Alan O'Riordan picks his cultural highlights of the year

Magic Moment: For a very literal answer, I would look to a spellbinding sequence from Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, a show by Australia’s Back to Back Theatre company that was one of several from Down Under during the Dublin Theatre Festival.

When the scene changed from a bare rehearsal room to a train moving through wartime Germany, you marvelled at the simplicity of such a stunning visual effect. The scene had all the tension of a wartime thriller, but an emotional heft too. Watching an actor with an intellectual disability, we were invited to stand in his shoes, not just under a regime that was bent on exterminating his kind, but in our own time too.

Best TV: Can I say the World Cup? Best €11bn any country ever spent.