laugh so hard at this joke I think the whole series might end there and then with Bill saying: ‘Congratulations, Apprentices, you have passed the real test. You have all successfully climbed up my arse ... which is paradise and where you may live for eternity.’
But he doesn’t. Instead he sends them out to bother/sell-hotel-vouchers-to the general public. As they do so, we’re slowly given insights into their lives. ‘I think I’ve been through more at twenty-seven than the other candidates,’ muses Ciaran ‘Flipper’ Walsh, referring, I presume, to his former career as a crime-fighting dolphin. In fact, he’s talking about his former career as a professional poker player which he reasonably worries will make people think he’s ‘a risk-taker and a gambler’ (he’s literally both!). Team leader Cathal Heapes reveals that, ‘I work best in short sharp bursts’ which is just as well really, as Bill sends him packing after just one episode. For the most part, while they were all entertainingly ineffectual, none of them had the star quality of last year’s breakthrough apprentice, the noble savage Breffny Morgan. While that will probably change in the coming weeks, right now the apprentices are an undifferentiated mass of young people in suits.
Which is also a good description of the front bench of Fine Gael, whose spiritual founder, Michael Collins, was being advocated as Ireland’s Greatest Person on RTÉ. This was part one of a five-part RTÉ documentary series about the five greatest Irish people, as discerned by an exhaustive poll. Over the coming weeks, luminaries will make the case for Bono, John Hume, James Connolly and Mary Robinson, before RTÉ reveals once and for all who Ireland’s greatest is after collating the results of a phone vote.
Now, the notion that you can decide who is the best between Michael Collins and Bono is pretty dubious. That said, it would be fun if it was done right, with Bono, Michael Collins, Mary Robinson, John Hume and James Connolly all competing in Apprentice-style challenges. (‘While Michael Collins wasn’t great in the writing-and-recording-a-pop-song round, Bono was surprisingly good in the assassinating-members-of-the-British-security-forces round,’ I imagine writing in my parallel-universe review). Unfortunately, this isn’t an option, and instead we are treated to a straightforward hagiography of Collins from former PD (and even more former Fine Gaeler) Michael McDowell, who, like many before him, has managed to pinpoint the exact moment in history when it became wrong to pursue political ideals by way of terrorist acts (11 July, 1921).
Stylistically it had many of the hyperactive camera effects and strange soundtrack choices (the theme from Pulp Fiction was played over a GAA match) that mark much Irish documentary-making, and filming was clearly arranged to coincide with a city break to London (why film McDowell up the London Eye?). There was also the sense that always exists when a politician praises a historical politician, that we were being invited to hear an implied ‘like meself’ at the end of every sentence: ‘Collins was a pragmatist who did whatever Ireland needed whenever it needed it ... (like meself).’ ‘Collins was covert and calculated, ruthless and efficient ... (like meself).’ ‘Collins had a price on his head and was on the run ... (like meself!)’
Political hero worship was also the subject of BBC’s The Special Relationship, which documented the friendship between Bill Clinton (Dennis Quaid) and Tony Blair (Michael Sheen). All other events and relationships were rendered as secondary, as their connection was framed through election campaigns, political scandals (the Lewinsky affair) and humanitarian crises (Kosovo). It was silly.
There was actually footage of Clinton and Blair looking longingly at one another through windows and furtively whispering down the phone line to one another as their wives slept. ‘Kiss him, you fool!’ I yelled, but the sizzling premier-on-premier action I anticipated never happened.
Still, as a Hays-code-era romantic comedy about a long-distance power couple it worked pretty well. As a compelling drama about political power, however, it failed.
America Idle
28 March 2010
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and soon I’ll have their beer-buzzed, thong-wearing descendants dry-humping one another in a hot-tub on MTV. It’s the American dream. It’s the better life that tubercular soot-stained Italian immigrants dreamt for their children, as they coughed consumptively, anglicised their names, and prepared to work their fingers to the bone all those years ago. Indeed, I’m pretty sure these brave souls are now in heaven saluting the flag as the remnants of their DNA lap-dance, fist-pump, binge drink and get vomit in their hair-extensions.
Jersey Shore is a fly-on-the-wall reality programme about eight self-identified Italian-American Guidos and Guidettes (this is, apparently, an ethnic slur turned badge-of-honour) living and working together for a summer on the eponymous beachfront party location. It’s a world of orange tans, gelled hair, fake breasts, obsessive body building, and self-conscious, brand-aware nicknaming (‘I’m known around town as Sammi Sweetheart,’ says Sammi Sweetheart, which I interpreted to mean: ‘I go around town asking people to call me Sammi Sweetheart because I really want people to call me Sammi Sweetheart.’). Apart from Sammi Sweetheart, there’s also J-Wow, Snookie, Pauly D and most impressively, The Situation (there’s also Vinnie, Ronnie and Valerie, but they’ve got boring normal names).
So why is The Situation called The Situation? ‘Because of that situation down there,’ he says, proudly pointing to his seriously overworked ab muscles. He looks really pleased with himself so the camera crew have to stop themselves from yelling: ‘Good lord, man, what have you done to yourself?!’ The Situation’s abs look like cross-dimensional chaos creatures from a HP Lovecraft horror story, or, as my wife so delightfully put it, a stomach full of tumours. It’s not wise to stare directly at The Situation’s abs. It�
�s like staring at the sun.
The Situation talks about himself in the third person a lot, like the Incredible Hulk, the Queen or a toddler. ‘I hope they’re ready for The Situation,’ says The Situation. ‘The Situation is anxious to get down to Jersey Shore with his hot clothes and his tan!’ says The Situation. ‘The Situation smash puny soldiers! The Situation once owned India! The Situation done a poo-poo!’ says The Situation.
Soon enough he’s chest-bumping happily and flirting with the seven other bad decision-makers at Jersey Shore, a place which seems to be the mythical spawning ground for a certain type of Italian-American stereotype (‘Take your shirt off at Jersey Shore and the girls come to you like a fly comes to shit,’ explains muscle-bound Ronnie, cunningly demonstrating both cockiness and low-self-esteem in one sentence).
Like salmon, it seems that the guidos of Jersey Shore are merely migrating in order to mate. It’s this realisation that makes me see within Jersey Shore the beauty of nature and God’s creation (Pauly D’s gelled hair, is in this context, magnificent plumage). This sense was heightened for me because I’d watched RTÉ’s new (and fascinating) nature programme Wild Journeys earlier that same evening. So when The Situation, Pauly D and Vinnie lured three passing ladeez into their hot tub (an essential reality television show prop if nudity is one of your ‘themes’), I could still hear the rich voice of Wild Journeys’ narrator Ruth McCabe saying, ‘The males are bursting with excitement! They are competing for access to the spawning grounds (i.e. the Hot Tub) ... areas of clean even gravel washed by fast-flowing well-oxygenated water.’ Okay, the bit about gravel doesn’t quite make sense; McCabe was talking about salmon. But elsewhere the parallels were also striking.
‘Territorial disputes break out all along the river,’ says McCabe of salmon on Wild Journeys. ‘Don’t be bringing trashy skanks into my house!’ shrieks Valerie on Jersey Shore (‘Whorebags!’ she says for good measure).
‘Swimming alongside the female, the dominant male repeatedly woos her with a shimmering dance,’ says McCabe on Wild Journeys. ‘Don’t hate the playa, hate the game!’ says The Situation to Sammi Sweetheart on Jersey Shore while doing a shimmering dance. ‘Certainly there wasn’t a researcher in the boat who’d seen anything like it!’ said Pádraig Whooley on Wild Journeys, and although he was talking about something else entirely, I had to agree.
Obviously I hope the parallels between Jersey Shore and Wild Journeys end there. Salmon travel all the way from Greenland to a stream in the Connemara hills in order to mate and then die. If Jersey Shore ends with eight post-coital figures bobbing face-down in the New Jersey water, I’m pretty sure there will be lawsuits. That said, I couldn’t promise that it’s not going to happen.
On Cougar Town someone else could be found injuring herself in an act of love. Jules Cobb (Courteney Cox) is the recently-divorced mother and career woman who has spent her youth being responsible and now wants to party and seduce handsome young men, but, as she discovers in episode two, she’s not as flexible as she once was. Cougar Town comes with a lot of cultural baggage. Firstly, it’s a television vehicle for an ex-Friends actor, and so might as well have been built in the Harland & Wolff shipyard circa 1912, so doomed is its voyage. Joey, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Dirt – they’ve all long hit their ratings iceberg. And secondly, the whole media-created notion of the ‘cougar’ (sexually aggressive older ladies) is really, really annoying, and leads desperate feature writers to write silly, silly articles reducing complex human experiences to farce.
Apparently there was once only two kinds of lady (virgins and whores) and then thanks to Sex and the City, there were four kinds of lady (Carries, Samanthas, Mirandas and Charlottes), and now fresh off the production line we have a new kind of lady ... the Cougar. ‘Thank God for that!’ says you. Having to be one of only four kinds of lady was a terrible amount of pressure for the type of person who needs to be told what type of person they are by television programmes and magazine articles. Having five types to choose from is such an improvement!
Thankfully Cougar Town is better and more nuanced than this worldview and its own silly title suggests. It has a good ensemble cast, some original characters (Jules’s ne’er-do-well, alimony-seeking ex-husband Bobby is a stand-out), and the type of spiralling in-jokes pioneered by more genre-expanding shows like 30 Rock and Scrubs (Scrubs, like this, was also created by Bill Lawrence). Just remember, Courteney Cox isn’t representing all single women over the age of forty, nor does she embody a real-life sociological trend. She’s playing a character in a television comedy. It’s not real. You can tell it’s not real because attractive Courteney Cox finds it difficult to attract men, and her character, despite working in the property business, isn’t living under a bridge eating rats.
The Situation from Jersey Shore, on the other hand, he is real. He should be the spur for a barrage of speculative feature articles. Here’s a start: ‘The Situation – he represents all men between the ages of twenty-five and forty, he’s a lover and a fighter, his stomach looks like a back-road in Cavan, and once he has deposited his milt in a gravelly egg-filled inlet, he will return to the sea to die.’
Dolly the Sheep would be more baaaaad ass
12 April 2009
In new cod-science-fiction cop-show drama Eleventh Hour, evil illegal cloners discard some human embryos, and top science guy and smouldering hunk Dr Jacob Hood (Rufus Sewell) asks a silly policeman who has questioned his authority, ‘Have you heard of Dolly the Sheep?’ and I find myself really hoping that the next sentence out of his mouth is going to be ‘... for she is my sidekick and she will kick your ass!’ Instead he goes on to give us an idiot’s guide to cloning.
I can’t help feeling cheated. A programme about Rufus Sewell and Dolly the Sheep fighting science crime would have been awesome, automatically suggesting several amazing scenes and plots. ‘How are you going to stop me, Dolly?’ gurns the evil scientist in an evil voice in my evil imagination. ‘You are but a humble sheep. Aaagh! Stop eating me! I’m not grass!’
Instead Sewell’s sidekick is a generic sexy FBI ice maiden who knows kung fu and is annoyed by, yet attracted to, his eccentricities. ‘He’s a brilliant biophysicist but he spends most of his time in his head, so I have to watch his back,’ she says, and I can’t help thinking this sentence would have sounded much better coming from Dolly (although she’d have said, ‘I have to watch his baaaaaack’).
Anyway, Eleventh Hour is a Jerry Bruckheimer remake of an English television programme of the same name, and it’s also very similar to Fringe, another US export in which a sexy blonde FBI agent helps out a mad old genius. Like Fringe, Eleventh Hour is built on the assumption that science is weird and scary and thus needs to be policed by special operatives investigating ‘science crimes’.
You see, all that technology they used to make the programme – the cameras, the microphones, the trucks – these all arose naturally out of ‘nature’ and have nothing to do with ‘science’ at all. The lights, for example, were simply plucked by the crew from lighting rig trees, much as our hunter-gatherer ancestors might have done, and Rufus Sewell was carried from England to America, not by science-plane, but in Jerry Bruckheimer’s jaws, much as a bear might have done with a fish. No, for the purposes of this show, ‘science’ means big, scary stuff like cloning and nuclear weaponry and ’flu pandemics, and it always involves someone ‘trying to play God’, a phrase I spent the whole programme waiting for, and which was eventually uttered in the last fifteen minutes as Sewell played midwife to a mutant clone and evil Dr Geppetto (that was her name!) made a getaway. Since when was ‘playing God’ a bad thing anyway? Surely it’s only a problem if the answer to the question ‘what would Jesus do?’ is ‘try to illegally clone mutant foetuses’? (Oh hold on, he does that in Mark 3:17).
There’s also some stuff in the bible about forgiveness, and this was the subject of Five Minutes of Heaven, a drama based on the real-life experiences of Joe Griffin (James Nesbitt), a Lurgan-born Catholic who
se life has been changed by witnessing the horrific murder of his brother years ago, and Alastair Little (Liam Neeson), the UVF man who murdered him. And it made for some powerful viewing.
After a documentary-like re-enactment of the crime, it’s decades later and a panic-stricken Griffin is going to meet Little for the first time since the murder, for a fictional television programme called One-to-One. Nesbitt’s wonderfully edgy and frantic performance is counterpointed by the unctuous film crew, and by Neeson’s own calm self-possession as the former terrorist who has made a life for himself travelling the world and talking about his experiences. Nesbitt has spent his life being blamed by his mother for his brother’s death, and delivers rambling, heartbreaking and funny monologues to whoever is there to hear them. (‘Here you are, pal, a fully signed-up member of the celebrity circuit of life’s victims: men in love with donkeys, twins stuck together by their bollocks, elephant women who can’t get out of their chairs ... and now you.’)
The script (by Guy Hibbert) takes a few hard, well-aimed kicks at the reconciliation industry, the sensation-hungry media, and the mealy-mouthed words of some former terrorists. Neeson’s performance is also fascinating. There’s a great trick played by the scriptwriter, in which Little’s seemingly sincere recollection of the murder is chillingly undermined by his own rehearsed repetition of the same words later on. As the film progresses, however, it’s clear that he’s a man who finds it hard to tell his own guilt from the eloquent words he’s used to express it, and that he needs the meeting with Griffin more than Griffin does.
The problem is, once these dynamics are established, the drama sort of fizzles out. After a potentially murderous Griffin backs out of their initial encounter, Little spends the rest of the film trying to re-engineer a meeting, and it begins to look a bit like this is going to be, like Waiting for Godot, the play in which nothing happens ... twice. Of course, this is television, so instead of nothing happening, the second act climaxes with Griffin and Little smashing through a second-floor window into a broken-boned embrace on the footpath below. Which was daft, and whatever it was meant to symbolise, it just undermined two exceptional performances from Neeson and Nesbitt, and what had been, until then, a nuanced drama about how traumatic events and complex emotions can’t be resolved and repackaged into media-friendly sound-bites.
