In a sketch for 'Hall's Pictorial Weekly' Cha (Frank Duggan) and Miah (Michael Twomey) take to a park bench to discuss a performance by Brazilian dancers at the Cork Opera House.
Did you go to the Cork Opera House to see the Brazilian dancers doing their stuff?
Miah tells Cha about his experience at the Cork Opera House where he witnessed some provocative Brazilian dancers describing it as an opportunity to broaden the mind and to see how the other half live. They discuss the difference between the Brazilian dancers and Irish dancers. Cha recalls how once while watching Irish dancing he looked up as far as the knee cap and had to go to confession afterwards.
Miah tells Cha that with Brazilian dancing
The feet is the last part of the body you looks at. As a matter of fact, you'd hardly notice them at all.
According to Miah it is less a dance and more a display of primitive emotions, to which Cha
responds,
Wouldn't you be spellbound if they took off all their clothes and started leaping around
the place?
Cha is shocked and outraged to discover that the dancers hadn't a stitch on them and blames the film festival for letting people look at things that should not be seen. Fearing that this type of dance may become part of Irish dancing and national culture, Miah reassures Cha by saying that the Irish weather isn't "conductive" to that kind of thing.
This episode of 'Hall's Pictorial Weekly' was broadcast on 24 November 1976.
Frank Hall’s amusing and satirical series began on 29 September 1971 with the full title
‘Hall’s Pictorial Weekly Incorporating the Provincial Vindicator’ which became known as ‘Hall’s Pictorial Weekly’. The series allowed Frank Hall to follow his own interest in the lives of viewers throughout the country. Regarded as RTÉ’s flagship comedy show, it featured satirical sketches on current news stories and popular culture, as well as parody songs, comedy sketches, re-edited videos, cartoons and spoof television formats.
The show ran for 9 series until 1980.
In the RTÉ Guide on the week of its first transmission, Frank Hall wrote,
The form and content of Hall’s Pictorial Weekly should be impossible to forecast until the last moment. It should be as varied and absorbing as life itself.
He further commented
I have an inexhaustible interest in the lives and times of the people who live in our country towns and villages; no event is too small to capture my attention, no community too out of the way... This programme is intended to be about you, your town, your friends, your local interests.
(RTÉ Guide, September 24, 1971, Vol.8, No.9, p.2)
