Worth getting out of bed for

Released in select cinemas in 2010 to critical acclaim the feature-length documentary Pyjama Girls aired on Tuesday night on RTÉ ONE.
Pyjama-wearing in any setting other than the bedroom or sitting room while in the throes of a hangover usually raises my hackles. The phenomenon, which began in Dublin and quickly spread to other urban areas, has developed quite a following that, in my opinion, is vastly over-prescribed to. My gnawing instinct is always to ask why, a question Pyjama Girls went a long way in answering. Following 15-year-old Lauren and her best friend, Tara, from the Basin Street Flats in Ballyfermot, the documentary was a stark account of the lives of some of Dublin’s most vulnerable young people. 
Director Maya Derrington apparently met the girls while filming in the estates of Dublin’s inner city. She decided to make the film because she was shocked by the sight of them in pyjamas outdoors and intrigued by the ire it was appearing to cause among other members of the public that it was becoming a more acceptable thing to wear.
Derrington used the setting of the flats and the pyjamas as visual inspiration when approaching the film and it really worked. These young girls who liked to wear fluffy pink, red and white pyjamas were in stark contrast to the reality of life in the flats and the everyday harshness they had to deal with – street violence with rival teen gangs, addict parents and school expulsion among them. Central the whole story though was the enduring friendship between Lauren and Tara.
Confessing to being a smart girl, Lauren was well able to get an honours mark in subjects until she got in trouble and was expelled from school. Now living with her grandmother because of her mother’s drug habit, Lauren’s pyjama-wearing is not a sign of her lack of ambition, rather she sees herself at the front of a fashion revolution.
“Our street fashion is to be badly dressed,” she proclaimed boldly. Yet, at the back of it all there is the constant references to the them and us divide. “Us” being the pyjama girls and “them” being the babe-os who wear ‘normal’ clothes. There is ever the feeling of underlying resentment in their dealings with these girls. While there is no bottom line answer to the pyjama question, the heart-rending story has gone farther than any other in trying to understand it.
On a totally different vein, there is fast becoming a problem with attaching big name producers to shows, in that they are becoming shows to start avoiding. Stephen Spielberg and JJ Abrams are two such entities. Over the past few years there have been a number of shows linked to these two producing powerhouses, yet the shows have consistently failed to match the hype the attachment inevitably generates. The now cancelled Terra Nova and Falling Skies are the more recent examples of where Spielberg has just been phoning it in.
As for Abrams, for every Lost or Fringe he has created along the way, there has also been sub-par fare like Person of Interest or Six Degrees.
Now comes Alcatraz, on which Abrams is executive producer. Airing on Watch on Tuesday night, the fires of my imagination were not flamed. That’s not to say it was terrible, just that when you know what Abrams is capable of, Alcatraz feels a little flat.
The idea behind it is fine, the execution less so, however. It may involve an island, some time travelling and a dark mystery but this is a far cry from a similar time-travelling island venture that Abrams was previously involved in. The pilot of Lost was an explosive effort; Alcatraz felt more like a damp squib.
The plot is established pretty quickly.  In the early 1960s, the population of Alcatraz prison disappeared. Moving to modern day, we meet Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones), a San Francisco detective investigating a homicide that turns up ties to a missing prisoner that has mysteriously re-appeared, seemingly not having aged a day.
Lost alum, Jorge Garcia, plays Dr Diego Soto, an Alcatraz expert who begins to help Madsen solve the case. He’s obviously being set up as the comic relief and he manages well with the material he’s been given. Yet there’s a noticeable lack of chemistry between the leads and the banter doesn’t quite have the same feel as, say, Bones duo Brennan and Booth.
The usually brilliantly creepy Sam Neill also appears as a secretive FBI agent working off-grid, but even his permanent scowling does not seem able to lift the story. Sarah Jones is a weak link in the central role and in no way holds the screen against her better-known castmates. And that’s the main problem, I just didn’t care about any of these characters, which is a huge problem if trying to entice people to follow a show.
Next week there is another prisoner on the loose and another, and another it would appear. I’m not holding out too much hope of a resounding success story however, if this lot are in charge of solving the prisoner dilemma while figuring out the island mysteries. Alcatraz offers plenty to get excited about but the first episode just left me cold, only time will tell if it’s a slow burner worth investing in.
Also in the supernatural vein, Touch, Keifer Sutherland’s first adventure since 24, begins next Tuesday on Sky 1. Created by Tim Kring (he of Heroes), Sutherland plays widowed father Martin Bohm who is haunted by his inability to connect with his mute 11-year-old son. That changes when he discovers his son sees the world through a tangle of numbers and calculations that connect seemingly unrelated events.
Sounds bonkers, but apparently despite the supernatural premise, the central plot of the relationship between a father and son is worth a look.