TV Reviews

My main problem with Classic Joe Dolan (RTE1) is that I had no idea what it was about. At the outset, narrator Simon Delaney spoke of “a concert film that almost went wrong”, but this went unexplained for the next thirty minutes. In the meantime, we heard from the ubiquitous Louis Walsh that “there was […]

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At the very end of Enda (RTE1), which was screened over two nights, presenter Pat Leahy informed us that the current Taoiseach’s backbenchers were “restive, wondering when he will depart”, but there had been no indications of impatience from the Fine Gael colleagues who’d been interviewed over the previous two hours. That, of course, is […]

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So why didn’t serial killer Paul Spector die of the gunshot wounds he incurred at the end of The Fall’s second season? Silly question – there would have been no third season. But why is there a third season (RTE1/BBC1)? Hadn’t we had enough of this glum-faced family man and his murderous woman-hating other life […]

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Last Orders with Gay Byrne (RTE1) began arrestingly, with the veteran broadcaster recalling “the most awful feeling of foreboding and fright and anxiety” as he turned up daily for classes at the Christian Brothers’ school in Synge Street. This, he said, was “because I knew, like most of my classmates, that I was going to […]

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I’d love to have attended the RTE commisioning session at which someone pitched the idea for Farmer in Charge and someone in Montrose approved it. There’s always been a basic logic to the long-running At Your Service, in which the Brennan brothers have used their hotel expertise to advise ailing hospitality outlets on how to […]

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For all I know, the offscreen Donal Skehan may well be the most laidback guy on the planet, but onscreen he lives his life in exclamation marks. “Wow!” he remarked of Budapest in the first instalment of Follow Donal (RTE1), a new series that has our chirpy food blogger and photographer taking weekly trips to […]

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What if? That was the historical question posed over three nights last week on TG4, and it was also the historical question posed over three nights this week by TV3. What’s going on? With all the centenary overkill, have the channels run out of facts about 1916 and are obliged to resort to fictions? The […]

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Irish Independent, 2012 When President de Valera addressed the nation through the new medium of Irish television on New Year’s Eve, 1961, he compared broadcasting to atomic energy, both of which “can be used for incalculable good but can also do irreparable harm.” Indeed, he confessed that when he thought of the “immense power” of television and radio […]

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Irish Independent, November 12, 2011 Women who have children not only have the right to go out and get themselves a job – they have an absolute duty to do so. That was the opinion of critic and columnist Emer O’Kelly on It’s Not Personal (RTE1) and, boy, did she tell us about it. Indeed, in Emer’s […]

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Irish Independent, April 14, 2012 The saddest remark I heard in ages came from Holly Sweeney in the first instalment of Celebrity Come Dine with Me Ireland (TV3). Telling the camera what she did for a living, she said: “People would know me best from being the ex-girlfriend of Rory MclIroy, the professional golfer”. And a little later, […]

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Irish Independent, March 16, 2013 Like any self-respecting broadcaster, RTE was on the spot when the new pope was introduced to the world last Wednesday evening and it provided engrossing coverage of this extraordinary ritual – no matter what one’s religious persuasion, there’s nothing to beat pomp and ceremony when staged by experts at putting on a good […]

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Irish Independent, November 17, 2012 The first episode in the new season of Love/Hate (RTE1) culminated in a brutally violent rape and murder, but long before that most of the women characters had already been used and abused – not just by the young males who dominate this crime drama but by its makers as well. You could […]

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Irish Independent, April 20, 2013 Who needs RTE to talk up The Gathering when our friends in the North are even more fervent in promoting the wonders of our enchanted isle? As it happens, Our Friends in the North is the title of Kevin McAleer’s new series about the Scots Irish, but I’ll get to that after […]

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Irish Independent, March 23, 2013 Nineteen artistic worthies were summoned to the Aras for Glaoch: The President’s Call (RTE1), which left me pondering why nineteen equally worthy others hadn’t been given the nod. Seamus Heaney was there, of course, as well as Paula Meehan, the latter gazing out a window and soulfully declaiming a poem that seemed to […]

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Irish Independent, March 24, 2012 Last Monday night’s Nuala was the third documentary about the late Nuala O’Faolain that RTE1 has screened in the past six years. That makes it at least one too many, and though in substance and general interest this new film was vastly superior to its predecessors, it suffered from the same basic problem […]

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Irish Independent, November 3, 2012 Like most of the celebrities with whom he’s been schmoozing throughout his priestly life, Fr Brian D’Arcy has always embraced the limelight – indeed, for anyone who’s lived through the last four decades, he’s been a constant media presence, whether through his Sunday World column or as guest on innumerable chat shows and […]

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Irish Independent, February 4, 2012 Whenever someone mentions the name Bernadette Devlin (not often, as it happens), the image I summon up is of a long-haired slip of a girl in a miniskirt standing on a windswept platform and delivering speeches full of youthful fury – a politicised Dana, if you like, before Dana herself got political. Whenever […]

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Irish Independent, August 6, 2011 At the outset of Lughnasa Live (RTE1), Grainne Seoige revealed that the Co Clare heritage park from which she was hosting the show was “surrounded by wild boars.” Sadly, we never got to see them. Instead we had to content ourselves with the tame bores whom she had gathered inside the encampment to […]

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Irish Independent, November 26, 2011 As a practising journalist, I wish I could say I’m dismayed at the disgrace RTE has incurred over its libelling of Fr Kevin Reynolds (there but for the grace of God and all that), but I’m afraid it didn’t even come as a surprise to me. Reviewing the Prime Time Investigates film […]

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