Pick of the Week
Rose of Tralee 2025
Monday & Tuesday, RTÉ One, 8pm
As the summer hols wind down, all eyes turn to Kerry, where the annual Rose of Tralee festival is set to provide a suitably glamorous finale to the season. This is the 65th year of the festival, and once again Dáithí Ó Sé and Kathryn Thomas will be interviewing the 32 hopeful finalists live from the festival dome in Tralee over two nights. We normally disdain this sort of “personality pageant”, but we can’t help wondering which Rose will bag the coveted riband this year. According to the latest odds from the bookies, the hot favourite is Cork Rose Nancy Lehane, whose talents range from singing to playing the piano, guitar and tin whistle. Also hotly tipped is UAE Rose Celiene O’Meara, originally from Limerick, an All-Ireland Fleadh-winning harpist who has performed at the Dubai World Cup horseracing competition. But don’t worry – the Kingdom is still in with a shout as Kerry Rose Laura Daly, a dance teacher and businesswoman from Ballymacelligott, is tipped 7/1 to bring the title home. With contestants coming from Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East, the show can also be watched for free by audiences in Ireland and around the globe on the RTÉ Player.
Highlights
Bee-Kept
Sunday, RTÉ One, 7.30pm
Have you caught the beekeeping buzz yet? Perhaps this “swarm-hearted” documentary will sting you into apiary action. Bee-Kept looks at the rise of beekeeping in Ireland, and meets avid apiary enthusiasts of all types, from scientists to gardeners to grannies, all answering to the buzzing call of the honeybee. Narrator Alison Spittle will ask some pointed questions, including the most obvious one: How do you keep bees without getting stung? The programme will also look at how beekeeping overlaps with animal husbandry and sustainability.
Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home
Monday, BBC One, 9pm
In the early noughties, the cameras followed Ozzy Osbourne and his family at home in LA for the hit reality series The Osbournes. Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly and Jack Osbourne are back in front of the cameras in this intimate documentary chronicling the last three years of the Black Sabbath star’s life. The idea was to film Ozzy and the family as they made the huge decision to return to England after 25 years living in LA, upping sticks and moving back in to their big country pile in Buckinghamshire. With a diagnosis of Parkinson’s, and chronic back pain caused by a fall, which makes walking a struggle, Ozzy’s plan is to retire to his Buckinghamshire home with his family, pack of dogs and multiple grandchildren, but he also has another plan: to perform one last concert for his fans despite his debilitating illness. Luckily, his devilish humour is still intact, and the Osbourne family ties are still strong, as they support him through what will become the final act for the self-styled Prince of Darkness. Ozzy died just two weeks after Black Sabbath’s triumphant homecoming concert in Birmingham in July, and this documentary brings home the huge impact this working-class hero had on the world of music – and on the people of his hometown.
Confessions of a Brain Surgeon
Monday, BBC Two, 9pm
Does being a brain surgeon make you uber-arrogant? Ask Henry Marsh, formerly one of the UK’s top brain surgeons, who pioneered a controversial technique whereby patients remained conscious while having a brain tumour removed. Over a 40-year career in which he operated on thousands of patients, it was inevitable that Marsh would develop a god complex, believing himself to be all-powerful. But when Marsh was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, he soon realised he was only human, and in this documentary, he looks back on his career in neurosurgery, including his time as lead neurosurgeon at London’s Atkinson Morley Hospital, focusing in particular on the procedures that went wrong. Was he too cocky to acknowledge his own mistakes? Marsh has some painful meetings with families of patients who died in his care, including one mother who admits to hating Marsh and blaming him for the death of her young child under his care 20 years ago. Marsh also meets his ex-wife to discuss how his high-powered job adversely affected his marriage and family relationships. As he nears the end of his own life, Marsh hopes that this documentary will help young surgeons grappling with the ethics, stresses and personal costs of this demanding profession.
RM Block
The Graceless Age: The Ballad of John Murry
Wednesday, RTÉ One, 10.35pm
In 2012 John Murry, a promising singer-songwriter from Tupelo, Mississippi, was ready to set the world on fire with the release of his debut album, The Graceless Age. The record was hailed by several music publications as one of the best albums of the year, and praised for its unflinching songs about Murry’s struggles with substance abuse. As his heroin addiction worsened, and his world fell apart, Murry fled to Ireland, burnt out and exhausted, where he settled in Co Longford and slowly began to put himself back together, inspired by the Irish landscape and the new friends he made. This documentary film by Sarah Share sees Murry return to his roots in Mississippi to explore his troubled childhood and his family links to the author William Faulkner.
Football’s Financial Shame: The Story of the V11
Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm
Premier League footballers are among the world’s highest-paid sportspeople, with a reputation for reckless spending and ostentatious displays of wealth. But when the Premier League was first established, a new breed of financial advisers came out of the woodwork, and many newly enriched footballers found themselves losing tens of millions through bad investments and dodgy financial schemes. Some players lost their homes and marriages as their lives spiralled out of control, and they fell in to drinking, drug-taking and gambling. Most were ashamed to admit they had lost everything, and for years this remained a hidden scandal, but now a group of former Premier League footballers – including Danny Murphy, now well-known as a BBC pundit, Craig Short, Rod Wallace, Michael Thomas, Sean Davis and Tommy Johnson – have teamed up, calling themselves the V11, and they are determined to fight back and gain recompense for their financial ruin and huge personal trauma. For the V11, whose members included former Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal, Celtic and Manchester City stars, coming together as a team has helped them regain their fighting spirit, and this documentary follows their fight for justice as they recruit pro bono support from financial experts, barristers and private detectives to help them rebuild their lives.
Miriam Margolyes Discovers New Zealand
Friday, BBC Two, 9pm
Beloved actor Miriam Margolyes has well and truly got the travel bug, and following her telly adventures in Australia – not to mention getting lost in Scotland with her good friend Alan Cumming – Margolyes is packing her bags once again and heading off on another big adventure, this time to New Zealand. It’s not just a random choice – Margolyes is taking a road trip around the country’s North Island, but she’s also preparing for her first New Zealand film role, and she hopes to learn more about the country and its people, and maybe even get to see inside the soul of this unique land. To help her research her film role as a nun, she spends time at a Catholic monastery, where the nuns live in seclusion. Along the way she attends her first-ever rugby match, surrounded by 30,000 All Blacks fans, and meets Maori tribespeople along the Whanganui river, where she learns about their deep spiritual connection to the river – now legally recognised by the New Zealand government as an entity in its own right. She also visits Hobbiton, a theme park built on the film set of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, one of the country’s biggest tourist attractions, where she discovers an innate connection with hobbitkind. The plight of refugees around the world is close to Margolyes’s heart, and she visits a refugee resettlement centre at Mangere in Auckland, where the New Zealand government’s treatment of refugees and asylum seekers is in stark contrast to the cruel and inhuman way they are treated in other parts of the world.
Streaming
Hostage
From Thursday, August 21st, Netflix
The brilliant Suranne Jones makes her Netflix debut in this explosive political thriller, in which she plays UK prime minister Abigail Dalton, with Julie Delpy as the visiting French president, Vivienne Toussaint. Abigail prides herself on her toughness and refusal to negotiate with or give in to terrorists, but her resolve is put to the ultimate test when her husband is abducted and the price for saving his life is that she step down as PM. With Abigail facing an impossible choice, and Vivienne facing a blackmail plot, both leaders must find common ground if they are to deal with this threat to country and family.
Invasion
From Friday, August 22nd, Apple TV+
While waiting for the next episodes of Alien: Earth, why not catch up with this Apple+ series featuring more fast-moving alien horrors with flesh-shredding appendages that seem to go everywhere? But never mind them: this is “character-driven” sci-fi, so we’re supposed to focus more on the interpersonal relationships and emotional arcs of the characters than on the “Look out! It’s behind you!” moments. So far we’ve watched the invasion through a number of perspectives in different parts of the globe. Series three sees the main characters converge with one goal in mind: to get inside the alien mothership and blast these bugs into oblivion.
