Meet Dad and Daddy

TV REVIEW:Brian Clough: The Greatest Manager England Never Had? Sunday, BBC2

The Great Irish Famine: Remember SkibbereenSunday, TG4

The Trouble With . . .Monday, BBC1

ApparitionsMonday, RTÉ1

My Weird and Wonderful Family Wednesday,Channel 4

FOR THE VAST majority of Irish viewers, the answer to the question Brian Clough: The Greatest Manager England Never Had?is "thank God". A timely restorative for those suffering from World Cup withdrawal symptoms, the documentary offered an affection portrayal of the football manager known as "Ol' Bighead".

Clough was a prolific goal-scorer as a player, albeit in the old Second Division, but found his true calling at the helm of unfashionable clubs such as Derby County and Nottingham Forest, leading the latter to two consecutive European Cups in 1979 and 1980. He remains the only English manager to achieve this feat.

Given his oft-repeated desire to be “the perfect dictator”, it was fascinating to wonder how Clough’s brand of iron rule might have established a culture in English football at international level designed to nullify the worst excesses of the self-indulgent, egotistical chaos that marked England’s most recent World Cup farce. He famously failed an interview for the job in the mid-1970s, however, subsequently claiming that the FA were terrified he would take over the FA. “And they were right,” he added.

A neatly packaged piece, the documentary blended old footage of interviews with Clough and his conspirator-in-chief, Peter Taylor, with contemporary interviews with those who knew him best, such as former players John McGovern and Martin O’Neill, now the manager of Aston Villa, and his wife, Barbara. Comprehensive and entertaining, the documentary also examined the darker aspects of Clough’s flawed genius, his temper and his ego, and the alcoholism that reduced him to a parody of his former self.

What it failed to do, however, was offer an answer to the question raised by its title. Indeed, it even forgot to ask the question.

Given that most Clough-watchers would have been familiar with most of the footage, the documentary was a lost opportunity, little more than a comforting stroll down memory lane rather than a Clough-inspired investigation of the problems bedevilling the English football team.

THERE WAS PRECIOUSlittle comfort to be derived from The Great Irish Famine – Remember Skibbereen, which viewed the catastrophic impact of the Great Hunger on the Irish psyche through the prism of the Cork town.

Clear-eyed and unflinching, the documentary even offered unintentional Monty Pythonesque humour with a vignette about a boy falling off a death cart who was subsequently discovered to be barely alive. The boy survived the experience and lived until 1910, but how many more were still alive when burned or tossed into mass graves? Despite the potential for melodrama, however, the makers employed a dispassionate style, allowing the harrowing statistics and haunting illustrations to speak volumes. The context was crucial, as the programme expanded beyond its immediate remit to explore London's laissez-faireattitude to the famine, and the contemporary belief that the eradication of the cottier class would eventually benefit the economy, as Irish agriculture moved – willingly or otherwise – from an emphasis on tillage to livestock.

The scale by which millions died or emigrated remains almost impossible for the modern mind to comprehend, but it was the incidental details that proved most telling: hints of cannibalism; guards employed at the gates of towns to turn away the starving; orphan girls shipped from workhouses to Australia and what was presumably a harrowing future, there being no record of their fate after they arrived. One contributor lamented the paucity of Famine memorials, and the neglect of those few that exist.

The programme left us with the suggestion that survivors’ guilt is a pernicious thing. At the back of every Irish mind, claimed one contributor, lurks the dark question: What did my ancestors do to survive?

THE GREAT THINGabout Northern Ireland, or so ran the consensus among the talking heads contributing to The Trouble With . ., was that the people had survived with their sense of humour intact. "We laugh at what most people would cry about," affirmed a beaming Ian Paisley Jnr. Cue footage of a young boy telling a joke about the IRA man with only two bullets in his gun confronted with Ian Paisley, Margaret Thatcher and Daniel O'Donnell walking up the Falls Road. "So he shot Daniel O'Donnell twice," said the scamp.

The first in a series intended to investigate the “thorny issue of identity in Northern Ireland”, the programme raced through issues such as what to call the place, the divisive power of religion, the inventiveness of the language, the dearth of culture, and the scabrous sense of humour. Marie Jones, Dennis Taylor, Fr Eugene O’Hagan and Julian Simmons were among those testifying in a self-deprecating way to the unique qualities of the region, and very entertaining it was too.

By the same token, a programme made about Munster, Wales or the Outer Hebrides would have made exactly the same claims in terms of a unique sense of humour, the resilience of its inhabitants, and the occasional deviations from the Queen’s English. In fact, what makes Northern Ireland unique in these islands is the conflict that claimed so many lives. The makers inevitably touched on “the legacy of the Troubles”, but there was no hint, as tourist buses rumbled up the Shankhill and Falls, that rioters were very probably preparing fresh petrol bombs even as the programme screened.

IN A WEEKdominated by programmes investigating the past, My Weird & Wonderful Familylooked to the future. Ten years ago, gay couple Tony and Barrie Drewitt-Barlow caused a sensation in the UK when they fathered twins Aspen and Saffron, their sperm impregnating an American surrogate mother. The pair have since had another boy, Orlando, who is – because the original egg split, and was put on ice – Aspen's identical twin, though he's half his age. All of which was complicated enough, but film-maker Daisy Asquith followed Tony and Barrie as they prepared for the delivery of yet another set of twins.

“We love having two dads,” Aspen said. “It’s not weird to us. It’s great.”

Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Even allowing for what might have been lost in the editing suite, however, all three kids seemed bright, happy and well-adjusted. Their demeanour around their fathers – Barrie is “Daddy”, Tony is “Dad” – certainly lends the lie to the naysayers who claim that the children of same-sex parents will suffer by comparison with those born to into the traditional nuclear family.

“People said Saffron would have no female influence,” said the endearingly camp Barry as he treated his daughter to a salon session.

"Hello! Have you seenthe gay men going out in Brighton and Manchester?" The focus, however, was on the men's parenting, not their sexuality, and in that respect they appear to have been a resounding success. When the possibility arose that one of their new twins might have Down syndrome, a fretting Barrie proposed putting the baby up for adoption, failing to see the link between his discrimination against the foetus and a wider discrimination against homosexuals in general and gay parenting in particular.

By contrast, 10-year-old Saffron wouldn’t hear of it, declaring that the baby would be a human being like everyone else, and should be treated with the same respect.

What those who opposed our own Civil Partnership Bill made of it all is impossible to know. What we can say is that the future here will be a foreign country. Happily, it looks like they’ll be doing things a little differently there.

Through the mists of time: from one mass delusion to another

The trials of Marian devotee Joe Coleman provided the narrative spine to Apparitions, a documentary exploring the Irish phenomenon of divine visitations, broadcast to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the infamous moving statues of Ballinspittle.

Coleman believes himself a channel for the Virgin Mary’s communications with the faithful, and the programme provided a platform for his evangelising. As a counterpoint to Coleman’s unwavering faith in his mission, talking heads such as Fintan O’Toole and Prof Lawrence Taylor offered a socio-cultural context for the occasional eruption of such paranormal events, and a science-based rationale for what they consider his delusion.

Meanwhile, Coleman did himself few favours, suggesting at one point that he had died, gone to heaven and returned. Even Jesus, after His resurrection, had the good grace to return as a spirit rather than a flesh-and-blood entity.

Most fascinating, however, were the links made between visitations at Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorje and Knock, and the turbulent times in which the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared. In 1879, for example, the people of Knock were at war with pro-landlord priests as the land reform movement gathered momentum. Is it possible the Knock visitation was a mass delusion born of a democratic appeal to a higher power than the clergy?

The current generation of clergy at Knock were by turns gracious and condescending about Coleman’s claims. Where the prog- ramme missed a trick was in not turning the spotlight on the clergy’s faith to ask why they so readily dismiss Coleman’s divine inspiration, yet cheerfully perpetuate what is essentially an unprovable Bronze Age superstition.