Poet, Critic & Journalist
It’s now late October and, apart from The Frontline, the RTE autumn schedules haven’t provided viewers with any series, or even single programme, of substance and quality. But they have provided lots of the opposite – gimmicky antics masquerading as economic insights in RTE1’s Addicted to Money, twaddle with a solemn face in the same […]
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In Tuesday night’s first episode of Addicted to Money (RTE1), David McWilliams posed the question “Who killed the economy?” and while we awaited the answer we were treated to many of the verbal flourishes familiar to anyone who’s watched previous series by this pundit – starting with the assertion that we had been “encouraged to […]
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Does God hate sex? Or women? Or science? No, but what God does hate (and viewers, too) are ideas for series that are as outmoded and naff as RTE1’s new Sunday night vehicle for Marian Finucane. Who on earth comes up with these notions? In the 1960s, when God’s existence was largely unquestioned in this […]
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For most of Pat Kenny’s new current affairs show, The Frontline (RTE1), the host was content to stand back and let the audience have its say, but no such modesty marked the second season of TV3’s The Apprentice, which, like its predecessor, was unashamedly about Bill Cullen. “You’re all here because you want to work […]
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As a half-hour programme, If Lynch Had Invaded (RTE1) might have been interesting, or at least intriguing. At an interminable ninety minutes, it was farcically overblown twaddle. The premise was there in the title – what if Taoiseach Jack Lynch had responded to the August 1969 police brutality in Derry by ordering the Irish Army […]
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For a television critic, Questions and Answers, which ended its 23-year run this week, was that weird combination of the unmissable and the frequently unwatchable. It was unmissable because, as RTE television’s main forum for political and social debate, it always offered the possibility of controversy. And it was often unwatchable because the politicians who […]
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When it’s not shamelessly stealing lifestyle and reality formats from abroad, RTE loves nothing better than to indulge in easy outrage, and usually belated easy outrage at that – lurid retellings of stories that have already been in the headlines, accompanied by oodles of tut-tutting and overheated editorialising. I’m not really thinking of the long-running […]
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Despite the promise of its title, there’s nothing remotely amusing about the current RTE1 series A Little Bit Funny, in which various over-exposed comedians are given free rein to tell viewers how great they are. First up was Twink, a woman whose thirst for self-publicity far exceeds her pantomime talents, while this week it was […]
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Much as some of us cherish the poetry of Seamus Heaney, RTE’s celebration of his 70th birthday seemed just a teensy bit over the top. As someone who contributed his own tuppence worth to the occasion in this newspaper, I still couldn’t credit that the people in charge of RTE radio set aside one hour […]
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Someone should tell RTE that the party’s over. While the rest of us are wondering where our next meal or pay cheque is coming from, our national broadcaster blithely commissions a new series of Brides of Franc (RTE1), in which a preening wedding planner encourages his clients to embrace ostentatious opulence. In his pursuit of […]
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This week, an international survey revealed that, of 19 countries polled, the Irish had by far the gloomiest view of the current economic crisis – and right on cue along came RTE’s George Lee to tell us that the country’s banjaxed. George, of course, has been droning on about this for years and though he […]
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So the first stage of an incredible, awe-inspiring adventure is now fulfilled – an adventure that has led one man from humble beginnings and years of sefless service on behalf of his community to the pinnacle of the world and all the challenges that represents. No, I’m not talking about Barack Obama’s inauguration as US […]
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Ninety minutes into Blood of the Irish (RTE1), a two-part investigation into how our ancestors got here, presenter Diarmuid Gavin sat in an ocean-tossed currach and was suddenly convinced that these early migrants must have “come by boat.” This was probably news to anyone who’d assumed that they’d arrived on a Ryanair flight, but to […]
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At Tuesday’s memorial concert for Michael Jackson, Motown founder Berry Gordy described his former employee as “the greatest entertainer that ever lived,” a judgment clearly endorsed by all those television channels which opted to jettison normal programming in order to accommodate live coverage of this funereal love-in to a dead singer. If you grew tired […]
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On the Saturday before the November 1984 Beaujolais air crash I met Evening Herald editor Niall Hanley at a rugby international in Lansdowne Road. As a journalist with the Evening Press, I had been belatedly invited on the plane trip, which was scheduled for the following Tuesday, but hadn’t confirmed my acceptance.
James Garner is the sole actor to be included in David Thomson’s magisterial New Biographical Dictionary of Film on the strength of a television role.
