Last week, RTÉ's Documentary on One was called My Father Takes a Vacation.
It's a lovely piece. It uses tingly music, the type that may be becoming a radio cliché, but still works well! It uses what sound like answering-machine tapes, another near-cliché meaning Dublin – those screaming traffic lights near Trinity – and delicious editing.
It uses a first person narrator and is compiled excellently. The narrator is a young man, and it comes across. Great images are painted throughout the documentary. It's a dream of a travel doc!
You can listen to it in Real Audio linked from the RTÉ website, or in the Documentary On One podcast.
Here's what the webpage for My Father Takes A Vacation says:
Martin Johnson's mother died of cancer eight years ago. The Johnson family lived in Sweden at the time and after his mother's death Martin's father decided he needed a break and disappeared, leaving Martin and his siblings alone in Sweden for a month.
Two years later Martin Johnson's father cycled along the southern coast of Ireland. After that he continued to disappear periodically. He now lives a new life in New Zealand, having left his three children behind in Sweden.
This is a travel documentary about trying to understand a father, about what Martin's father saw in Ireland, about loss and most of all why one most keep on moving on.
Martin Johnson produced this documentary, following in his father's footsteps from Dublin to Dursey Island in West Cork. In the documentary Martin also meets a fisherman from Dunmore East who talks about leaving home as well as Dennis who owns a Bed & Breakfast in Castletownbere and who lost his wife five years ago and a farmer on Dursey Island - to name but a few.
Producer: Martin Johnson
Supervising Producer: Peter Woods