Weighing up the options

A jockey struggles with his weight in Health Squad; Jack shows the different directions in which our lives can turn and TG4 weighs in with two great short films. By Dermot Bolger

If you wanted to think of someone for whom starvation and dehydration were favourite weapons of choice you would probably pick Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. Nearer to home, both however are also professional tools of the trade for people of relatively small physical statue but of huge heart –the jockeys of Ireland, whose primary battle every day is not with hurdles or sleeting rain along the flat, but with their own body weight on the scales.

Nemeton Productions highly successful Health Squad (RTÉ1, Thursdays, 8.30pm) returned this week with a glimpse into the life of Carlow based jockey John Cullen who has notched up 45 winners this year while existing on a daily diet of a morning cup of tea and a biscuit followed by total abstinence until a late night fast food takeaway on his way home from the races.

Like unhealthy people across the world, nothing makes me reach for the remote control quicker than a programme with the world "health" in the title, however while hitting John Cullen and this reviewer with a blitz of facts about body fat levels that I am not sure either of us completely grasped, the format of Health Squad remained constantly engaging. This was not least for its insight into the world of racing where all the professional expertise in relation to health, fitness and nutrition is reserved for the horses, with jockeys more or less left to fend for themselves. While horses were groomed and watered and closeted away, jockeys appear to lead chaotic, unstructured lives with little knowledge of fitness and training. This may be because it is so hard to read fitness manuals in a sauna, where they can spend an hour a day shedding pounds, but Health Squad presenter Sheana Keane followed Cullen over several months of his life as his training routine and level of fitness and nutrition changed. It wasn't quite as dramatic as being kidnapped by the Moonies, but in the run up to the Galway races, Cullen found that despite eating far more and far regularly and feeling better in himself, he was making his weight easily every morning. He even learned how to cook, to the befuddlement of fellow jockeys, while several fast food outlets near Carlow put their staff on protective notice. Bizarrely however, my advance tape spluttered out just after he rode his first winner in Galway. Probably it was just a technical hitch, but I just hope that it wasn't because he brought Sheana Keane and the entire film crew for a greasy slap-up mixed grill and chips to celebrate.

If he did stop on his way home to treat them then hopefully it was at the Capitol Grill and Pizza in Naas, which co-shared the catering duties during the filming of Jack (RTÉ 2, 11.25pm, Saturday). This was in the Shortscreen series which is often the most interesting ten minutes viewing in the week. Directed by Simon Hubbard and co-written with Declan Reynolds, who also starred as Jack alongside Hilary O'Neill as Lindsey (the perhaps love of Jack's life), this short film played interesting mind-games with the viewer. It fluently bridged the gaps between reality, nightmare and bitter aspiration as a jealous momentary thought at a party is played out in all its possible consequences.

TG4 also weighed in with two shorts in its Oscailt series on Sunday night, with Fluent Dysphasia (10.30pm) followed by The Longest Ditch (11.45pm). Made by Dough Productions and directed by Daniel O'Hara, Fluent Dysphasia follows on from his extremely successful and funny short, Yu Ming is Aimn Dom. This new film features Stephen Rea as a single parent who, after a night of binge-drinking, bangs his head in a Macari chip-shop (populated by neither jockeys nor film-crews) and wakes up to find himself able only to speak fluent Irish and not understand a word of English. It's a bizarrely Irish twist on Kafka and Rea has great fun, as does Jane Stynes as his long suffering daughter and Paddy C Courtney as the drinking buddy who presumes that Rea is possessed. It does wears its point on its sleeve and doesn't leave itself too many options, but remains highly engaging with a nice twist at the end.

Directed by Hugh Farley, The Longest Ditch or An Diog is Faide was moving in its recreation of the life and death of Sonnie Murphy. Although the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics is remembered as a glorious occasion for Irish athletics with two gold medals, Sonnie Murphy is largely forgotten. A farm labourer who got a chance to compete in the steeplechase in extreme heat and against medical advice from Irish colleagues who knew that he was unwell, Murphy felt that it would be impossible to go back home without having given the race 100 per cent effort. He paid the price, with a race still run every year in his native parish of Kilnaboy, Co Clare, in his memory. This was underplayed, effective filmmaking.

Dermot Bolger's new novel is The Family on Paradise Pier.