World of difference between The Village and The Estate

TV Watch with Dave O’Connell 

I suppose at the end of the day you get what you pay for – and while you might imagine that a series called The Village would share some common theme with one called The Estate, you couldn’t be more wrong.

The Village is on BBC and has a lavish budget, and it tells the story of a fictional area of Derbyshire during the First World War. The Estate is a low-cost TV3 ‘reality show’ of modern day life in what one hopes is the toughest part of Waterford.

You hope it’s the toughest part of town, because if there’s a rougher, more deprived area, they’d need to bring in the bulldozers to condemn it.

This is chav-central – families of 14 where the only reason anyone ever leaves home is because they’ve been murdered or they’re gone to jail.

Everyone drinks and smokes like they are training for an Olympic version of poor living, and the few shining lights are dimmed by the utter despondency of those around them.

It’s a three-part fly-on-the-wall series and it does nothing for either the city itself or those taking part – with the exception of one youth worker who is determined to get into third level despite his family’s determination to keep him in the gutter he came from.

Thankfully, the local branch of the St Vincent de Paul comes to his aid and gives him the chance to get out of this pointless existence – but pointless is the recurring theme of The Estate.

Low budget, low expectations, low life – all wrapped up in TV3’s latest assault on their unsuspecting audience.

The Village, on the other hand, is addictive for all the right reasons – deservedly cast as an epic drama, it mines this new rich vein of interest in period drama that has grown on the back of Downton Abbey.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.