Reality TV

Pure Mule RTÉ 1, Tuesdays, 9.30pm
Victim 0001 RTÉ2, Sunday 8pm
United by 9/11 Sky One, Sunday 9pm
The Death of Celebrity Channel 4,
Sunday 9pm

When the former Irish footballer Niall Quinn first arrived at Arsenal as an innocent teenager, everybody in the stadium – from the manager to the tea-lady – played a trick on him by pretending to be unable to understand a word of his apparently incomprehensible Dublin accent. Quinn eventually grasped the wind-up and took it in good part. However, had he been more cunning, he might have extracted his revenge by coming in the next day and flummoxing them all by putting on a truly incomprehensible Irish accent – that of Edenderry in the Irish midlands.

At least that was how the Edenderry accent sounded when I first encountered it in Eugene O'Brien's truly brilliant debut play, Eden, in the Peacock Theatre. Watching two isolated figures on a stage bereft of any setting, the play sounded at first like a rough trade version of Finnegans Wake. Gradually however, as one grew accustomed to the slow assault of slang phrases and nicknames, the entire population of a small town was conjured up onto that empty stage, with their failed dreams and hopes and secret passions.

Eden proved such a masterful evocation of contemporary small town life that I worried in advance about how Eugene O'Brien's new RTÉ six part series Pure Mule could ever live up to it, and if by having to flesh out the locations and minor characters, this "real life" version of O'Brien's small town would somehow get diluted.

Based on the first two episodes of Pure Mule (RTÉ 1, Tuesdays, 9.30pm), I can happily report that any apprehensions were misplaced. Co-produced by Dave Collins (who also produced perhaps the first screen version of midlands life in Eat the Peach) and the energetic Ed Guiney (who is currently co-producing Charles Sturridge's new version of Lassie and therefore leading a decidedly schizophrenic existence), Pure Mule is a superb example of Irish television drama made for an Irish audience.

It pays a very slight nod to Roddy Doyle's Family in that, like Family, each episode is centred on a different main protagonist. However, unlike Doyle's work they are not all from the same family. Instead the characters who stumble across each other's paths inhabit an unnamed Irish town (the actual filming is in Banagher, Co Offaly). Set across six weekends, Pure Mule looks set to build into a brilliant kaleidoscopic portrait of small town life, superbly written with an unfailing ear for dialogue by Eugene O'Brien and excellently directed by Declan Reeks.

Different stations picked different ways to mark the anniversary of 9/11, with RTÉ2 showing Victim 0001 (Sunday 8pm). This was a portrait of the Irish American priest Father Mychal Judge, who for eight years was chaplain to the New York City Fire Department, and who became the first victim pulled from the Trade Centre and declared dead. Sky One marked the occasion with United by 9/11 (Sunday 9pm) – a rather sad viewing experience of watching people try to cling to some sense of their lost loved ones, even if by just having a dog named after them so that they had a context to say the names aloud.

The people interviewed on Victim 0001 who launched a website campaign to have Mychal Judge canonised might feel that they were working on a more advanced level. But the cult that has grown up around Father Mychal Judge hinted at the way that people always try to make sense out of a senseless act by trying to construct some tangible good to give it meaning.

Father Mychel is far more deserving of instant media canonisation than others also conferred with saintliness by sudden death, like Diana Spencer who briefly became a cult-like figure. Judge seemed to have been a genuinely deep spiritual figure who touched both famous people who came to elegise him at his funeral (can anyone remember seeing Hilary Clinton speak in public without her looking as if she had rehearsed her delivery in the mirror) and down-and-outs on the streets. However, popularity won't get you on the fast track to sainthood. And neither will annoying cardinals by straying from the orthodox. So while Fr Mychal may become the first internet saint, one suspects that he will remain at the back of a very long queue in the Vatican.

Meanwhile on Channel 4, Piers Morgan in The Death of Celebrity (Sunday 9pm) was making a plea for talent to win out over mediocre personalities who possess no job beyond being famous merely for being famous. The programme only made its alleged targets all the more famous in having a countdown vote for the Most Pointless celebrity – won by a Mrs Victoria Beckham. The only problem is that the public also voted a Mr Tony Blair among the top ten pointless celebrities, which is worrying as Mr Blair actually has a job – even if he doesn't do it very well – and having a prime minister isn't actually that pointless. But at least nobody is trying to make Victoria Beckham a saint – just yet.