Tourism Ireland has been collaborating with various British TV channels in the hope of wooing tourists across the Irish Sea. Results have been mixed. Imelda May’s Voices of Ireland, on Sky Arts last year, was buried beneath an avalanche of cliche: stout, sad songs in dank pubs, horses and carts clopping around Dublin. It was less a journey around Ireland than a trip back to the 19th century.
That was recently followed by a two-part Adrian Dunbar travelogue, on Channel 5, that was as twee as an Aran sweater and duller than a wet weekend at Limerick Junction. Ted Hastings, assuming he stayed awake, would not have approved.
But the third time’s the charm as May and Sky work together yet again, this time on Christmas in Ireland with Imelda May and Friends (Sky Arts, Christmas Eve, 9.30pm), a festive concert recorded at St Stephen’s Church – better known as the Pepper Canister – in Dublin.
It’s all sorts of hokey, but what would Christmas be without a sprinkling of schmaltz? And it contains no horrors as existential as May and Glen Hansard’s dismembering of Fairytale of New York on last week’s Late Late Show. Even those of us who believe Fairytale of New York the soggiest song ever written – one to be blasted into outer space – were appalled on its behalf.
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There are a few caveats. The first is that, to enjoy the programme, you’ll have to push through an icky opening in which May wanders down O’Connell Street reciting poetry at unsuspecting passers-by. But the mood improves immensely as the action cuts to the church interior, where May is joined by Loah, Jack Lukeman and Hawke the Band (a group from her native Liberties), as well as by Hansard.
“He’s going to reach inside your chest and pull your heart out,” is how she introduces him. It sounds like a threat. But May is merely bigging up the Frames singer as he duets with the busker Paddy Finnegan on Hansard’s song High Hope.
The performance is parcelled with a moving backstory. Finnegan was lost to addiction but, with help from the Simon Community, is back on his feet. “Drink and drugs took over,” he laments. “I got lost in the madness.”
The Christmas spirit is amped up further with a short film of John Sheahan of The Dubliners walking through a park reciting a self-penned Yuletide poem. Later, Sharon Corr likewise dons her mittens and goes for a stroll while declaiming Patrick Kavanagh’s A Christmas Childhood.
The evening culminates in a Band Aid–style group take on Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. No song has suffered more indignities down the decades than Cohen’s doomy dirge (aside, arguably, from Fairytale of New York). This version is far from definitive – Hansard sounds like a depressed Cookie Monster – but May’s enthusiasm blazes as brightly as a neon Christmas tree. Her hurricane-force cheer carries the day.
