By Paul Bradley
Raised By The Village RTÉ1 Sunday, 6.30pm
It’s been a while since I saw Raised By The Village, RTÉ’s show in which (usually troubled) all-mod-cons teens are transplanted to the county to see how they cope with an older kind of living, but I have to say the recent series of ads did what it was supposed to do: it was hard, after all, to ignore those shaking, glitching visuals and that irrelevantly annoying music.
So here I am, freshly reminded, having another look to see if the show is any easier to watch than its publicity.
In Sunday’s first new episode, two Dublin teens (Noah and Teagan) were sent to work on family farms in Cork, handing over their phones and adapting, with some reluctance, to different lives, routines, and families. You can imagine how it went – a bit of grumpy face-pulling, a bit of hugging, uncertain results, and a psychotherapist talking to the parents about the children’s fundamental issues (possibly the most interesting part, but given fairly short shrift).
It’s meant, I think, to be a kind of uplifting bit of Sunday evening viewing, and maybe to some extent it succeeds – it’s occasionally funny, the new families are remarkably patient, and some of the results appear positive, even if they’re only detailed in the closing credits rather than visible in the show. But it never entirely convinces – some scenes (some mithering between the teens and their parents) seem entirely played out for the camera, and as a production it’s a tatty, patchily audible thing. I also suspect there’s a bait-and-switch going on here, in that it’s not really the “city” that causes the problems, nor the “village” that fixes them (if they’re even fixed) – don’t village teens have phones too, and can’t cities be places of constructive work? And I know teenage life is often hard, but it’s not, surely, a different planet; you do despair just a little bit when Teagan thinks chickens have four legs.
The Wheel Of Time Amazon Prime
In somewhat less realistic vein, The Wheel Of Time continues to spin, now on its third abstruse revolution on Amazon Prime. If you’ve stuck with it this far, you’ll remember that at the end of season two, Rand (Josha Stradowski) was proclaimed the Dragon Reborn. Now he and Moiraine, pictured below, (Rosamund Pike) are heading into the Aiel Waste, a dangerous trek they hope will help them understand his role and destiny. But there are shady forces everywhere, some trying to stop them directly, some plotting (and outright destroying) back at the White Tower, where Mother Siuan (Sophie Okonedo) struggles to stay in charge as various sects vie for power.
If that’s a bit vague, it’s because there is far too much going on to summarise it any better. It’s one of the problems with the show: too many players, too many names, too many plots to actually recall, to the extent that, two full years in, we still need to be reminded of the names of even the central characters. There is still too much showy CGI, and it’s still too clean and pretty. And, worst of all, the one thing that makes this at times almost unwatchable, is the whisper acting. Can no-one speak in a normal voice, even in places of safe privacy, even in lighter moments? You might need to watch it with subtitles just to hear what’s being said, even if it still refers to people and places you don’t know anyway; worst of all is Marcus Rutherford as Perrin, who not only whispers but slurs his whispers into the shapeless noises you might make as you drift into sleep. You will say, more clearly than he says anything, what, who, and where’s the remote?
All that said, the cast generally seem a little more confident in their parts than in previous years, and the costumes are a wonder. There are even several early set pieces which not only move things along, but might represent a shift in the underlying blandness. You can only cup your hands to your ears and hope.
Ancient Greece By Train Channel 4, Saturday, 8.15pm
Alice Roberts is back on her Channel 4 train trips again. Actually the “train” part of it is more or less irrelevant, but Ancient Greece By Train still takes us on a trip through a gorgeous country with an epic history, in the company of an agreeable expert, so it’s hard to raise any objections. Her trip began in the north in Thessaloniki, and so far she’s moved south through Vergina (site of Phillip II’s palace, where Alexander the Great grew up), the spectacular Delphi, and into Athens, packed with ancient remains. She tends to explore less well-known sights, which might mean Parthenonaholics will be slightly disappointed, but it does mean we get to see less familiar significant sites like Pnyx hill, where, very specifically, democracy began.
It’s a whistle-stop tour, and no more than a potted history, but a perfectly engaging one. Roberts herself knows plenty, but she talks extensively to local experts too, getting (quite rightly) excited over an old inscription or the possible link between theatre and democracy itself. There are some odd continuity blips (setting out for a meeting with a minister in jeans but arriving in a dress), and it would be nice to hear some more questions about Alexander (tyrant or hero?), but otherwise this is a thoroughly pleasant way to start a Saturday night, even if it does send you straight back to the Greek booking sites.
Of course, there are a few ways to deliver TV shows about ancient civilisations. One, for example, is to have an actual expert like Roberts take us calmly through known human history. Another is to have a non-expert celebrity talk to us about his theories about alien builders. If you like the second variety, you’ll be excited to see something called Bradley Walsh: Egypt’s Cosmic Code; if you prefer the first variety, you’ll have choked while trying to shout, red-faced, at the sheer absurdity in the title alone.
Bradley Walsh: Egypt’s Cosmic Code Sky Showcase, Sunday, 7pm
The series begins with Bradley telling us that he became interested in Ancient Egypt years ago when, as an apprentice at Rolls-Royce, he realised “whoever built the pyramids, it wasn’t the Ancient Egyptians 4,500 years ago”. Of course he did. And if that alone, coming from a man of such noted subtlety and intellect, didn’t make you sit up, he invited some self-important “historians” on to tell us the same thing, that the pyramids could only have been made either by aliens or an advanced human civilisation that has since disappeared. Graham Hancock must have been punching the air.
Still, let’s not be too hasty. There are other voices here too, sane ones, logical ones, which give us some real-world facts to counter all the conspiracy nonsense. And in fairness to Walsh, it seems they finally persuaded him that aliens were not involved. But did the show need to be made at all? Or at least, couldn’t it have been given a less ludicrous (and ultimately inaccurate) title? Couldn’t Walsh have, you know, read a Wikipedia article while a sensible presenter did the job?
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