TV Review: David Puttnam is an inspiration in a cynical age — and he's fallen for West Cork

David Puttnam and wife Patsy Puttnam. Picture: Miki Barlok

When Oscar-winning director David Puttnam told his wife Patsy he’d bought them a holiday home in a country beginning with I, she got very excited. “Italy,” she said. “Ireland,” he replied. She asked him if he was insane.

Patsy grew to love their new place in Skibbereen and now spends more time there than her husband. Their story meanders enjoyably like the River Ilen on their doorstep in David Puttnam: The Long Way Home (RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.)

It’s enjoyable because Puttnam is one of those English people who has gone native here, telling us he would support the team in green if Ireland played England in soccer. 

Lots to love there for the Irish people but this is no throw-away line. He has grown disillusioned with Britain since Brexit and likes the Irish way of life in West Cork.

Puttnam isn’t what I expected. I was braced for a self-satisfied luvvy, enchanted by the sound of his plummy accent.

But he comes across as ego-free, more interested in talking about the Famine and the accompanying lack of British empathy than his Best Director Oscar for Chariots of Fire.

So instead of the Hollywood gossip they dish out on chat shows, Puttnam talks about a childhood memory of pins and needles in his arm from hugging his father, after he came home from the war. It was incredibly moving.

It’s in contrast to way he talks about his mother, a Tory as he describes her, who absorbed crap she read in the Daily Mail.

It’s the kind of brutal honesty you’d expect from a great film-maker.

His best friend, film-maker Alan Parker, was the brother he never had according to him. He reflects on male friendship and affection, noting it runs through all his movies and suspecting it has something to do with his father.

Following his Oscar success, he headed off to Hollywood and became head of Columbia Pictures. He didn’t like it so came home after a year.

Now, he’s an activist, pursuing what he believes to be right in everything from education to the environment. 

With anyone else this would be dreary and worthy, but there is a blunt sincerity to Puttnam that makes you sit up and listen. He’s an inspiration in a cynical age.

At the end, Patsy and David become Irish at a citizenship ceremony. They shake hands with the other new Irish around them, sign-of-the-peace style. 

If it was any one else, I’d raise an eyebrow at the schmaltzy nature of it. But David Puttnam isn’t anyone else.