3 June 1999 Edition
Television: Lives of grime
By Sean O Donaile.
Bad Girls (UTV)
The Emergency (Radio One)
A Life of Grime (BBC)
I was advised to review Ally McBeal and Friends but life is difficult enough without suffering the utterly vacuous George `screw' Clooney and his cronies [surely that's ER? - Ed.] rabbiting on about ``relationships'' and ``love'' on trite TV, so I've decided to plump for the 23rd time for a programme about life in a women's prison cluttered with `bent' screws and `misguided' loudmouth inmates, Bad Girls was touted as a ``gritty new drama'' but if anything it was overhyped.
Rachel (of Zoë fame from Corrie Street) is a recovering drug addict unjustly sentenced to three years on the slab for possession of three Ecstasy tabs, where her evil vinyl-clad miniskirted cellmate robs her `smokes', only for her to be rescued by a caring middle-aged screw, up to his neck in dirty deeds, swopping favours with inmates for sexual dalliances.
His workmate, Sylvia, is portrayed as your typical beer-bellied , burnt out cynical screw who ignores the pleas of Carol, a pregnant inmate, who subsequently suffers an horrific life-threatening miscarriage alone in her cell.
Guv'nor Mary is a new wave Ma'am, determined to be fair to the women (as all governors in these programmes are), only to be undermined by the efforts of her corrupt staff - ``I hate these graduate types... trying to suck up to the prisoners.''
Her attempts to quell dissent among the women fail and she subsequently attempts to cancel the `Prison Fashion Show', which backfires on her badly - ``Shove your stupid Fashion Show up yer arse Ma'am''. The women are portrayed as a bunch of St. Trinian's girls screaming for their supper, led by the clichéd butch boss, determined to stir it up.
Give me the brilliantly tacky Australian Seventies soap Prisoner Cell Block H, complete with cardboard walls. Prison life is a serious theme and deserves to be treated with a somewhat honest portrayal, not this claptrap, which there was a lot of when World War II broke out and Ireland was filled with rumours of the local shopkeeper being a German spy , with radio transmitters under his bed and paratroopers descending on the shores of Youghal, on the south coast of Cork, which is where the excellent Radio One histo-documentary The Emergency was set.
Led by a coalition of middle-aged former British Army and IRA veterans, the LSF (Local Security Forces) was a patchy attempt by de Valera's government to keep the invading hordes at bay.
Tim, Mick and Johnny are refreshingly honest and witty in their reminiscing - ``Sure we were never prepared and didn't even know how to walk straight.''
Uniforms were initially comprised of brown boiler suits, earning these local `volunteers' the nickname `chocolate soldiers'.''Christ they were bloody awful.''
Fortunately for Dad's Army, trendier green jackets, Glengarry caps and shiny boots were issued for Christmas and Springfield rifles, ``big Yankee guns'', added the professional touch - ``Boy, were we the lads, walking up the main street with the rifles as big as ourselves. Don't talk to me about Gary Cooper.''
Ammunition was tightly guarded lest it fell into the wrong hands (I wonder who that might be?!) but gun oil was somewhat more plentiful, so much so that it substituted for hair oil of a Saturday night, ``but of a summer's night it would be running down your face and that was the end of the courting!''
Manouevres consisted of trips to the seaside to look out at the horizon and hikes across muddy streams at six in the morning followed by pints of porter and wedges of brown bread with strawberry jam in the nearest hostelry.
Summer camps were more threatening, however, with embarrassed teenagers being forced to expose their privates for inspection and being lectured on the dangers of VD and crabs - ``Sure I thought they were the things we caught down the beach in Youghal.''
Any few Germans that up to then had peacefully coexisted with their neighbours suddenly became spies and were promptly ostracised. Fortunately for the people of Cork, the submarines, ( ``I wished they had've landed and bought us an effing pint''), never came, as ``our boys would have been decimated - half of us would have run off or gone home I supposeî but sure they were the best days of our lives.''
Also on the trail of crabs, rats and other nasties were the environmental health officers of London's Haringey Council, featured on A Life of Grime last week - sure there's worse ways of making a living, although I don't recall anyone stating that they loved their job.
The cameras took us to the house of 80-year-old Mr. Ondropolis, whose preference to dump his waste and rubbish in his house over a 30-year period irked his neighbours-''waste not, want not''.
Not so grimy, one might argue, as the Southern hordes who descend on the Belfast Festival every August, armed only with a copy of An Phoblacht, a rusty toothbrush and one pair of socks , only to be discovered abandoned beside a Poleglass bonfire at week's end.
Bad Girls (UTV)
The Emergency (Radio One)
A Life of Grime (BBC)
I was advised to review Ally McBeal and Friends but life is difficult enough without suffering the utterly vacuous George `screw' Clooney and his cronies [surely that's ER? - Ed.] rabbiting on about ``relationships'' and ``love'' on trite TV, so I've decided to plump for the 23rd time for a programme about life in a women's prison cluttered with `bent' screws and `misguided' loudmouth inmates, Bad Girls was touted as a ``gritty new drama'' but if anything it was overhyped.
Rachel (of Zoë fame from Corrie Street) is a recovering drug addict unjustly sentenced to three years on the slab for possession of three Ecstasy tabs, where her evil vinyl-clad miniskirted cellmate robs her `smokes', only for her to be rescued by a caring middle-aged screw, up to his neck in dirty deeds, swopping favours with inmates for sexual dalliances.
His workmate, Sylvia, is portrayed as your typical beer-bellied , burnt out cynical screw who ignores the pleas of Carol, a pregnant inmate, who subsequently suffers an horrific life-threatening miscarriage alone in her cell.
Guv'nor Mary is a new wave Ma'am, determined to be fair to the women (as all governors in these programmes are), only to be undermined by the efforts of her corrupt staff - ``I hate these graduate types... trying to suck up to the prisoners.''
Her attempts to quell dissent among the women fail and she subsequently attempts to cancel the `Prison Fashion Show', which backfires on her badly - ``Shove your stupid Fashion Show up yer arse Ma'am''. The women are portrayed as a bunch of St. Trinian's girls screaming for their supper, led by the clichéd butch boss, determined to stir it up.
Give me the brilliantly tacky Australian Seventies soap Prisoner Cell Block H, complete with cardboard walls. Prison life is a serious theme and deserves to be treated with a somewhat honest portrayal, not this claptrap, which there was a lot of when World War II broke out and Ireland was filled with rumours of the local shopkeeper being a German spy , with radio transmitters under his bed and paratroopers descending on the shores of Youghal, on the south coast of Cork, which is where the excellent Radio One histo-documentary The Emergency was set.
Led by a coalition of middle-aged former British Army and IRA veterans, the LSF (Local Security Forces) was a patchy attempt by de Valera's government to keep the invading hordes at bay.
Tim, Mick and Johnny are refreshingly honest and witty in their reminiscing - ``Sure we were never prepared and didn't even know how to walk straight.''
Uniforms were initially comprised of brown boiler suits, earning these local `volunteers' the nickname `chocolate soldiers'.''Christ they were bloody awful.''
Fortunately for Dad's Army, trendier green jackets, Glengarry caps and shiny boots were issued for Christmas and Springfield rifles, ``big Yankee guns'', added the professional touch - ``Boy, were we the lads, walking up the main street with the rifles as big as ourselves. Don't talk to me about Gary Cooper.''
Ammunition was tightly guarded lest it fell into the wrong hands (I wonder who that might be?!) but gun oil was somewhat more plentiful, so much so that it substituted for hair oil of a Saturday night, ``but of a summer's night it would be running down your face and that was the end of the courting!''
Manouevres consisted of trips to the seaside to look out at the horizon and hikes across muddy streams at six in the morning followed by pints of porter and wedges of brown bread with strawberry jam in the nearest hostelry.
Summer camps were more threatening, however, with embarrassed teenagers being forced to expose their privates for inspection and being lectured on the dangers of VD and crabs - ``Sure I thought they were the things we caught down the beach in Youghal.''
Any few Germans that up to then had peacefully coexisted with their neighbours suddenly became spies and were promptly ostracised. Fortunately for the people of Cork, the submarines, ( ``I wished they had've landed and bought us an effing pint''), never came, as ``our boys would have been decimated - half of us would have run off or gone home I supposeî but sure they were the best days of our lives.''
Also on the trail of crabs, rats and other nasties were the environmental health officers of London's Haringey Council, featured on A Life of Grime last week - sure there's worse ways of making a living, although I don't recall anyone stating that they loved their job.
The cameras took us to the house of 80-year-old Mr. Ondropolis, whose preference to dump his waste and rubbish in his house over a 30-year period irked his neighbours-''waste not, want not''.
Not so grimy, one might argue, as the Southern hordes who descend on the Belfast Festival every August, armed only with a copy of An Phoblacht, a rusty toothbrush and one pair of socks , only to be discovered abandoned beside a Poleglass bonfire at week's end.