Lookback in anger

Blundering magicians, naughty bloopers and Gaybo escaping retirement. Dermot Bolger looks at some dubious New Year telly highlights

As a rule, it is generally easy to spot the person who has made a resolution to give up drink on New Year's Eve because they have a sufficient quantity of alcohol to fill a small lake in Leitrim before them on the bar counter. Similarly, you can spot the smoker promising to reform because they are working their way through heaps of cigarettes with the frantic energy of an Irish builder shredding evidence. On New Year's Eve it would be nice to think that television stations were engaged on a similar splurge before a bracing resolution to give up showing boring outtakes and talentless people making a show of themselves. But I know that this is wishful thinking.

Indeed it now seems that the only thing that a mediocre television show needs to achieve immortality – or at least repeat showing – is for the actors to make a dog's dinner of their lines. ITV decided that the best way to celebrate New Year's Eve was for Denis Norden to present an hour of gaffes and outtakes from television programmes in It'll be Alright on the Night 19 (ITV, Saturday, 8pm). For those who don't know, an outtake is when people make a moss, sorry, make a mash, sorry, make a mess of their lines and, as a rule, are about an side-splittingly funny as reading this sentence. For those who missed Mr Norden's selection, the same station obliged us with TV's Naughtiest Blunders (ITV, Saturday 10.30pm) some hours later – a programme distinguishable from its predecessor by the narcissism of minor detail.

By then ITV might have thought that the public had enjoyed its fill of people making a fool of themselves, because they had already given us an hour of Best Ever Worst Auditions (ITV, Saturday 7pm), which showed that if they were not over keen to stretching the bounds of television, they were interested in doing so with the English language. Channel 4 got in on the act the previous evening, but at least the archive clips on When Magic Tricks Go Wrong (Channel 4, Friday, 10pm) did possess a gripping, morbid fascination in presenting people more concerned with fame than safety, like the unfortunate man who had himself buried alive in a Perspex coffin which immediately collapsed and crushed him under the weight of the soil heaped onto it.

With so much archive film floating around the most informative was actually The Unique Dave Allen (BBC 2, Thursday, 10.45pm). Much of this footage from the late Irish comedian's television shows stood up surprisingly well to the test of time. The sad fact is that when tributes are paid to most successful 1970s television comedians, what shows up most is that they had one foot firmly planted in a 19th-century music hall tradition. Allen's material has certainly dated, but looking at his style you knew that he had at least one foot stretched out towards the 21st century.

One of the few certainties in life is that a bastardised version of anything successful on British television will resurface on Irish (and, to be fair) possibly a few dozen other televisions. Thus it was only a matter of time before Gaybo's Grumpy Men (RTE1, Friday, 10.25pm) surfaced, continuing the longest drawn out retirement since Fu Man Chu's voice boomed out "I shall return" from the slopes of the Sugarloaf Mountain in the golden days of Ardmore Studios. This was an anthology of moans and groans from middle-aged men presided over by Mr Byrne, and featured Cathal O'Shannon who wanted the leaves cleaned off his pavement, Alan Stanford who wanted municipal authorities to provide more public toilets and some old man bizarrely complaining about ladies' skirts being too short. I say "bizarrely" because I suspect that many old men would secretly complain that they are not short enough. David Norris was good on his relationship with God, with whom he is not on immediate speaking terms, but generally the show was about as exciting as... well... sharing a bus with a cluster of grumpy old men.

Or it was about as exciting as watching The Premiership (RTÉ 2, 7.15pm, Saturday) which – with the abolition of corporal punishment – may exist mainly as a fate with which fathers can threaten their sons if they are bold and therefore not allowed to stay up and watch Match of the Day (BBC 1, 10.30pm, Saturday). Fifty tedious minutes into The Premiership, RTÉ had still managed to show only two matches – neither overly exciting. Fifty-nine minutes into The Premiership they had managed to squeeze in three. As fascinating an oracle as Mr John Giles is, long-winded analysis will never be a substitute for what people tune in to watch, which is football. Could RTÉ make a New Year's resolution to put their hands in their pocket and pay for a bit more actual footage of games?