Television: One man's bench

Kilkenny's getting swankier, according to RTÉ's new fly-on-the-wall series 5 Star, which charts the difficult run-up to the opening of a new hotel. Legend gets off to an equally slow start, but could be one to watch

The most pleasant night's sleep I ever had in Kilkenny was on a stone seat beside Kilkenny Castle, on an isolated riverside path. The location was not just dictated by poverty, because even if I'd had the money to afford what was then Kilkenny's most luxurious hotel, The Newpark, I was barred from there along with Thom McGinty. Thom (who later become known as the Diceman) was barred for removing all his clothes in the Newpark during the Arts Week Ball. Possessing a more demure disposition, I was barred on the same occasion, merely for wearing a long, sensible black dress. (In our defence, we were suffering from a condition known as the late 1970s.)

Kilkenny has come a long way since the late-1970s, when sophistication meant having scampi with your Blue Nun. Now, it seems awash with luxury hotels. The latest to open its doors is the Lyrath Estate Hotel, Spa and Convention Centre owned by millionaire businessman Xavier McAuliffe. "Open its doors" may be an incorrect term since the hotel's revolving door refused to revolve on its first day in use – just one of many mishaps forming the frantic backdrop to 5 Star (RTÉ1, Friday, 8.30pm), a fly-on-the-wet-varnish look at the problems behind the opening of McAuliffe's pet project. Directed with nice pace by Gillian Marsh, 5 Star was presumably named more in expectation than reality, as Failte Ireland may not have issued a rating for this grandiose project yet. Based on the opening episode, hotel inspectors might not be welcome ahead of schedule amid the chaos.

McAuliffe owns hotels in South Africa, but opening a hotel in Ireland presents different problems, not least the fact that probably more staff in South Africa speak English. Richard Bray, the stoically harassed general manager, hammered home his mantras of decorum and etiquette to 40 Polish staff with little English, while the kitchen manager used more basic linguistic techniques to explain what was in the canapés to be served to a gathering of potential customers: "It's duck. Quack, quack."

If that sounds like Fawlty Towers, the foreign staff are no Manuels. With their honest desire to learn new trades (if they could just get a break from searching for lost curtains), they are the stars of the show. McAuliffe comes across as a rather blundering figure, but shrewd businessmen don't blunder their way into six weeks of free publicity on RTÉ. That would be like telling the Taoiseach that he lacks balls.

Legend (RTÉ2, Monday, 9.30pm) got off to a slightly laboured start, introducing a multitude of sub-plots and characters gathered in the house of "Fridge" (Padraic Delaney) to console him after the death of his wife, Harriet, on a bleak Dublin estate. Fridge thought he knew Harriet inside out, but she leaves him not just with their two young children but also a large, unexpected debt to a local money-lender/ thug.

The second episode moved far more smoothly, largely due to Delaney's superb performance as a bewildered, vulnerable and yet steely 26-year-old stonemason confronted by overwhelming grief and the responsibility of minding two utterly distraught children.

The domestic moments are emotionally engaging, but the more clichéd world of hard-boiled detectives and loan sharks feels as if it might drive the story in the overly obvious direction of 'quiet man pushed too far'. Hopefully my fears of a certain predictability will be unfounded, because it has an ambitious script by Ken Harmon and strong performances by Ruth Bradley, Allen Leech, Joe Doyle and especially Katie Whelan as the young girl coming to terms with a changed world. Directors Charlie McCarthy and Robert Quinn are always worth watching too. Legend's Dublin feels real and if it gathers pace it could be a slow and memorable burner.