If Downton Abbey is going to end on a high, the revolution will need to be bloodyThree shows into season six and Downton is in a rut - it’s time for a changeWed Oct 07 2015 - 21:50
Seán Moncrieff: ‘Irish people don’t deal with failure that well’Moncrieff, whose new book is about the paradox of Irishness, talks about his own identity, the ‘village mentality’ at RTÉ and how the internet brings out ‘performance piety’ in peopleFri Oct 02 2015 - 06:00
Patrick Freyne: “Once I denounced Strictly; but it’s all that stands between us and annihilation by Emperor Cowell”While the BBC's 'Strictly Come Dancing' trots along the lighter side of light entertainment, 'The X Factor' firmly belongs to the dark sideWed Sept 30 2015 - 14:24
Ray D’Arcy: ‘We need a discussion about public service broadcasting’After 14 years with Today FM, Ray D’Arcy has returned to RTÉ for a radio show and upcoming TV chat show, and he is ‘hyper aware’ of the culture difference between the two stationsFri Sept 25 2015 - 06:00
Patrick Freyne: 'If you could travel back in time to kill, would you stop with just one enemy?'Peter Capaldi’s grumpy, universe-weary Doctor Who is back on our screens, and like many healthcare professionals, he's chosen to endlessly wander time and space rather than work for the HSE.Thu Sept 24 2015 - 14:00
Was this David Cameron’s piggest mistake?Patrick Freyne: In my opinion, being part of a club that trashed restaurants and used their wealth to buy their way out of trouble was far worseMon Sept 21 2015 - 15:50
Patrick Freyne: Despite the solid presence of The Rock, HBO’s new “comedy” Ballers stomps across very shaky groundDwayne “The Rock” Johnson looks like an Easter Island head on top of an upside down triangleThu Sept 17 2015 - 06:00
Barbara (83): ‘I light candles because they make me feel somebody is here’All the Lonely People: For Barbara, left behind by a faster and colder world, loneliness is a constant, unwelcome companionFri Sept 11 2015 - 06:00
Patrick Freyne on TV: ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ is like a less sexy version of ‘Carry On the Class System’Thu Sept 10 2015 - 12:36
Blur: Damon Albarn leaps off the stage and leads Saturday night | Electric PicnicIt was never Blur vs Oasis. It was always Blur vs BlurSun Sept 06 2015 - 15:52
Parquet Courts: a song dedicated to the people p***ing on the wall | Electric PicnicThee anti-festival, no-show-show band that can’t hide their inner glittery jacketSun Sept 06 2015 - 14:56
Electric Picnic Saturday: Puppy power and sunny dispositionsVendors prey on the hungover, but there is comfort to be found with puppies and sunshineSun Sept 06 2015 - 12:43
The Redneck Manifesto: post-hardcore, groovy & trancey | Electric PicnicIt’s nice to see these six men hard at work on their musical machinesSat Sept 05 2015 - 13:52
2Unlimited: there are limits | Electric PicnicIf there is one thing we have learnt from this gig it is that a total lack of limits is just irresponsibleFri Sept 04 2015 - 22:32
Electric Picnic: ‘That’s only 48 divided by three cans a day’Tribes are gathering and it’s all systems go in the opening hours in StradballyFri Sept 04 2015 - 21:14
Tubridy's return: the 54th Late Late Show season beginsThe show returns to our screens tonight, with producer Larry Masterson back on board. He explains the show’s unique appeal and why it doesn’t need to change in order to workFri Sept 04 2015 - 06:15
Electric Picnic: Things we learned in 2014Enlightening encounters in StradballyThu Sept 03 2015 - 15:40
Patrick Freyne: the 12 people you will meet at Electric PicnicHere are the 12 people you will meet at Electric Picnic. Feel free to give the wise journalist snacksThu Sept 03 2015 - 11:00
Marc Maron: ‘The first 100 episodes are me asking celebrities for help’Comedian Marc Maron was an embittered recovering alcoholic before he found his way as a podcast interviewer of brutal honesty. Not even Obama refused the callMon Aug 31 2015 - 06:00
Recovery? Ghosts still haunt abandoned estatesDublin has housing shortage while rest of country has symbolic oversupplyMon Aug 31 2015 - 01:00
Power to the peopleThe official line was that the Irish don’t protest. But that changed with the bailout, the recession and the water charges. How might those demonstrations affect Ireland’s next general election?Sat Aug 22 2015 - 01:00
Patrick Freyne: Positive changes are afoot in the world of reality TVIt's early days, but there have been some signs that reality producers no longer want to exploit people and now plan to use their powers for goodFri Aug 21 2015 - 09:17
Netflix, All4, Vimeo, YouTube... The best TV shows to binge-watch on the webSummer is gone and the evenings are drawing in – fear not, there's a lot of great TV out there to get you through the coming monthsSat Aug 15 2015 - 05:00
From Amy Schumer to Waterford Whispers: two kinds of political comedyIt's funny... In US media over the past decade, thanks to the likes of Jon Stewart and Amy Schumer, comedy has found a central place in the culture wars; in Ireland, political comedy never even pretends to be able to effect changeThu Aug 13 2015 - 16:35
Goodbye True Detective, hello David Duchovny roughing up hippiesWhat a week it's been for cop shows - True Detective is finally over, and David Duchovny is back in 1960s-set crime drama Aquarius. The question is: who's the true detective?Thu Aug 13 2015 - 07:15
Lesser Spotted Ireland: Patrick Freyne goes on a ‘mancation’The Living Wilderness Bushcraft ‘mancation’ is educational and a whole lot of fun – but don’t go thinking it’s like Bear GryllsMon Aug 03 2015 - 06:00
‘O’Dynamite’ Rossa: Was Fenian leader the first terrorist?Radicalised by the Famine, his funeral became a propaganda coup for the movementSat Aug 01 2015 - 01:00
Patrick Freyne - Prince Philip: The Plot to Make a KingChannel 4's riveting tale of how major obstacles became minor in marrying a queenFri Jul 31 2015 - 11:41
Why do we argue online?The internet is now the world’s number-one debating forum, but online argument is more bitter and less productive than face-to-face discussion. Why do we do it and does anyone ever win?Fri Jul 24 2015 - 14:30
Even if they don’t seem real, participants in reality TV are most definitely harmed in the productionFri Jul 17 2015 - 05:45
Patrick Freyne: ‘True Detective’ is telly at its dourest‘OITNB’ on the other hand has compassion, wit and righteous angerFri Jul 03 2015 - 10:19
Power, politics and the press: the man who brought Rupert Murdoch to bookNick Davies’s pursuit of the phone-hacking scandal shut down the ‘News of the World’. Now he’ll show you how to be an investigative reporterSat Jun 27 2015 - 09:00
Patrick Freyne: It’s said that if you open up Marty Whelan’s suit you will find another suit, and so on unto eternity...Winning Streak is the longest running quiz show in the world and has seen many eras, none of them goldenFri Jun 26 2015 - 15:38
St Vincent: the art and soul of the guitar heroAnnie Clark talks music, performance and not taking things too seriouslyFri Jun 26 2015 - 05:30
Barack Obama: ‘We are not cured of racism . . . it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘nigger’ in public.’Obama in a US podcast interview from a comedian’s garage talks about Charleston, race relations and parentingMon Jun 22 2015 - 17:00
Watch in awe: from Jack Black to Super Pup, the greatest TV shows never madeFrom Jack Black's TV debut in 1999 to The Adventures of Super Pup, Patrick Freyne unearths the forgotten TV pilots that, disgracefully, were never turned into full series. (Well... except for Heil Honey I’m Home! which, unbelievably, made it past the pilot)Fri Jun 19 2015 - 16:59
Patrick Freyne: destroyer of culture Chris Evans is perfect for Top GearFirst, an uncalled for resurrection of TFI Friday, and now he's to replace Jeremy Clarkson in the noisiest job on televsion - is there no stopping Chris Evans?Wed Jun 17 2015 - 15:51
The Duke of Wellington’s drunken Dublin yearsLong before he introduced Napoleon to his Waterloo (200 years ago on June 18th), the idle young duke-to-be could be found carousing the hot spots of his native Dublin. Let’s take the tourMon Jun 15 2015 - 06:00
Johann Hari: ‘I should have to meet a higher bar’The newspaper columnist derailed a fiery career with plagiarism. Now he’s back with an exhaustive exploration of the war on drugs, and has a sideline helping Russell Brand. But, he says, he’s not looking for a second chanceSat Jun 13 2015 - 09:20
Patrick Freyne: meet the medium confusing the recently bereaved for moneyPatrick Freyne watches two new episodes of Long Island Medium, which is about a loud and terrifying woman who confuses the recently bereaved for moneyThu Jun 11 2015 - 23:33
Patrick Freyne: This week, Red Rock redefined car-crash telly, while Pat Kenny happily remembered the madnessRed Rock is nicely self-contained, focusing its melodrama around the local police station, with the rest of the suburb depicted as a desolate hellscape of empty warehouses where people go to schemeFri Jun 05 2015 - 11:50
Beck to the future: Musical chameleon returns to his originsBeck Hansen is now ready for a ‘deepening of the conversation’, he tells Patrick FreyneFri Jun 05 2015 - 11:21
Superhero-free zone: the weird comics of Daniel ClowesClowes, the artist behind such funny, melancholic comics as Ghost World and Eightball, is happy to work in obscurityWed Jun 03 2015 - 03:00
Patrick Freyne: A baby smuggling ring holding baby auctions? Better call the cybercrime unit“Any crimes involving electronic devices is by definition ‘cyber’,” Avery tells her boss, a little defensively, foreshadowing episodes in which they investigate shoplifted iPadsThu May 28 2015 - 12:00
Same-sex marriage: gay couples react to Yes vote‘It means that we’re the same as everybody else. We are now officially part of Ireland’Sun May 24 2015 - 14:26
From the archive: Patrick Freyne writes a song for the EurovisionIn an attempt to bring Ireland back to its glory days, Patrick Freyne asks the experts how to write a Eurovision song and co-writes his ownSat May 23 2015 - 13:00
Same-sex marriage: gay couples await people’s decision‘It’s a terrible thing to ask all the people can you get married and to think they might say No’Fri May 22 2015 - 23:20
How to write a Eurovision winnerOn tomorrow night's Late Late Show, five songs battle it out to represent Ireland at the Eurovision. Patrick Freyne asks the experts how to write a Eurovision song and co-writes his own.Thu May 21 2015 - 16:13
Patrick Freyne: Tears are currency in the Big Brother house and the overlord won’t be deprived of their salty goodnessAaron, who wishes to be seen as more than an underwear model, dances in his underwear and shouts: ‘I love wine. Wine is my friend.’ Later we watch him vomiting aloneWed May 20 2015 - 16:00
Gambling Big: ‘When you hear the poker chips rippling, there’s an energy’Our series on winners and losers in gambling concludes at an international poker tournament in Dublin, at which some of Ireland’s 50-odd professional players battle rivals from around Europe for a €50,000 prize, gobbling up a few ‘fish’ in the processTue May 19 2015 - 01:00
