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We all know that RTÉ’s original programming can be questionable at times. One needs to look no further than The Voice of Ireland or Dancing With The Stars to know that RTÉ is not exactly proficient at devising quality entertainment for its viewers. However, RTÉ managed to top even those bland and disappointing shows with its Late Late Show Valentine’s Special last Friday night, which is the most blatant example of the network’s incompetence seen in years.
Things were off to a rocky start when Z-listers Al Porter and Linda Martin opened the show with an embarrassing and unwarranted musical number. Once that cacophonic ordeal was over, the host Ryan Tubridy stepped out on-stage and welcomed the audience of singletons to the love-themed show. The lads in the audience (“lads” being the scientific name for men with no respect for others) launched into an enthusiastic rendition of ‘OLÉ OLÉ’, resulting in a certain amount of bile invading my mouth. Suffice to say that it remained there for the duration of the show.
The first round of guests were extremely underwhelming in this edition of The Late Late, though that’s not exactly a shocker given the usual standard. Al Porter did himself no favours by relying on gay stereotypes for most of his “comedic” material, and topped his routine off with a Jihadist bombing joke that he should be thrown under a speeding train for sharing. Porter also introduced us to the wonderful phrase “pebble-dashing the hole off of her”, which I hope to never hear again for the remainder of my life. Linda Martin, on the show for the nth time in her dwindling music career, left no impression whatsoever, which is probably for the best.
It isn’t The Late Late Show without a GAA player. Ryan Tubridy completely missed the mark when interviewing Cork camogie star Ashling Thompson. Tubridy took the opportunity to ask her relentlessly about why she is single, and what she looks for in a man. Thompson dutifully answered the questions but didn’t seem impressed with the line of questioning. Tubridy then asked her to remove her jacket to show the audience her tattoos, and she reluctantly obliged for a few seconds. She was then subjected to the heckling and catcalling of the lads in the audience who apparently thought that she was there to perform a striptease for them. Tubridy finally got round to actually asking her about sport, for no more than two or three minutes. This interview attempted to reduce a successful sportswoman into nothing more than a pretty ornament on display for the sake of ratings. Not good enough, RTÉ.
The show featured two musical performances from Crystal Swing. They were relatively inoffensive but about as cringeworthy as you would expect. Their interview was utterly forgettable. I zoned out while Tubridy attempted to interrogate the band members about their personal lives, but at the very least it offered a reprieve from the rest of the show. Septuagenarian crooner Dickie Rock also made an appearance to perform ‘That’s Amore’, which was somewhat bearable but certainly did not uphold Tubridy’s description of him as the “Irish god of love”. If anything, it only accentuated how badly the Irish National Broadcaster had interpreted 21st century Valentine’s Day.
The Valentine’s-themed activities throughout the episode were positively vomit-inducing. First of all, there was a Kiss Cam throughout the show, where audience members were pressured into swapping saliva live on TV, supposedly for our enjoyment at home. Unsurprisingly, watching some poor girl being grabbed by the throat (yes, that actually happened) and kissed against her will was not entertaining. It was disgusting, and served no purpose other than to validate the rape culture that is all too prominent in Irish society anyway.
Let us not forget the utter cringe-fest that was the ‘Blind Date’ segment. One ‘lucky’ guy was brought out and given the opportunity to interrogate three single women until he could choose his date for the evening. Tubridy referred to the women as ‘victims’, but I failed to get the joke. After fifteen minutes of painful sexual innuendo and blatant indecency, it came to an end. Never have I heard the word ‘ride’ said so many times on Irish television. I could breathe a small sigh of relief. That is, until the newly formed couple was visited again later in the show for an update, as if love could have blossomed in the space of an hour.
Most baffling was the ‘Beat It or Eat It’ segment, where a male and female member of the crowd were chosen to compete in order to earn prizes for their respective gender in the audience. They had to answer questions about each other, despite having never met, and if they answered incorrectly then they had to eat something from an array of delights (chicken feet, cow’s tongue, meal worms, snails). For some reason, RTE decided that what a Valentine’s special really needed was a long-winded attempt at an I’m A Celeb bushtucker trial. Perhaps most tragic was the final question, when the two contestants were asked what the other had rated them out of ten, having been shown a photo prior to the show. Incorrect guesses, hurt feelings and awkward laughter ensued, and you can imagine the discomfort even Ryan Tubridy must have felt.
The show concluded with Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh, Bernard O’Shea and James Kavanagh answering sex-related questions from the audience, though by this point I had long given up on this hot mess. The supposed ‘experts’ shared their opinions on threesomes, sexting and manscaping. Instead of becoming more sexually enlightened, I lost the will to live, and possibly a fraction of my sanity. Crystal Swing finally played out the show, and I wondered how I had managed to endure this twisted parallel universe for almost two hours.
In all honesty, the highlight of the entire show was Ryan Tubridy’s slick suit. It fit his figure well, the blue material appeared to be of a high quality, and he even wore a red rose in his lapel to increase the romance. It was a sharp little number, and could potentially hold its own against the iconic Toy Show Christmas jumper. The fact that I even have an opinion on Tubridy’s attire lets you know just how lacklustre the rest of this piss-poor show really was.
This should have been a romantic, humorous and uplifting piece of entertainment for everyone watching at home; all in preparation for Valentine’s Day 2017. Instead, it was two hours of crude, offensive, and disgusting content courtesy of our publicly-funded national network. This cannot be allowed to happen again in 2018, or any other year for that matter. Along with many others, I’ll be lodging a formal complaint to the RTE, insisting that they invest their funds in quality entertainment in the future. Those that pay the license fee deserve better than this load of bollocks.
