The Assembly Ireland Review: Micheál Martin's Charisma Fails to Shine

As with most outside-the-box ideas on television, The Assembly didn’t originate in Ireland but is an import from the UK, where it ran on ITV. The premise is that a beloved celebrity – Gary Lineker or Danny Dyer, say – is grilled by autistic and neurodivergent people, whose line of inquiry pushes beyond “media-trained responses” and yields answers that are “honest, humorous and unpredictable”. It’s a promising concept and, needless to say, neurodiverse people aren’t seen enough on TV, so well done to Virgin Media for bringing the format to Ireland (Monday, Virgin Media One, 9pm). But you do wonder if the producers have chosen the best possible opening-night guest in Taoiseach Micheál Martin – a successful politician, but not someone who exactly radiates charisma. In episode two, the interviewee is comedian Joanne McNally: might she not have been a better “box office” with which to kick off the show? Filmed on the top floor of the Exo Building in Dublin’s Docklands – it’s one of just two (puny) skyscrapers in the city’s, ahem, “business district”, so you can’t miss it – the broadcast makes for chatty, revealing fun. Martin is a good sport, as his interrogators pose questions about his supposed love of elephants and a childhood spent playing soccer, GAA and rugby “on concrete” – for which he lost a tooth. Martin’s tone understandably changes when he is asked about the deaths of two of his children – Ruairí, at five weeks old, and Léana, shortly before her eighth birthday. These were life-altering challenges, but he feels he did right by himself and his family by continuing to work. “There was a lot of soul-searching,” he says. “You could retreat and not do things. If I had retired, that would have had a worse effect on my life. You just keep going in some respects.” There isn’t much about Government policy, though one participant puts Martin on the spot by asking him to name his least favourite Fianna Fáil leader. Martin does not take the bait. Smooth as anything, he turns the question on its head. All of the party bosses had strengths and weaknesses, he says. If you were to ask him, his favourite would be Jack Lynch. Do we get a more profound sense of Martin as a person? Not especially. But the show is nevertheless worthwhile in that it gives a platform to neurodivergent people. The only caveat is it could have benefited from a tighter run time. At nearly an hour (including ads), The Assembly perhaps outstays its welcome. It is an engaging and endearing watch but would have been even more compelling had Virgin trimmed it by a few minutes.