Republican News · Thursday 20 February 1997

[An Phoblacht]

The King is dead - long live the Kings

The strong and encouraging increase in the number of Irish productions continues with Sweet Dreams (RTE 1, Wednesdays, 8.30pm), a four-part documentary series following the efforts of Irish performers to make it big in the entertainment industry. The first episode was one which I had to watch, being a lifelong admirer of the King, despite the unfortunate manner in which he left this earthly building. I like to think that maybe it was all a hoax and Elvis is actually alive and well and taking a break on that Kit Kat commericial.

Neither of the Elvis impersonators featured were in any danger of being mistaken for the risen King but their dedication was impressive indeed. Ben `Slick' Somers, from Finglas, was the more personable and charismatic of the two off stage and had enough ambition to power an entire city. He, quite simply, wants to be ``stinking rich''. Curtis King, an office equipment service engineer from Belfast, appeared from the short glimpse we got of their respective performances, to be the better Elvis.

Ben colourfully described his previous career on a factory assembly line as ``Yawnsville, Arizona'', a boredom taken care of when the workforce was made redundant. We also met his mother, who was like all mothers. A career in showbusiness, you could tell, was not really a career at all, certainly not for a son who got ``seven honours in his Leaving''.

To digress for a moment, it was my own mother who set me on the road to a non-vocal career from an early age with constant reminders that ``you haven't a note in your head'', although to be fair, she had a point. During my five-year stint at the local CBS, I bore the proud distinction of being one of just two boys ordered to shut up in choir practice. And when I surreptitiously joined in again, thinking that my distinctive harmony would be masked by thirty or so other voices, I was collared almost immediately. But enough about me. Back to the plot.

While Curtis perfected his costumes and practiced Elvis's smallest gestures, Ben was stealing the show. Before going on stage he whipped out his Elvis wig, something of a necessity because ``I'm bald as a coot,'' he smiled. ``I've gotta wear this. But Elvis wouldn't have gone out with a bald head and neither will I.''

``No idea comes true unless you first believe it,'' he assured the camera. If there were Elvis Commandments this would surely be one of the uppermost. 

 

Good strong black comedy is in short supply these days but BBC 1's Gobble (Saturday, 15 February, 9pm), a satirical swipe at the BSE scandal in Britain, hit the mark solidly. The choice of Kevin Whately (Inspector Morse's impressive sidekick) in the lead role was an added bonus. The plot centred on an outbreak of suspected mad turkey disease, a localised problem which is soon blown into an international crisis plunging the Tory government into direr straits than even the hateful Douglas Hogg has provoked in real life.

Kevin Whately is the underestimated civil servant drafted in to produce the desired report that there is nothing to fear.

``I thought turkeys were vegetarians?'' he queried naively, when he heard the suspect turkeys were being fed turkey offal. ``They are,'' said the turkey baron who bore a little too much of a likeness to Bernard Matthews. ``That's why we feed them vegetarians.''

A few good twists sprinkled with a dash of incompetent animal rights activists, a plethora of incompetent politicians and civil servants and this reviewer was left with a very satisfied feeling.

Gobble was originally due to be screened by the BBC at Christmas but was held over because of an outbreak of E coli poisoning in Scotland. Just to prove that truth is indeed stranger than fiction, its delayed screening coincided with breaking news of an outbreak of Newcastle's Disease in the Six Counties. 

 

The final episode of The Joy (Monday, 17 February, RTE 1) was a mixed bag. It focused in part on the segregation unit, where prisoners took staff hostage for a short period last month but also highlighted more positive elements, such as the prisoners' production of West Side Story, the première of which even attracted Mary Robinson.

The success of this series has been its message of the uselessness of a policy of imprisonment without adequate resources for rehabilitation or tackling the social and economic forces which cause crime. It will have brought to a wider audience the extent to which the drugs crisis has crammed our prisons and will continue to do so if the struggle to rid our communities of drugs is not adequately funded by the state.

The series ended powerfully with the frustrated and angry words of Keith, a drug addict who was leaving Mountjoy for the eighth time. As he left on TR (temporary release), a prison officer warned him to be of ``sober habits''.

``And this, be of sober habits,'' he appealed to the camera as the heavy prison door shut behind him, ``I can't be of sober habits. I came in with a problem and I'm going out with the same fuckin' problem and I'm not the only one with that problem.

``There's your TR, there's your fuckin' problem but [pointing back at the prison] that's not your answer.''

BY LIAM O COILEAIN

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