So You Want To Be Taoiseach is a new three-part TV series from Midas, the outfit which made Chain Reaction under producer/director Mark Warren.

Instead of getting endless interpretations of the main players and how they promise you a miracle, the series attempts to "get behind" the stories in politics. With nobs on. And not a few bells and whistles.

Naturally, for something so weighty and august, the presenter is a heavyweight commentator on economics and the global economy, particularly in terms of going forward and adding value as you go.

Ardal O'Hanlon, better known as Father Dougal, fills the roll with aplomb.

His brief is to bring the viewer through the steps required to arrive at the Taoiseach's office. Appropriately for an era when business is the business of society, he guides the viewer as if the politician were negotiating the hierarchy of a corporation or some such monolith. Not just that, but he presents from behind a pair of thick rectangular glasses which make him look fierce brainy and serious.

Things begin at the beginning when our eponymous hero wants to get into the game. "The first thing you need to do is have a little chat with yourself and say, am I a driven person, do I want to sacrifice my family life, my hobbies and let this be the one overriding passion in my life. And if you can tick that box, proceed." So says Ivan Yates.

Yates himself didn't tick the box as he got out of the business of politics in the prime of his life, and went off to become a fulltime bookie. And he could really have been a contenda.

All avenues of entry to the game are explored.

One, of course, is the family route. Here, O'Hanlon declines to mention that once upon a long ago he could have been that soldier if the higher calling of comedy hadn't beckoned him. His father is a former minister and current Ceann Comhairle of the Dail, Rory O'Hanlon.

The art and craft of canvassing is explored. And from there, negotiating the convention for selection is examined for pitfalls. Once you're in the Big House, the focus switches to getting noticed in order to procure advancement up the party's hierarchy. Along the way, politicians . . . some still active, but mostly former . . . remember anecdotes from their time at the coalface.

There is also a liberal sprinkling of contributions from enough talking heads to clear a medium-sized public house at closing time (including a very minor slice of verbals from the author of this piece).

What the programmes do convey is the excitement, humour, skullduggery and pettiness that informs so much of politics at every level. Of course there is much more to the pursuit of politics, even in these cynical times. Many enter the game for selfless notions and start out with noble ideals.

Some even retain the bones of their idealism through a career.

But So You Want To Be. . . also highlights why we stay interested in the game. Politics is power in its purest form, reliant for its mandate on neither lineage (not really anyway) nor wealth, but the ability to get people to believe in you, or at the very least, like you. That puts it at the heart of human behaviour and emotions and also ensures that it provides a well of entertainment for the rest of us.

If you are finding the actuality of current politics too much to bear at the moment, tune into this.

'So You Want To Be Taoiseach' begins on Thursday 12 April at 10.15pm on RTE1 Michael Clifford