On Tuesday week last, RTÉ’s Network 2 was due to screen – after the 10.30 news and weather – the first edition of Newshounds, a new satirical comedy series from the Scrap Saturday merchants, Dermot Morgan and Gerry Stembridge. The duo were to feature as writers and performers, and former Nighthawks star Ann Marie Hourihane was to have a central comic role. But the show never went out: it was pulled and replaced with a filler called Yum, Yum, Yum – “a celebration of Cajun and Creole cooking in Louisiana”.

There was no celebration in RTÉ, however, at this decision nor in the Morgan/Stembridge camp, where the series had been cooking since being commissioned late last October. The decision not to go ahead with Newshounds is inevitably being seen as yet another failure by RTÉ to keep its long-heralded promise of establishing a genuine, and genuinely funny, home-grown television comedy series.

Inevitably too, since the show would have featured politicians among its prime satirical targets, the decision is seen in some quarters as a craven submission to supposed political pressure. This allegation however is rejected out of hand by RTÉ’s Group Head (Entertainment), David Blake Knox: “There were crucial delays in development, and the decision to drop Newshounds was a pragmatic one, not a question of politics. It’s the sort of decision that could be made about any show. There was absolutely no political aspect; it just wasn’t ready to go.”

With producer Philip Kampff at the helm, and Gerry McNamara (formerly script editor at Nighthawks) as comedy co-ordinator, there were two “dry runs” of the show in RTÉ. The word is – and the word has yet to be rejected by anyone even vaguely associated with the show – that the first version was considered very funny, though somewhat on the lewd side. More notable was the fact that this first dry run was done “on the wing”, i.e. with more improvisation than actual script.

The second dry run was then almost totally improvised but by all accounts it didn’t work at all. It was at this stage that some of those associated with the project realised the need for serious advance scripting, such as is provided for Have I Got News for You, the BBC show on whose format Newshounds was based. But at this stage, the portcullis was brought down: the planned third run was cancelled by RTÉ, the decision being taken by Director of Television Programmes Bob Collins.

Dermot Morgan is nevertheless confident that the show would have gone down well. “The first run showed enormous promise, and though the second one was down – we got a bit complacent – we could have rectified it very quickly. Certainly my gut instinct is that the programme would have been very favourably received. And I think one has to wonder”, he adds, “whether or not RTÉ are necessarily up with their audience. They perhaps haven’t spotted how far on the audience has moved. And though no one disputes RTÉ’s editorial prerogative, I feel a verdict has been delivered on the show without a trial, or at any rate without a public trial.”

Officially, Newshounds has been “deferred”. But according to Gerry Stembridge, the series as it existed is dead: “What happened wasn’t deferring, it was axing.” However, though Stembridge and Dermot Morgan are now in the process of agreeing compensation from RTÉ for the time and effort put into the project, they have already been in new talks with Bob Collins: “We see this”, says Stembridge, “as the start of a new negotiation. lt’s a question of starting all over again.

In the business of comedy creation, the situation of “starting allover again” is hardly a novel one for RTÉ. Indeed, the absence of (intentionally) funny TV material has been notable at the station. There have been a few gems over the years , : such as Hall’s Pictorial Weekly, but for the most part the long gap – stretching from the glory days of Jimmy O’Dea (with David Kelly) to the arrival of Nighthawks – was filled in by such notoriously unfunny series as Leave It to Mrs O’Brien. And in the late 1980s Dermot Morgan’s planned six-part comedy series was dropped at a very late stage, and reduced to 30 minutes of “highlights With Nighthawks, fronted by genial host Shay Healy, came the breakthrough, particularly in the field of TV satire and stand-up comedy; but while names were made here – most notably those of Sean Hughes, Kevin McAleer, Blaithin (Michelle Houlden), Ann Marie Hourihane, Morgan Jones, Gina Moxley and Rosemary Henderson – the momentum was not adequately maintained, and with the demise of Nighthawks the talent was dissipated. Shay, Healy himself went back to his first love music, and subsequently presented the successful country music video/interview series music City USA from Nashville’ Sean Hughes was snapped up for a (highly successful) Channel 4 comedy series (followed by a BBC series). In the case of Ann Marie Hourihane, the revue-style show promised by RTÉ metamorphosed into a summer chat show, For One Night Only, which, being a poor vehicle for the undoubted Hourihane talents, never got beyond second gear. Hourihane is currently presenting a weekly phone-in show on BBC Radio Four, Against the Grain.

David Blake Knox, Group Head (Entertainment at RTÉ nevertheless points that the station is working on a number of comedy ideas in different areas. In stand-up comedy, the first full series of The Basement (a Nighthawks spin-off) has just concluded. “This was not designed to be mainstream, but it scored highly among its young, target audience,” he said. A situation comedy “pilot” is also due for screening in May, but no more details have been released so far and we are continuing our efforts to develop satirical drama”. RTÉ has ’also signed a development deal with Central TV “and funding has already been agreed for one project,” he said.

At the same time, one of the problems affecting comedy production in RTÉ is that there seems to be little long-term planning. Work on Newshounds, for example, apparently did not start until just before Christmas.

There is also the matter of RTÉ’s undoubtedly low morale, now exacerbated by the Newshounds affair, the handling of which is seen as, at best, clumsy. The legacy of the long RTÉ strike still affects the station and producers seem regularly at loggerheads with management and uncertain of support for proposed projects. Nevertheless, with new negotiations already begun on Newshounds, there is already renewed hope that the series will eventually reach the screen.

David Blake Knox makes the point that comedy has in effect spread to other areas of television – to the soap operas, the game shows and productions like Secrets, where producer Ferdia MacAnna looks after the comedy inserts. And MacAnna himself has produced two half-hour comedy “video dramas”, which will probably be screened in the near future. One of these, Romeo on His Ownio, MacAnna describes as “a light, comic, teenage soap”, while in Hamlet and Her Brothers, Frank Kelly plays Hamlet’s father and the comic trio of Mr Trellis play)Peggy Hamlet’s brother and boyfriends.

There are plans for the filming of two other MacAnna pieces A Tempest on O’Connell Street and An Evening with Katrjna Macbeth: “Actually, this four-pack of Shakespeare was meant to be a six-pack, but two bottles fell out.”

Despite this small amount of activity, the deferring/axing of Newshounds remains a major disappointment. Few people take seriously the suggestion that it was removed as a result of political pressure – “more cock-up than conspiracy” is how one commentator described it. But with a new Director General in charge at RTÉ, and with severe financial constraints currently operating (not to mention the financial spectre of the Eurovision Song Contest in Millstreet), ,the feeling remains that no-one in RTÉ is prepared to take any unnecessary risks. And Dermot Morgan thinks that “there’s an instinctive reservation in RTÉ about doing anything which might rock the boat. I’m not saying that RTÉ is serving political interests but it is open to that accusation – of course in some ways it is in a no-win situation in this regard.”

Certainly where the creation of comedy is involved risks nearly always have to be taken. Gerry Stembridge feels that – particularly following the huge popular success of the radio show Scrap Saturday – more faith should have been placed in himself and Dermot Morgan and that there should have been less interference: “Comedy is very difficult. The only way to make it work is for RTÉ to put its trust in what we (for example) have already done. The tendency at RTÉ seems to be to buy’ something and change it but sometimes you have to take a chance In radio with Scrap Saturday (a new series of which is promised) it was a very benevolent approach. Comedy only works in a very easy and free environment. When there’s tension and doubt, it’s not going to be funny at the end.”