This TV review first appeared in the Andersonstown News
It’s funny (peculiar) what people find funny (ha-ha),and you could say it’s also funny (peculiar) how tastes in what’s funny (ha-ha) change with age.
There was a good example on Channel 4 last Thursday: FRANK OF IRELAND. It’s a new half-hour series produced by Sharon Horgan’s company – yes, Sharon Horgan who wrote and starred in the superb CATASTROPHE, which was funny (ha-ha), rude and totally believable. FRANK OF IRELAND stars Irish actor Brendan Gleeson’s two sons Domhnall and Brian, and begins as it clearly is going to continue.
Frank (Brian Gleeson) wakens up and reads some advice to himself he’s written on his hand the night before. Alas he hasn’t followed his own advice, because the next shot shows a young woman called Áine in the bed beside him. Frank’s mother enters the bedroom and criticises her son’s taste: “Áine’s so boring!” When Frank defends her with “Listen, her gran died yesterday”, his mum says something that I can’t repeat in a family newspaper.
Áine wakens and tells Frank she’s been seeing a doctor. Frank wonders if he should get checked too, but Áine explains that she’s seeing a doctor as in a doctor boy-friend. All this in the opening three minutes.
From there the show goes galumphing off, first of all to the wake of Áine’s granny, where Frank quotes lines from the movie Taxi Driver. Áine’s doctor-boyfriend is at the wake and it emerges he’s also a martial arts expert. Frank responds by going with his friend Doofus (Domhnall Gleeson) to a local gym to learn some martial arts himself. Their instructor is a young woman, who does some eye-popping martial arts clinches with both brothers.
Then there’s the gran’s funeral service, with Frank and his guitar doing a painful version of ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat’ before things dissolve into mayhem with Áine, Áine’s martial arts boy-friend, Frank, Doofus, and Frank’s martial arts sort-of-girl-friend all grappling in front of the altar, their thumb in the mouth of the person they’re grappling with.
What can I say? FRANK OF IRELAND is loud, full of half-funny jokes and situations that people in their teens and twenties will probably kill themselves laughing at. I’ll be honest: Curb Your Enthusiasm (SKY COMEDY) is my idea of funny (ha-ha). Frank of Ireland is fast-paced and sort-of-funny, and maybe it’ll grow on people, especially the under-forties. But don’t crack open the champagne for the Gleeson boys just yet. Comedy makes you laugh. Frank of Ireland made me wince.
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