Dublin Opinion

My television license renewal reminder landed in the door on the same day Trouble in Paradise made its debut on RTE 2. This, combined with the recent blurb for this year’s St. Patrick’s Day stamp that it “presents the shamrock as a contemporary emblem while reminding us of its eco-system”, has me convinced. An Post are starting to take the piss.

The motto of recent RTE commissioning seems to be “Keep it regional. Baby”. In fairness, this policy brought us Love is the Drug (Drogheda) and Pure Mule (Offaly), both entirely passable, and more importantly, watchable dramas from outside the pale.

The general consensus is that this trend is all very well and good as long as we never end up with a drama set in Cork. “This Langer”, anyone?

Trouble in Paradise is theoretically regional. Belltown, the fictional setting, seems to be vaguely mid-landish, but it’s a mid-land town the commuters haven’t found yet. The cast is actually very good. Lorcan Cranitch (Jimmy Beck in Cracker) and Angeline Ball (The Commitments, The General) are wasted here. The trouble with this production however, started long before cast and crew set to work. It’s the Screenplay, stupid.

To call TIP car crash television is to ignore the clear and defined narrative involved in most car crashes. This programme is a mess. It’s the screenwriting equivalent of a morality tale where Ambition meets the Limitations of talent. They struggle for a while only for Limitations of Talent to make off with our licence fee. Ambition is left bloodied but unbowed, clinging to a treatment for an Upwardly Mobile reunion.

I teach fourteen year old girls who have a better idea of who they are than this show does. My best guess, half way through its run, is that it’s a shot at some kind of comedy-drama allegory. The comic book setting of Belltown with its strip clubs, rapping priest, Country and Western family oligarchy (The Littles) and of course the woods which hold a “dark secret” all add some credence to this assumption. But an allegory for what?

Modern Ireland? State broadcasting? The space race? From reading various forums on the programme I am not alone in my ignorance. So it will amble along aimlessly for the next few weeks with none of us any the wiser. The writing team seem to have put much more time into their character’s ridiculous back stories and “fun facts about Belltown” on the TIP website, than making sure the project was worth filming in the first place.

RTE have made great strides in recent years in terms of production values and giving new talent a forum. Trouble in Paradise will hopefully become a learning experience rather than the step backward it would seem to represent. There’s not a capable cast or competent crew in the world who can turn confused concepts and ineptly written screenplays into TV gold.