“Watch now on RTE player.
https://www.rte.ie/player/series/raised-by-the-village/SI0000003426?epguid=IP10007373-03-0001
Is Raised by the Village the best thing on television? It is so sophisticated but it doesn’t patronise. It is reality television but the viewer doesn’t feel manipulated. It’s about urban working-class children going to the country but it doesn’t resort to stereotypes. It’s an original idea. There are no bad guys, and yet you believe it.
Of course, there are questions. Is the countryside really so full of lovely people? Is the mobile phone really to blame for all our modern ills? Do none of the kids get drunk, take drugs or run away? Is it even fair to transplant kids like this? Above all, does there really have to be a teen psychotherapist? That is, a psychotherapist who specialises in treating teenagers. Not a teenager who has trained as a psychotherapist, although that would be interesting.
But while you’re watching it, Raised by the Village is an unalloyed pleasure. It never drags. An awful lot happens in Raised by the Village. Four families, four houses, tempestuous teens. I had taken copious notes and then saw that I’d been watching for just 12 and a half minutes. Prime Time please copy.
This week, in the first programme of a new series, Noah and Teagan were heading for the sticks. They were both bright and very cranky. Their parents were at the end of their respective ropes; both Noah and Teagan were 14, and there are some of us who know what that means.
Dear God, why does Irish television not believe we can cope with English people?
“He needs a complete cultural reset,” said Noah’s sister, Skye. She should be running the country.
Teagan was obsessed with her false eyelashes, wouldn’t get out of bed and shoved her mother, Anne Marie. “The swearing and the roaring and shouting at you,” as Anne Marie put it. Teagan’s father described what they were going through as “an absolute nightmare”.
Noah’s parents, Tony and Adrienne, were hoping that Noah would return from his visit to the countryside as a different child. So it wasn’t pretty.
You have to love the young people here. They packed their very large bags – Teagan took four hair brushes, as well as her lashes, obviously – and off they went into the great unknown. Noah is from Dublin’s north inner city – very near the Ilac Centre, he said. Teagan is from what was described as a suburb of Bettystown.
Poor Noah arrived in west Cork on a day when it was covered in mist. “Are we in the clouds?” he asked, reasonably. But in fact he was on a berry farm run by the Collins family. Both Steve and Claire Collins had Irish parents, the voiceover told us, presumably in an effort to protect us from the fact that they were English. Dear God, why does Irish television not believe we can cope with English people?
Meanwhile, Teagan was being ferried to a dairy farm in east Cork. In the car, Teagan was saying: “I don’t like the smell of farms, full stop. I just don’t know how I’m going to deal with it.”
Teagan doesn’t like beaches either. She was taken to one as part of a group of local volunteers to do a clean-up. Or, as the voice over put it, to experience “the transformative power of collective environmental action”. Please. Or, as Teagan would say: “Whatever.” She was very rude to a lovely smiling volunteer and I’m secretly glad to say that she remained decidedly untransformed by the whole experience.
Teagan, who lives near a beach, hates beaches. She doesn’t understand why people want to spend time on them. She looked around at the happy people on the lovely beach and said: “But that’s Cork people for you.” Too true, Teagan. She was only starting: “I hate sand. Sand is horrible. It shouldn’t be a thing. It should just be concrete on beaches. Soft concrete.”
Also she was blinded by her eyelashes, what with the wind and, yes, the sand.
Teagan with the Morrissey family on their farm in east Cork for RTÉ’s Raised by the Village
Meanwhile, the Collins parents had discovered that when Noah had dutifully handed over his phone at the start of his visit, as all the refugees from the city have to do on this programme, he had a second phone with him. What a moment.
Noah hated picking blueberries, despite the best efforts of the Collins children. (Are all children who grow up on farms perfect? And if so, why?) Noah refused to clean up a stable: “I’m not picking up shite…see yiz” and things only improved for him when he was introduced to mechanics, hurling and working on a charter boat.
The men who taught Noah these new skills seemed like top guys. As Brian O’Rourke, the owner of Bantry Bay Charters, put it: “I have no fear of Noah.”
Brian had been a dyslexic boy, in his time, as Noah is. “School makes me very angry,” Noah said – an absolute nul points for our vaunted educational system, which has an intelligent boy humiliated by something as common as dyslexia. With the mechanic and the GAA club and the boats Noah thrived under easy-going, masculine care.
Teagan had been introduced to the milking parlour – “I’m never drinking milk again” – but did better at Midleton Meals On Wheels. She was in tears as the car drove her away from the Morrisseys’ east Cork farm. And she has returned since, with her parents. Noah’s father is going to take him fishing, and now Noah’s a leader in his local youth group. This is perfect Sunday night television. Let’s just be grateful.