This TV Review first appeared in The Andersonstown News
ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS (RTÉONE) has a nice blockbuster sound to it, the kind of documentary series that would come loaded with big insights. Not so.
Patricia Scanlan is an Irish writer who ‘adores’ writing, and in last week’s episode she remembers when she met ‘the magnificent Maeve Binchy’. She was ‘excited and nervous’ in the presence of Binchy, who at the time was selling her books by the million worldwide.
In the episode Scanlan meets old friends of Binchy, with all the while a tinkling piano telling us this is a sad and beautiful bit. Then she interviews Mary Kenny, another friend, and we hear once again the story of how Maeve was in a kibbutz in Israel and was writing letters home, describing kibbutz life. These were of such quality that her father checked the possibility of her becoming a writer.
Intersecting with the contemporary interviews we saw old clips of Maeve being interviewed by Gay Byrne and Pat Kenny, and explaining why she never wrote about sex or violence (“I’ve never been at an orgy – have you?”). She never used ‘bad’ language in her books, and that widened their sale figures among the throngs of more shockable readers. She had her own disappointments in love which hurt, but her friends and acquaintances assured us that this became a driving force for Binchy – she poured her pain into her art.
Maeve Binchy was a wonderful bubbly talker, always good-natured and smiling. I knew her briefly when I worked in The Irish Times and all that they said about her in ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS rang true. But the programme strained too hard, laid a foundation of pop music ooh-aah choruses and soft melancholy piano from start to finish, as if the documentary producers didn’t trust the story of Maeve to move and inform the viewers on its own.They also introduced trivia which frankly sounded dumb – like the fact that Maeve got arthritis in her thumb and decided she’d type without it.
ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS is the first of a series of programmes where the debt owed to a previous talented generation is explored. That could make for some truly interesting insights. Alas, last week’s one was made soggy by sentiment. More screen time for Maeve herself and less for the people standing on her shoulders, let along tinkly pianos and ooh-aah singing, would have made for a better programme.
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