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One of the clichés that emerged about Gay Byrne’s Late Late Show was that it showed a mirror of Ireland and invited us to look at ourselves for who we really were: warts, wrinkles and all. A similar claim could be made when Ryan Tubridy oversees the return of the immortal chat for a season 59 with an engaging episode that captures the hopes, frustrations, heartaches, and oddities of life during the coronavirus.
We are so far into the Age of Covid that social distancing on set and the absence of an audience in the studio no longer register as strangers. In fact, it would be enormously alarming to see Tubridy accompanied by dozens of members of the public who coughed and sputtered. Those are the raw materials of our nightmares today.
The Late Late Show has had a solid pandemic. Tubridy clearly sees it as his mission to keep our flagging spirits high. It says so at the top of the broadcast, which begins with images of empty stadiums and venues. “We are not going to pretend that everything is normal,” he says. “[But] we will arrive. “
The rarity mentioned above is courtesy of movie star Russell Crowe. You have emailed RTÉ, which is essentially a long-form TikTok video from Australia. He serves a pint in his private bar and tells a strange story about a tarantula.
There is a rude auction that I will not repeat and that is irrelevant anyway. What matters is that an Oscar winner and box office bully is monologue about tarantulas on Friday night in primetime and feels completely normal. If anything speaks to the sheer weirdness of life as it is lived in the present, it’s Russell Crowe at the Late Late serving beer and talking about arachnids.
Meanwhile, the hopeful component of the episode begins with an interview with Ellen Glynn and Sara Feeney, Galway’s cousins who went to sea on their paddle boards last month. Miles from shore, they survived the night by tethering themselves to a lobster pot, keeping their spirits afloat by singing Taylor Swift songs. If we were watching the Toy Show, this is the point where the actual Taylor Swift would jump out from behind the couch holding two autographed paddle boards and tickets to see her at Croke Park.
Although it is not. So Glynn and Feeney calmly recall their hours at sea, while fisherman Patrick Morgan and her son Oliver recount their discovery the next morning. “We found them,” says Patrick. “But they saved themselves.”
In an alternate 2020 Christopher Nolan timeline, this would be Electric Picnic Weekend. The spirit of Stradbally is conjured through a Skype interview with Gary Lightbody, whose band Snow Patrol was to headline. In the studio, meanwhile, Picnic regulars Frank and Walters perform their enduring hit After All, in their regulation uniform of orange shirts and black ties.
The other live performance is by Irish Women in Harmony, a collective of Irish singers, led by songwriter and producer Ruth-Anne Cunningham. Her Dreams by the Cranberries cover has raised € 250,000 for Safe Ireland. Two meters away, artists like Erica Cody, Moya Brennan from Clannad and Una Healy beats of the Saturdays repeat the song. They later explain that this is the first time that many of them have met face to face, what 2020 really is in a nutshell.
There is also an interview with Acting Medical Director Ronan Glynn, who has a calm and thoughtful figure. “We are still in control of this,” he says of the pandemic. “And when I say ‘we’ I mean the Irish people.” This is followed by a devastating conversation with Dr. Sammar Ali talking about the loss of his father, Dr. Syed Waqqar Ali from Covid-19. “It was evaluated by Covid and it came out positive,” she says. “And that was the day our world was turned upside down.”
And there’s a trip out of the studio to Croke Park for an interview with the incomparable commentator Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh on his 90th birthday.
He and the presenter talk about GAA and Tubridy presents Ó Muircheartaigh with a special All Star award recognizing his contribution to GAA and the fabric of Irish life. It’s a feel-good time and Ó Muircheartaigh is truly a national treasure. However, for many it will be Russell Crowe and that anecdote of the spider that will remain in the memory, funny but also a bit disturbing.
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