Brendan O’Connor’s Cutting Edge

Wednesdays, RTE One

What were we expecting - a madcap mix of Republic of Telly, Mock the Week and Have I Got News for You? A bunch of wisecracking guests trying to outsmart-aleck each other, while being ritually humiliated by cackling ringmaster O’Connor? Or a bizarre topical gameshow in which news is the currency and the prize is a public figure’s head on a platter? Brendan O’Connor’s Cutting Edge was none of the above - no gimmicks, no house band, no elaborate games, and no gurning. Just four people - including O’Connor - sitting at a rather small round table and chinwagging about the hot topics of the day, watched by a studio audience who seemed a little removed from it all, like flies on an adjacent wall.

The camera is so close to the panelists’ faces, you can see the whites of their eyes - and the anxiety as the conversation ventured into such hazardous terrain as nudism, campness and online dating. It was live, too, with all the expectation of the unexpected that comes with that. If anyone looked tense, it was probably out of fear of saying the wrong thing - just like Twitter, once it goes out there, there’s no getting it back. Apart from a badly judged Aids anecdote, however, the watercooler moments were few and far between, and the chat stayed on an even and inoffensive keel. O’Connor moderates it all with a cool head - OK, he’s not exactly Graham Norton corralling a trio of Hollywood stars, but he keeps everything neatly balanced.

Guests for this first Cutting Edge were journalist and Newstalk presenter Chris O’Donoghue, entrepreneur and former Dragon Norah Casey and comedian and actor Pat Shortt. Shortt looked the most out of his element here - clearly he’s not used to going out there without a comic persona, and as a result he seemed most on his guard. Casey and O’Donoghue are clearly well used to chatting around tables, whether it’s on telly or at a dinner party, so they breezed comfortably through the list of topics.

They discussed the “inhumanity of the internet” after the online abuse directed at Sinead O’Connor following reports of her disappearance; the duality of Labour’s Alan Kelly (“is he Peppa Pig or AK47?”); Donald Trump’s misogyny (“Why does he feel the need to constantly put women down?” asks Casey. “What is he afraid of?”); and Finian McGrath’s bizarre emissions about smoking. “He’s hardly a wet week in the job and he wants to bring smoking back,” says Shortt.

A segment featuring taxi drivers talking about refugees coming over here to “rape, murder and pillage” only confirms our worst prejudices about taxi drivers.

In “Who do you think you saw?” an audience member is shown 20 famous faces in quick succession, and gets €100 for every face they can remember - a bit like that show where people had to memorise the prizes going by on a conveyor belt.

In between there are sidebar segments such as “On the slab”, “Vital signs” and “Donor Card”, all of which are vaguely broad and broadly vague enough to be interchangeable. There are also a few not very funny pictorial gags to lead into the ad breaks. The writers will have to work on those a bit more.

The big WTF moment comes when George Hook appears on a metaphoric soap box and delivers a spoken word essay on why heaven exists, almost choking up when he talks about his late mother. This gets the panel talking about bereavements in their own families - it’s not very topical, but it is the most insightful and compelling bit.

Cutting Edge follows a simple, unplugged format to take a quick sounding of what’s happening in the world. You could do the same yourself with a few mates down the pub or at a dinner party, but sometimes it’s nice to just sit back and let some other heads do the talking. Not in a taxi, though.