Republic of Telly is a vehicle show for Irish stand up, Neil Delamere. Essentially what happens is Neil rips the piss out of a bunch of RTE’s shows. Sometimes he ventures into the UK’s TV guide, but only when RTE’s two stations fail to provide him with enough ammo. The whole thing is essentially Harry Hill’s TV Burp with an Irish accent and a few non-telly related segements with reporters.
The show begins with Neil taking a few clips from the likes of Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy out of context and making little quips about them. Then he zeros in on Operation Transformation, Gerry Ryan’s weight loss reality show. Naturally the review begins with Neil pointing out that auld Gerry isn’t exactly Kate Moss, then he lamps into Ryan for suggesting that the show has some how magically begun to fix the national weight problem.
Then Neil is superimposed into the Oscars Ceremony alongside Alec Baldwin. Baldwin’s opening duolog wasn’t funny when Steve Martin did it with him. Delamere didn’t improve the situation.
Neil then takes on an appearance by Trevor Sergent on some show and a BBC documentary about hospitals This is a chance to do what he’s really good at; political satire. He fires off a few barbs that would’ve been more at home on the Panel than on a TV review programme. Unfortuneately RTE has handed the job of satire over to Kevin Myers and Mario Rosenstock – neither is particularly funny but Mario can do a decent impression of Keith from Boyzone.
Soon afterwards Mairead Farrell of Ray D’Arcy's radio show is rolled out to add some glamour. The producers sent her down to Croke park for the Ireland v Wales rugby match to vox pop the crowd. This has nothing to do with television but it was funny watching a load of drunk people talking into a microphone. Got a bit odd when some of the vox poppers started groping Mz Farrell. She was clearly uncomfortable.
Then Bernard O’Shea is plopped in front of a green screen to give his survival guide to St.Patrick’s day. Again, this has nothing to do with tele, but hey, Bernie’s supressed rage schtick is funny.
After that, red carpet correspondent, Jennifer Maguire gets shipped off to the VIP style awards, the very tenuous link here being that there were some people off the tele at it. She tries some Dennis Pennis/Olivia Lee style cheeckiness. Sometimes it works, as with Marty Whelan who riffs with her a bit. Sometimes it doesn’t, as when Grainne Seoige just calls her mean for insulting “talent” of All Ireland Talent Show.
Then there’s some bashing of Fregal Quinn’s Retail Therapy where Fergal Quinn revamps some little shop on the northside or something. I’d started to lose interest at this stage as had much of the audience. Everytime the director cut to them they were gently smiling or applauding, but the big laughs stopped around the time Bernard O’Shea finished.
Then there was some gnattering with Mairead on subjects that had nothing to do with TV. They might want to revise the name.
The show closes with the TV highlight of the week (and possibly the decade), Crystal Swing’s appearance on the Late Late Show. Neil makes a few jokes about their performance but nothing he says could possibly be funnier than the visuals.
A hit and miss episode from a hit and miss series.
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