There she was, the glorious Carrie Crowley, on The View with John Kelly on RTE1, holding her own and batting the bullshit with ego trippers who name drop like liquorice allsorts. But she got to the point and she looks great, so it is no wonder that Hugh Leonard said recently that she could be Pat Kenny’s replacement on The Late Late Show. Why not?
Royal Return
What’s the world coming to at all? It’s gone all topsy turvy with the return of that usually happy Sunday show, The Royal. They decided to kill off the couple who were going to get married and then dragged it out with a lot of dotty and I suppose funny characters to sweeten the bitter taste of disaster. There was the woman in the hat who wanted her jackpot money from the collapsed ruin of an arcade.
There was the whining man with his willy caught in his zipper. And the boy awaiting a blood additive for clotting, as well as the codger who couldn’t see all that well without his glasses, miss-identifying people. To make it worse UTV followed it with that seasonal tear-jerker, the death of Little Nell in Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop.
Sleepy Matters
If you switched channels you got BBC1, sleepy detective in a Volvo with at least seven deaths in a Wallender that had no pulse, no life, no sense for a long time and a small cast. Wallender had diabetes, hence his falling asleep, but if this is going to be the major series the Beeb hopes, it will have to inject more life into it. Silent Witness has more life and more interest and it’s about a morgue.
The Priests
God works in mysterious ways they say, and none more mysterious and wonderful than the success story of The Priests on UTV who, as a result of a mobile phone camera clip, got a million pound sterling deal by signing to Sony BGM with a recording deal. But this was no mawkish baloney style programme but a well-made honest look at three Northern Irish priests, who after 35 years singing together, became overnight stars with a major recording contract. No, they didn’t give up the day job, despite recording in London and Rome and there were lovely ordinary shots of them officiating at weddings, masses and a tender scene of singing to an elderly man in a nursing home. Needless to say there were no superstar tantrums, demands or hissy fits as they balanced their ministry with rehearsals, recording and tv spectaculars. Now this was feel-good, be happy, television.
Come Uppance
It was great to see the bane of tv viewers life, the awful NTL/Chorus/UPC company getting a lash of the Prime Time Investigates on RTE1. There was a great cheer in this house as Conor Pope reported on the lack of service in the so-called service industry. Chorus/NTL were top of the list in the programme – Service With A Snarl – and some academic talking heads said that some of these companies was about taking your money and having a catchy answerphone message. As a service provider, these looders are legendary and they have the technology to ring you back but they never do. Another talking head said the Irish are slow to complain but we wouldn’t have a thriving dodgy box service if the originals had a real concept of service in the first place.
Drool
Is drool a posh word for dribble? No matter, but watching TV chef Nigella Lawson in Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen, all I could do was drool and dream of mouth-watering confections. She just whisks them up, no bother to her and before the end of the programme, six are sitting at a table licking their lips and salivating. Question is, are they salivating at the food or the hostess with the mostest. Nearly four million watched her on BBC2 last week as she started her festive series.
