Reviews

The West Wing in Ireland in ’03

from NottArsed: The Nottwel Review, 2003

Well, it’s been another interesting year for The West Wing in Ireland. Firstly, a major shock was delivered when the fourth season arrived on our screens in January, just three months after the third ended with that oh-so-controversial shoot-out. Now, you have to understand that three months is a startlingly short hibernation period between seasons for Irish TV. The gap between WW seasons two and three was, if I remember correctly, a disgraceful eight months. By the time the third season opened with Manchester, Part I, and President Bartlet’s press conference, I had almost completely forgotten what the hell was going on. (That’s another thing – Manchester was the first third-season episode aired here; we never got to see the special September 11 response episode, Isaac and Ishmael).

Yeah, so the fourth series began with the classic 20 Hours in America – a real vintage WW blend of humour and values. But while the programme itself remained entertaining, RTE seemed to think that The West Wing was an Insomniacs Only Zone, as the show dislodged from its reasonable 10.40pm time slot and hurtled towards 11.00, then 11.20, before a partial recovery towards the end of the series. The later times presumably mean dwindling viewership, and RTE no longer shows ads advertising new episodes of the programme either. Lucky for us Irish fans, RTE is a taxpayer-subsidised company, so it isn’t in the habit of dumping foreign shows when they become less popular – it just sends them further and further into the night. So, looks like it’s stock-up-on-coffee time!

The progressively later timeslot wasn’t the only problem Irish West Wing fans encountered during the last season, however. Though, admittedly, this next quirk could only be noticed by an utter WW nerd like myself. You see, there was obviously some mistake in the RTE scheduling department, and episode #410, Arctic Radar, was shown the week episode #409, Swiss Diplomacy, should have been aired. This clearly led to a mini crisis somewhere in the bowels of our state broadcaster. In Swiss Diplomacy, you see, Sam Seaborn (our dear departed Rob Lowe) takes the first steps along his congressional campaign, while still being part of the presidential staff. But in Arctic Radar, Seaborn leaves the White House. So, when RTE aired Arctic Radar before Swiss Diplomacy, the broadcaster got itself into quite a plot tangle. Wouldn’t it look stupid if one week Sam had left the White House to run for Congress, and the next week he was back with the President, wondering if he should leave? Naturally it would. So what did the folks at RTE do? Why, they edited Swiss Diplomacy, of course, cutting out all the scenes featuring Sam Seaborn! I wonder how those fine people at NBC would react upon discovering that their masterpieces are being severed by Irish broadcast terrorists! Still, all things considered, RTE’s last-minute fix-up job mustn’t have gone too badly, for even I didn’t realise that a mistake had been made until I looked up The West Wing Continuity Guide. I was actually going to e-mail our national broadcaster and complain. But what good would that do? The only result would be the embarrassing exposure of my nerdiness.

Apart from this material breach of all known West Wing airing practices, the rest of series four went fairly smoothly here (although towards the end of the season, some critics could be heard whining as the show became more ‘dramatic’ and less ‘political’). Oh, and yeah, we Irish and British fans are currently enjoying the second season DVDs while you yanks still fumble around swapping VHS tapes! HA! Sorry.

With the recent departure from the show of creator/writer-in-chief Aaron Sorkin and director/executive producer Thomas Schlamme, the future of our beloved WW certainly looks uncertain. Can the ‘B Team’ keep up the standard we’ve become accustomed to? Time will give its judgment on that – and so will the fans! Meanwhile, the long wait for season five to arrive over here goes on (and on and on and on…)…

© 2008 benmurnane.com.