Raw. What is it good for?

..Absolutely nothing.

I'm watching the last episode of Raw, RTE's big-budget, big-balled series set in a Dublin restaurant. I've dipped in and out of it and while it's rather watchable, it's completely forgettable and just plain unbelievable. I've known a few chef types in my time and although the cliched image of stressed out boys and girls boozing and snorting seems to have more than a sliver of truth to it, these guys are off the scale.

Here's a quick review of Raw:

Sex! Pills! Egos! Lesbians! Booze! Shouting! Coke! Cheating! Gays! FULL FRONTAL GAYS!! More sex!. Oh - and lots of shots of people chopping veg and shouting orders. Because someone's seen that on Hells Kitchen.

And there's been some really bizarre music choices. I don't know how they come up with it. It's not that the music's bad - it's just that it doesn't work. This week's episode which was all about a wedding in the restaurant. There's just been a scene on the dancefloor with the guests slow-dancing to Leonard Cohen's 'A Thousand Kisses Deep'. It's a great song (listen to it here and try to dance to it) but I can't imagine any song less likely to be played at a wedding.. Before it ended, the DJ interrupted it to play Beyonce's Crazy in Love, which is obviously a huge improvement for a dancefloor but, again, can you imagine any 2 songs less likely to sit side by side in any DJ's imagination? Such a bizarre choice.

Oh - and there's a character in the show called 'Tiny'. He's played by a huge bouncer/comedian/actor character that works the door at the Dice Bar. Anyway, Tiny doesn't speak in the show, It's a funny quirk the writer's have given him. Except it's not very funny is it? And now he's just spoken. So the conceit really serves no purpose. He won a bet with a colleague which gave the writers a chance to let him speak. And what are his only words in the entire series? "I told you so". You see it's really funny cos, in fact, he never told anyone anything. Ooh - they must've been pleased with that one. That's not very good really is it? I mean they're trying to be clever and all but, well..

Look - Raw hasn't been rubbish. It looked great and the Dublin exteriors were great. Most of it was shot around Camden Street and it's nice to see that neighbourhood all scrubbed up for tht tv. But it they're going to go to all that trouble, wouldn't you think they'd spend a bit more time on the old scripts? And a little less time cooking up a few old cliches for us to swallow.

RTE have probably already commissioned a second series.