RTÉ’s latest drama series proves a ratings topper

You have to hand it them. Sick of the Irish people complaining about Fair City since 1989, RTÉ finally decided to act. Their new drama series dropped this month, and the first few weeks have not disappointed. There is betrayal, anger, upheaval, tension and mystery in every episode. To keep viewers gripped, there is a new storyline every day, each bombshell more jaw-dropping than the last.

There are two main protagonists.

First, the tall, suave well-heeled golden boy of RTÉ, the star at the top of the pay ladder. Having recently relinquished the reins of Ireland’s most popular TV show for over a decade amid much fanfare and adulation, he has cemented his place in the nation’s affections and is embarking on the next phase of his life and career. The words “future President” have been whispered. He has the ears of the nation and the world at his feet.

Deep in the bowels of Montrose, the beleaguered Director General has spent the last few years trying to keep RTÉ’s sinking ship afloat. The impoverished national broadcaster can barely keep the lights on. She regularly begs for more money from our pockets. Even homes that don’t own a TV should pay a TV licence, she claims, despite RTÉ’s online player being, well, a bit rubbish. The hungry ‘talent’ at RTÉ is gobbling large chunks of her budget, so she is leaving no stone unturned trying keep them fed.

Both of our main characters are unusual, in that they never actually appear on screen. ‘Unseen’ characters, they call them in the soap-opera world.

Scandal breaks. The golden boy, who in the past claimed pay cuts were not ‘something I’ve ever been found wanting in’, was found to be earning more than RTÉ had told us he was. The Director General had apparently made a unilateral decision to arrange a secret commercial deal with Renault that somehow saw the national broadcaster paying for their corporate events.

We have a cliffhanger. Who knew about this arrangement, and why was it made?

Enter a cast of supporting characters, and a two-part special, set in Leinster House. A motley crew of board members, senior management, and posturing politicians, the latter tripping over each other in hurried bluster to scold and declare outrage, as if no politician has ever come within a hair’s breadth of a shady deal or dodgy declarations. We meet a financial controller who doesn’t know his own salary, and a whole crew of people who know absolutely nothing at all. Out the front of Leinster House is a bus, under which our long-suffering Director General has been thrown by her colleagues.

And the audience? Well, that’s us, and like a good pimple-popping video, we can’t look away, despite our disgust. Every episode reveals more of the rot that exists in our national broadcaster, where regular workers are starved of the resources to do their jobs and some exist on precarious, zero-hour contracts, or no contracts at all. Meanwhile, the odiously termed ‘talent’ takes home salaries rivalling that of the President of the USA. The house of cards is tumbling, it’s the biggest scandal to hit RTÉ since its foundation. It’s a ratings-topper, and we are hate-watching with the rest of them.

If only it were fictional, but in a year of cutbacks and belt-tightening and waiting lists and homelessness and soaring costs, there is mounting anger and bitterness. You see, in Ireland, one of the most heinous things of which a person can be accused – second only to ‘notions’ – is greed. (This, despite it being a remarkably common trait, typically combined with low self-awareness.) And the only thing as bad as greed is hypocrisy.

Unfortunately for our golden boy, while he did nothing wrong in the eyes of the law, he managed to display both greed and hypocrisy, ensuring that his crown didn’t just slip, it fell down the toilet in Montrose. Should he ever return to those corridors, the thinly veiled, chilly contempt his own colleagues have shown of late suggests he will need extra layers.

Our DG, meanwhile, has presided over a crumbling empire of hierarchies, silos, secrecy and a culture shamefully unbecoming of our national broadcaster, where some people are simply more important than others, to a point where their grotesque salaries bear no relevance to their so-called talent.

The most unforgivable thing of all is how this episode has undermined one of the most essential, fundamental elements of any healthy democracy – public-service broadcasting. There is a growing clamour for privatisation (as if we have learned nothing from the past). The only bright light in has been the rigour with which RTÉ’s reporters have bravely held their own employers to account.

There is now a strong mandate for drastic reform within the organisation. It offers significant opportunity for reform and a new financial model. But it will take hard work and bravery, and new characters to develop new storylines.

Will RTÉ grasp the nettle? Stayed tuned in to find out.