Journeys worth taking - Television by Dermot Bolger

Flesh and Blood, and Hide and Seek, two new RTÉ series, one fact, one fiction, both worth trying. Reviewed by Dermot BolgerThe softback edition of my latest novel appears shortly and Harper Perennial have introduced a new feature in their books called The PS Section. This contains a long Q&A session with the author. One question they asked me was the hoary old – why do you write? If I had been totally honest and succinct I would have replied, because it shows me to be in control.
Control is most especially important, if – though I've never done so – you write a memoir. Long before a word is written, authors agonise over the ground rules of personal revelation, not just over what will be said, but about the context in which it will be framed. Any memoir is an attempt to reclaim the past, to revisit and reshape it to let childhood hurt be understood through the prism of adult experience. Even the most searingly honest writer wants to be in control, to write the first draft with fire and rage in their heart and be allowed reshape the second draft when there is the ice in their veins which turns the past into prose they can stand over.
It is hard to overstate the importance of Nuala O'Faolain's brilliant memoir, Are you Somebody? which was a huge world-wide hit. It effected the lives of thousands of readers who felt something of their own experiences reflected in its beautifully written pages. It was and remains a controversial book but every citizen has the right to recollect their own life through the prism of their memories and, through careful crafting, every page of it still stands up as superb literature.
The great thing with a computer is that it does not ask you to justify yourself; it doesn't interrupt or lead you into unnecessarily voyeuristic areas. Nuala O'Faolain was the subject of Flesh and Blood (RTÉ1, Thursday, 10.15pm), the first of a series of profiles of people who have had to deal with childhood trauma. It made for uncomfortable viewing, not least because its subject seemed so uncomfortable at times with the direction of the questions. In fairness to reporter Mick Pello he was simply doing his job of asking the hard questions. If some seemed extraordinarily crass and intrusive – like asking her if she wished to apologise to the wives of any married men she had slept with – most times he said nothing and simply let O'Faolain talk.
A huge deal of what she had to say was fascinating, all of it deeply felt and deeply honest, but there were some moments when this viewer at least felt like an uncomfortable voyeur watching somebody have to deal with a medium where they had ceded control of how their own life was being framed. O'Faolain did not hide from the camera (which to be fair to the programme she did invite into her life) and tried to answer questions – even ones that she resented – honestly. But the impression I was left with was that somebody who has now shown in four superb books that they are a writer to their fingertips, probably belongs best behind a computer where they can tell the full story in context, where they can be their own editor, where – quite simply – they are in control.
Control is something which middle-aged refrigeration engineer, Paul Holden (superbly played by the excellent Michael McElhatton) is rapidly losing in the highly challenging four part series, Hide and Seek (RTÉ1, Monday 9.30pm), now in its second week. “Rapidly” is probably an inappropriate word for this deliberately slow unfolding voyage into mental meltdown. It is to the credit of writer Ted Gannon and director Dearbhla Walsh, that the convergence of past trauma and present day stress of work (his boss would make Lucifer quake) and parenthood is at times almost torturously slow, with the back story being bled carefully in through the sequence of nightmare images of water. Holden simply washing his hands can cause him to be drawn back to the night of a drowning witnessed in childhood. This is not meant to be comfortable viewing, bit it is good to see RTÉ try something which is not cosy or formulaic. It will take four episodes to see if it fully works on its own terms, but it seems to me that this will be a journey well worth taking.