This is Irish American comedian Des Bishops first attempt to provide a realistic portrayal of a marginalized section of Irish society. In this series Des Bishop selects six jobs that are considered minimum wage in Ireland. He works at that job for one month where he must live within the means that a minimum wage can provide. He then recounts his experiences through his live stand up show.
I dislike Des Bishop and I hate his stand up comedy act. But I must give credit where credit is due. This documentary is fantastic. He could have made the documentary without his stand up parts being included and it would have worked, but he left them and it does work. Either format is acceptable and what's more both will work. Over the course of a half an hour we see how the other half live. For six weeks I watched Des Bishop become a staff member in a busy city center fast food outlet, a lifeguard in a water slide park and a porter in a luxury hotel. What we begin to see is how naive Des Bishop was when he undertook this task and over the course of six weeks he suffers from stress, poverty and some serious verbal abuse. Des Bishops comedic persona takes a serious battering from his work experience. In his live stand up work Des Bishop likes to present himself as the street wise working class white rapper whose finger is on the pulse. From this show we discover Des in reality is very far removed from his stage persona, and this is just one of the reasons why this show is very enjoyable.
A television show like this can educate the public and it successfully does. It reveals that a lot of workers who are in these jobs are not all students who have degrees in their midst, but a lot of the workers are full time workers who have families depending on their minimum wage salary. What is frightening and educational about this is that Des Bishop has only to keep himself with his wages and this is something he finds very hard to do from week to week. This situation automatically thinks of the workers that have families and how they might cope. Unfortunately this is something that is never fully followed up. We also see the horrendous verbal abuse that minimum wage earners receive. We get a first hand account of the racist taunts that our immigrant work force receive. In the segment where Des Bishop works in the Fast Food outlet we personally see a disturbing scene where the Asian workers are receiving racist abuse from drunken racist thugs. This is just another grand moment from a series that boast a lot of great television moments.
The Des Bishop Work Experience is a fantastic look at Ireland in the post Celtic Tiger era and it perfectly demonstrates the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. It is very different from other Irish lifestyle shows that depict everything is getting better but they always focus on the middle class. Des Bishop does the opposite and what he produces is the best Irish documentary series that Ireland has ever had. The only fault I had with it is that it was not long enough. At only a 45 minutes certain brilliant ideas are touched upon but never followed up. I fully believe had the producers been contracted to six one hour shows all these ideas would have been covered and more ideas would have come about. But this is not the fault of Des Bishop or the producers the blame firmly rests at the feet of R.T.E who ordered the series and the time duration.
This show will really appeal to an Irish audience therefore it will have no relevance outside Ireland however if a foreign student was doing a thesis on Irish society then they might do well to find a copy of this as it may come in handy. 9 out of 10.
