It was refreshing to see a documentary on RTE last night, John Hume in America, which struck me as being really well done. The historian in me is usually intolerant of TV documentaries because they always seem as sensational as a cartoon but without the humour. Here, however, was a portrait of a media figure that truly captured the social dimension, made possible, perhaps, when the many dwell on a single subject as opposed to a multitude of disconnected subjects. As to “the man himself”, I am only in the process of forming an opinion of a figure who I remember seeing on TV quite a lot when I was still a nipper and had little more than a nipper’s impression of, since he seemed to have the same hairstyle and slight chubby chin as my dad and was equally soft spoken to boot. I had already bought a book of the same name as the documentary for the sake of aiding my own book writing puzzle, and while I have done a little more than glance at it yet, it seems to have quite a lot of other, or additional, information in it, which will be something to devour a little later on, along with an “in his own words” book that I hope the library does not tear away from me too soon. But anyway…the TV documentary really was a portrait and a half: a “real life film” worth seeing, which does not happen everyday, especially when one as is as fond of the black-and-white as me. Recommended.