Leaders’ debate review: A feature-length snooze fest, short on drama but high on stodgy soundbites

The Prime Time Leaders’ Debate (RTÉ One, Tuesday) kicks off with a blast of Troubles Coming by rock band Royal Blood. But is that a prediction – or a vague aspiration on the part of RTÉ following the previous week’s dishwater-dull 10-headed leaders wrangle on Tonight With Katie Hannon? That broadcast was two hours of hot air – and Prime Time’s producers will have hoped for more spark, less guff as Simon Harris, Micheál Martin and Mary Lou McDonald reconvened for a triple-threat face-off.
Alas, the near two-hour back-and-forth struggles to get out of first gear. Trouble coming? How about lethargy looming? This is a feature-length snooze fest, short on drama, high on stodgy soundbites, and with the three participants determined to get through it without handing their political opponents fresh ammunition.
That is despite the best efforts of Miriam O’Callaghan – co-presenting alongside Sarah McInerney – to raise the temperature. With an eye for a dramatic moment, O’Callaghan pins Sinn Féin’s McDonald to her collar over her party’s commitment to undertake an “independent human rights and journalist expert review into the objectivity of coverage by RTÉ of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and other international conflicts”. Sinn Féin would not be involved, says McDonald, but, chillingly, the review would be carried out by “human rights experts” (whoever or whatever those are).
O’Callaghan also gets into it with Martin over his insistence that he would not got into government with Sinn Féin. He made he same pledge about an alliance with Fine Gael in advance of the 2020 vote – “just saying,” she, adds, leaving Martin to sputter.
Most of the pressure is on Harris, however. After his catastrophic interaction with a carer in Kanturk, Co Cork, on Friday – a PR omnishambles straight from a political satire such as Veep or The Thick of It – the Taoiseach is keen to rehabilitate his image. Anxious not to come across as snippy, he seldom raises his voice and has phases set to “empathy” from the outset. He keeps it folksy throughout, as he recalls voters collaring him on the campaign trail. “Do you know what people are saying to me …” he says. “They are saying … Simon … ”
McInerney and O’Callaghan try to redeem a blockbusting snooze-athon, but they are up against it. The three leaders are so familiar with one another – so inoculated against their opponents’ shtick – that they don’t have it in them to lose their cool. Tempers are not frayed. They don’t even turn tatty at the edges.
Looking at the United States in the age of Trump and Britain in the aftermath of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, we should probably be glad that our politicians are such a bland bunch. Nobody wants a clown show when they turn on the evening news. But goodness, what flat viewing it makes for – a point underscored with a flourish by Tuesday’s night’s tedious chin-wag. The only trouble that attended this broadcast will have been on the part of viewers struggling to stay awake.