The Irish Times – Wednesday, January 4, 2012

50 YEARS OF IRISH TV: Can TV made for a different generation stand the test of time? We brought four RTÉ viewers to Montrose to find out

THE FIRST thing we look for when five of us arrive in a screening room in RTÉ is a screen. There are several couches, armchairs, tables and even an area that appears to be a bar, but no pull-down screen. There is, however, a modestly-sized television.

However, we’re set to watch a selection of archive programmes, so how else should we be viewing them except on a television?

RTÉ is 50 years old this year and so Ali O’Kane (20), a second-year student of film and broadcasting at DIT; Tim Hunter (40), an American IT architect; Kevin Macken (61), a businessman and restaurateur; Gerry Hickey (81), a retired bank manager, and myself are here to look at a selection of programmes from the archives.

The idea is that collectively, we represent a range of generations and perspectives.

Hunter, for instance, who is from Colorado and only came to Ireland 12 years ago, did not grow up with RTÉ; O’Kane was born when the station was already 30 years old; Hickey can recall watching the “snowy screen” 1961 launch festivities with a group of neighbours in Mayo. We’re a wide-ranging group.

SELF-PORTRAIT, SYLVIA BEACH 

First up is Self-Portrait, Sylvia Beach , a 1962 half-hour interview with the woman who founded the famous Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, and who published Joyce’s Ulysses. Beach was in Ireland to attend the opening of the Joyce Tower at Sandycove, and died shortly after this terrific interview by Niall Sheridan.

Or rather, Beach simply talks and the camera focuses on her for almost the entire time in what appears to be only two takes. We hardly ever see Sheridan, sitting on a bench alongside, although occasionally we hear his quiet, posh voice.

Beach, her face merry and animated, canters through her incredible life story. Raised in New Jersey, comes to Paris, founds the bookshop, meets famous writers – Beckett, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald – “I met Joyce one day at a party”, is the first to publish Ulysses , lives through the Nazi occupation of Paris. It’s an astonishing and powerfully unselfconscious interview that grips us all.

It also has an irritating backing track of a dog barking throughout, a production slip-up which none of us can imagine happening in 2012.

“They kept the interviewer out of the picture entirely,” notes Hickey. “Nowadays, interviewers are often the stars of their own interviews.”

Hunter says: “Clearly the technology didn’t support two camera angles. But it’s nice to see something so raw. They just let the lady speak.”

“There were only two cuts the entire time,” says O’Kane. “It was all about raw content.”

Macken, with his businessman’s eye, has noticed what he describes as “an interesting bit of product placement. She was wearing a St Brigid’s cross, which is the RTÉ logo.” Nobody else has noticed this. We rewind. There the cross clearly is, on a chain around Beach’s neck.

“RTÉ more or less reinvented the St Brigid’s Cross,” Hickey says. “We all know what it is now because of the logo.”

What we’ll probably never know is whether it was coincidence or an inspired piece of early branding that Beach was wearing one for her interview.

TOLKA ROW 

Next up is the final episode of the drama Tolka Row , which aired in June 1968. The series had been running for four years. Knowing nothing at all about it, I find it hard to follow the storyline, but pick up the fact there is attempted smuggling of wrist-watches across the Border going on; that a key character is emigrating to England for work and another is going home to Donegal, while someone else is getting married.

Everyone appears middle-aged to my eyes, even the young girl getting married. Perhaps this is because everyone is dressed more or less identically, no matter what their age? Their names also reflect an era: there’s an Ignatius, an Assumpta and an Anastasia, known as “Stasia”.

It’s pretty grim in Tolka Row land. People refer to “HP” (hire purchase), the fact there’s no work and “over a million people have emigrated since 1940”; there are lots of tears, and the general atmosphere is of unrelenting dourness.

Every shot is of a rather claustrophobic interior decked out with religious iconography – as well as a surprising, random portrait of Churchill.

There is silence after the episode finishes. “Well, that was terrible,” Hunter announces cheerfully.

“I wonder what the other episodes were like if the last one in the series was so boring,” says O’Kane.

“That was depressed Ireland in the 1960s,” Macken says. “That was the reality.”

Everyone has noticed there are no scenes shot in a pub – a location now considered essential for all soaps. “We didn’t see women in pubs in the 1960s,” Hickey says. “If a woman sat in a pub on her own, they’d think she was up to something.”

“They all hung out in the dispensary instead of the pub,” says Hunter.

He’s referring to several scenes where the Tolka Row residents rather mysteriously wander in and out of a doctor’s surgery/dispensary, where they assemble to chat. Nobody can figure out what Churchill is doing on the wall, although we know why the pope, JFK and the Child of Prague are there – they were part of the social history furniture of the time.

WANDERLY WAGON 

The episode of Wanderly Wagon we next watch originally aired on Christmas Eve 1971. I watched this series as a child, but it is decades since I saw it. My favourite puppet by far was Judge the dog. I was so fond of Judge I learned the show’s Safe Cross Code especially so I could send away for a badge with his image on it. The badge duly arrived, and although I promptly lost it, I’ve never forgotten the code: (“One, look for a safe place . . .”). As the intro music starts, I find myself oddly nervous about how time may have changed my affection for a canine puppet.

The show is Christmas-themed, with Godmother making mince pies with (unbranded) baking products. O’Brien and Rory are decorating the wagon. A candle is placed in the window to guide the Holy Family. The mice are off carol-singing to collect money, “to give Christmas dinners to the poor”, as Godmother tells us.

When the mice sing for Fortycoats, he tells them the best Christmas gift of all to receive is money. Santa Claus arrives and tells us he will be visiting all the boys and girls in Ireland “and the islands”. Rory twice self-importantly incants a list of the 32 counties Santa will be visiting. How, I marvel, could I never have noticed before just how pompous Rory is?

The puppets and puppetry are as charming to me as of old. When the credits roll, Mr Crow is in his clock, Mr Fox is in the water barrel, Judge is still being himself, wise in the crook of O’Brien’s arm, and all is well in the world of Wanderly Wagon .

“I want to clap!” is Hunter’s response. “The puppets were wonderful. But that rat wasn’t at all well assembled.” Hunter is referring to the fact that one of the puppet’s button eyes was literally hanging by a thread.

“Mouse!” I correct, scandalised. “They’re mice, not rats.”

“This is the first time I’ve really noticed that we’re watching in black and white,” O’Kane observes.

“Children’s TV today is all about very bright colours. I think children would still enjoy this, but probably younger children than this was originally aimed at. The audiences are much more sophisticated now.”

“It’s interesting it’s a childrens programme, but there are no kids in it,” says Macken. “But you could see those three people were entertainers. They were treating it like there was an audience watching. And of course Eugene Lambert played live to kids all the time in his Puppet Theatre.”

“It’s kind of odd in terms of education that one of the messages of the programme was that the best gift to get is money; to promote consumerism to children,” Hunter points out.

Hickey, who has several grandchildren, says he thinks children today would still enjoy the show.

MAILBAG 

Mailbag , the programme that dealt with viewers’ letters about RTÉ shows, ran from 1982 to 1996. It was presented by Arthur Murphy, and the format included dramatised readings of extracts from letters. The show we watch was broadcast in 1987. All I can initially focus on when it starts is the size of Murphy’s gigantic glasses, in dramatic frames: they are absurdly distracting. Until this moment, I hadn’t realised how discreet on-screen glasses are these days.

It was clearly Lent when this Mailbag went out. We know this because when Murphy opens the show, he starts by announcing: “I’m sure many of you have given something up for Lent.”

The first two letters out of the mailbag are from viewers who have given up sweets for Lent and are complaining about the fact that RTÉ is carrying too many ads for sweets and bars. Murphy looks straight to camera and declares: “I have a suggestion for you – why not give up watching television for Lent?”

We are all so astonished by an employee of a television station suggesting that viewers stop tuning in for Lent – a six-week period – that we talk over the next few letters.

“He wouldn’t be too popular in the station these days,” Hickey says sagely.

“A man who works for TV telling you not to watch TV?” Hunter marvels.

To me, watching this, it’s the equivalent of writing an article encouraging readers of The Irish Times not to buy the paper for six weeks.

Later, I realise Murphy’s comment is, in fact, all about context. It was a throwaway remark from a pre-satellite era, where Irish viewers had so few choices that it was very likely he believed he was merely making a joke by suggesting viewers tune out for six weeks.

Other letters concerned sitcom Leave it to Mrs O’Brien , of which a writer says, “The unbelievable clichés leave me in tears every night,”; the perceived paltriness of cash prizes to be won on Murphy’s Micro Quiz-M ; and complaints about the redesign of the RTÉ logo. Murphy winks to camera as he signs off. “Back to the St Brigid’s cross again,” Macken says. “How that programme lasted 14 years is a mystery to me. They were so flippant with the letter-writers.”

“I assume it wasn’t meant to be a comedy?” asks Hunter.

Hickey has enjoyed it, and explains why. “It’s a programme I’d look forward to every week. Letters are the first thing I look at every day in the paper.”

“People ‘talk to Joe’ now; they don’t write letters,” Hunter says.

“There’s so much choice of what to watch, it wouldn’t make sense having a show about letters to RTÉ,” says O’Kane.

WHEN WE talk about the programmes we’ve seen, what everyone has noticed is how innate the religious references are in three of the four. The Child of Prague and Sacred Heart pictures in Tolka Row , the Christmas Eve candle in the Wanderly Wagon window, and the assumption that most viewers were giving something up for Lent in Mailbag .

“Religion is what comes across, over and over,” Macken comments.

“You’d never see any children’s programmes these days with overt references to religion,” O’Kane says.

The meaning of any archive is partially located in the comparisons it contains, and they only become evident over time. Some elements of an archive are ephemeral; some become meaningful landmarks; and some turn into curiosities.

Of the randomly selected programmes the five of us watched, the Sylvia Beach documentary was, for all of us, the brightest gem; a piece of work that stands up in any era, no matter how rudimentary the production values.

Despite this, the thing I kept thinking about as we left RTÉ, and ever since, was how much I regretted losing my Wanderly Wagon Safe Cross Code badge that I was sent in childhood with Judge’s picture on it.

Times may have been simpler then, but viewer loyalty appears to endure.

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