Life

TV review: Podge and Rodge will make RTE 2 great again

Billy Foley

Billy Foley

Billy has almost 30 years’ experience in journalism after leaving DCU with a BAJ. He has worked at the Irish Independent, Evening Herald and Sunday Independent in Dublin, the Cork-based Evening Echo and the New Zealand Herald. He joined the Irish News in 2000, working as a reporter and then Deputy News Editor. He has been News Editor since 2007

Podge and Rodge
Podge and Rodge Podge and Rodge

The Podge and Rodge Show, RTE 2, Monday at 10.40pm

Podge and Rodge are back and they’re wearing ‘Make RTE Great Again’ hats.

Their only promise was to double the number of viewers to RTE 2 - “from two to four.”

In fairness, they have a point. I can’t tell you the last time I even looked at the RTE 2 listings, never mind hit channel 53 on the remote. Especially since sports broadcasting got blanked out for us in the north.

Around a decade ago Podge and Rodge was one of the most popular shows in the Republic, competing with the likes of The Late Late Show for top spot.

But it all ended in 2010 and you wondered if it would look a bit dated eight years later.

Not a bit of it. We’re in more need now of a bit of inappropriate behaviour than ever before.

“A lot has changed,” Podge declared, before the boys from Ballydung Manor got stuck into same sex marriage, the gay taoiseach, the 8th amendment and gender equality.

There’s a bit of an RTE history with puppets intended for adults. Zig and Zag ran a double life as children’s and adult entertainers for more than a decade and Dustin the Turkey was so big that he represented Ireland in the 2008 Eurovision song contest.

On Podge and Rodge the guests are besides the point, but to be fair, JP Patterson from Made in Chelsea seemed a reasonable chap and Erin McGregor revealed that her mega star brother Conor once bought her a car.

There were a couple of dull patches, but mostly it was laugh out loud funny although much of it is too offensive to be repeated here.

***

The Cry, BBC 1, Sunday at 9pm

The Cry finished predictably. We found out at the end of the penultimate episode that Joanna was in fact on trial for the murder of Alistair and not their baby son, Noah.

The final episode was a long explanation of why she snapped (the guilt, the media attention, the false blame) when Alistair finally admitted that he gave Noah the wrong medication after the long flight to Australia and not a shell shocked Joanna.

It had after all been Alistair who disregarded Joanna’s needs and brought his wife and unsettled young baby to the other end of the earth in a self-indulgent legal attempt to regain custody of his teenage daughter.

Alistair told her how he had buried Noah’s dead body “for both of us” and let Joanna think that she had made the fatal mistake with the medicine.

His mistake was to metaphorically put his hands up while Joanna was driving. She opened his seatbelt, hit the accelerator and drove off the road.

Jenna Coleman was fantastic but the Cry was a bit of a dirge and failed the first law of the whodunit. It shouldn’t be obvious who did it.

****

Prime Time Presidential Debate, RTE 1, Tuesday at 9.35pm

The Irish public have a remarkable appetite for politics.

The average audience for the 105 minutes presidential debate was 446,000, while more than 900,000 tuned in at some point.

These are stunning audience figures for a campaign which will result in the election a president without any real power, while the outcome of Friday’s vote is already a certainty.

Added to that the debate was hardly exciting.

Michael D Higgins was pushed again on the need to take the government jet to Belfast, Sinn Féin Liadh Ni Riada was challenged on her sums around the average industrial wage and Sean Gallagher explained why he didn’t use the last seven years to learn Irish.