TV REVIEW: The Model AgentRTÉ2, Monday
Paisean FaiseanTG4, Monday
Headroom: Georgia's Story – 33 Stone at 15BBC1, Tuesday
The Meaning of Life,RTÉ1, Sunday
‘YOU AND I know all about the stresses and strains of modern life,” said Cliona Ní Buachalla, an intelligent woman, oozing sincerity and reassuring discretion. Okay, she was flogging a bottle of probiotic something-or-other at the same time, and her dulcet tones were competing with some hoary old graphics depicting a holey oesophagus, but, dressed in nursely white, exuding compassion, her tone soothing and balmy, Ní Buachalla was talking to me, talking directly to me. Her eyes, radiating sympathy and understanding, were fixed on mine.
Oh Cliona, you said it. Stresses and strains of modern life? Tell me about it. Only that morning I had watched the contents of my bin disgorge themselves into the cruel rumpus of the crushers, observed the belching truck drive away, only to realise, moments later, that my car keys had spirited themselves into one of the bin bags and the spare set were locked in the car’s interior. Many industrial estates, and illuminating chats about microchips later, and I have to tell you, Cliona, that much as I appreciate your camaraderie, the contents of your little white plastic bottle are really not going to do it for me.
Is there is a tincture of summertime looseness seeping into the TV listings, or am I just projecting my own internal state (semi-derangement) on to the schedules? It seems that last week all was art, and this week all was artifice.
Beginning a six-week search for an Irish supermodel (Irish modelling is the Cinderella of this international industry apparently), The Model Agent, a new reality series from the national broadcaster, kicked off its Manolos this week. Modelling agent Fiona Ellis (known simply as Ellis to the bevy of air-kissers in her wake) scoured the mean streets, the music festivals and the pulsing clubs of the island in the hope of bagging a six-foot skinny girl who will make the cover of Imagemagazine and win herself a year's contract with a top modelling agency. Ellis, who has great swathes of rock-chicky blonde hair, and sunglasses the width of the contestants' waistlines, was aided in her mission by her protégé, model Erin O'Connor, a handsome woman who looks like she belongs in a tall equestrian painting.
The show got off to a bit of a sluggish start, and initially it seemed a bit of an uphill battle to find 12 lofty teenagers who could fill Ellis’s portfolio. After much poking around the countryside, Ellis, although sanguine and pleasant, was beginning to look a little perplexed. Now, perhaps unsurprisingly, “beef to the heel like a Mullingar heifer” was not a phrase that came tripping off her shimmering lips, but she did say about Irish women that “they like their calves” (whoops) and that they tend to be “too short” for the demands of the industry. Oh, that’s all very well for you to say, Goldilocks, it’s easy to see you’re not from these parts. You weren’t born to a nation which, for generations, has seen its comely daughters pounded into the muddy earth by endless rain, 800 years of colonial oppression and the frenzied crozier of a bishop with the rage of a bull. Yerragh, woman, ’tis amazing that there are any of us at all over three foot six.
Anyway, eventually Ellis found her 12 coltish contestants, young, lovely and bearing the weight of their hopes and dreams on their fragile, elegant necks. They will get whittled down over the next six weeks, until the final girl is left standing proudly on her slender legs. I have to say, having trawled through various model-reality competitions in my time (purely for the purposes of research, you understand), this one looks to be a pretty entertaining series.
TG4'S PAISEAN FAISEAN, returning for yet another series, caught my attention this week. I have to admit that the premise for this undoubtedly popular series seems so bizarre to me that, at the time of its inception, I assumed it would peter out after a few programmes. The idea behind the show is that three young . . . (I was about to write the word "blokes", but I got a tetchy e-mail from a reader a few weeks ago despairing of my vernacular when it came to words for men – so "blokes" and "geezers" are out) . . . hang on, I'll start again.
In Paisean Faisean, three chaps, generally imbued with youth (and an almost heartbreaking lack of irony or self-doubt), gad around various boutiques, accompanied by the moodily indifferent Síle Seoige. The fellows are looking to choose and purchase an outfit for a girl they have only briefly encountered on a laptop screen. After much fun and frothy camerawork, generally involving irrepressibly good-humoured boy contestants in floppy hats interacting with frosty mannequins, the girl chooses her favourite from the three selected outfits. Then, on the basis that the couple have now established some kind of bond, albeit a slightly tangential one, she and the winning buyer go off for a romantic dinner, girl clinging to potential suitor in the four-inch heels he has chosen to shod her unknown feet. Don't look at me, I don't make this stuff up.
Now Síle needs a gig. Seoige, the afternoon picnic she presents with her more successful sister, Gráinne, has been axed, due apparently to financial cutbacks (it seems to have had nothing to do with how the duo's presentation technique had about as much dynamism as a limp shoulder-pad). Paisean Faiseanis an innocuous enough little sinecure, and though it doesn't particularly seem to ring Síle's bell, presumably it pays the rent.
What is remarkable about the show though, aside from Seoige’s rather chilly air of entitlement, is the young participants’ distinct lack of edge. It’s all pink cardies and pass-the-gravy and being a darn good, well-pressed, multilingual sport. God be with the days when a pair of purposely ripped black nylons, a cunningly placed safety pin and a bottle of Stag behind the beer kegs was as hot as it got in the dating game.
STAYING WITHbody image, there was a programme this week that made one question the bleak realities that can lie behind the way people look. Headroom, the new health strand from BBC, began with the poignant but ultimately affirming Georgia's Story: 33 stone at 15. Last year, Georgia was the heaviest teen in Britain and, at 15, had been told by doctors that if she didn't lose weight she would be dead within 12 months.
A scholarship to a Wellspring Academy (a residential weight-loss school) in the US then released Georgia, an intelligent and sensitive child, from the burden of being her ill and widowed mother’s registered carer. It is an appalling situation that a child should be expected to carry out such a demanding task, and her massive size somehow appeared to be a physical reflection of the weight and depth of her responsibilities and subsequent isolation.
In the course of filming, and given the supportive environment of the academy, Georgia lost 13 stone and gained as much in confidence and self-belief. I know that a lot of these fat programmes are just a tongue-hanging diet of voyeuristic indulgence, but this intimate portrait of a child breaking out of a cocoon of despair was a far more wholesome treat.
