What to watch on TV this week
SATURDAY
Irish actress Ruth Kearney stars alongside Will Arnett (30 Rock) in this new eight-part comedy series. Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz is the main force behind the show. All episodes now available.
Keith Barry and Phillip Schofield return for a second series of the comedy game show.
Bláthnaid Treacy presents highlights from the recent concert and awards night at Vicar Street where the likes of Villagers and Ham Sandwich were among the performers before the album of the year prize went to young Derry singer-songwriter Soak.
SUNDAY
A new series that has put colour on footage from British Pathé and other archives to show what life was like in Ireland in the first quarter of the last century.
Written by Trinity College historian, Professor Eunan O’Halpin, the first episode delves into events leading up to the British election of 1918, when both nationalists and unionists on this island became more radicalised, and the outbreak of the First World War would further complicate the situation.
Julie Walters and co are back for a second season of the Raj-era drama set in the hill town of Simla, a favourite summertime retreat for the British in India. We pick up the action in 1935 when the campaign for independence is in full swing and at times turning violent.
A documentary following journalist Valerie Cox, her husband Brian and their garda son Eoin as they travel to Greece to spend a week trying to help some of the Syrian refugees making their way to the islands of Kos and Leros.
The Irish family would wait at night on the beaches for the refugees to arrive, and then provide them with blankets, food and shelter.
Cox, whose voice is probably familiar from Morning Ireland on RTÉ Radio 1, sees the issue as a test of her faith in both God and humanity.
MONDAY
Camille O’Sullivan looks at the work of Harry Clarke and how he was influenced both by British artists and Irish sensibilities in his beautiful stained glass creations. His pieces adorn such buildings as the Honan chapel in UCC, and Bewley’s cafe in Dublin.
Ragnar Lothbrok and his Viking hordes are back for a fourth season, and the extended run of 20 episodes was good news for all involved in the show’s production in Co Wicklow. We’ll see the first of those 10 episodes now, with the second half being broadcast at a later date.
Last season, we saw Ragnar’s surprising conversion to Christianity during the attack on Paris, and while rumours of his death were greatly exaggerated, he is still confined to his sick bed. While most of the Vikings have returned home, Rollo has stayed in Paris and is worming his way into the French court.
Documentary that follows a police domestic abuse team and meets three female victims of violence from their partners.
Linda Martin guest-stars as the ‘Woman from Dublin’ that Bridget has to take on to win the housewife of the year competition, and the much sought-after prize of a year’s free gas. Last in series.
TUESDAY
Includes a visit to the home of blind goat farmer Ed Harper on Cape Clear, Co Cork. Also, cat owner Roisín Mills is moving house, so calls in a pet behaviour counsellor to help her beloved pets to settle.
First episode of a new series looking at the successes and failures of the American president. Several members of his inner circle relate tales tonight about Obama’s struggles to pass his $800 billion stimulus package, his unfulfilled promise to shut the Guantanamo Bay facility, and his engagement with China on climate change.
Concluding episode of the sport-swapping show follows the fortunes of Mayo footballer Aidan O’Shea as he tries American football, while former NFL star Roberto Wallace joins a GAA team in Mayo.
Professor Declan Kiberd looks at the Celtic Revival and whether the artists and writers who fostered a new era of cultural pride really created the conditions for the rebellion of later years.
WEDNESDAY
If any of us had the money of Russian millionaire Dmitry Itskov, perhaps we’d also plough it into the cutting edge science that he’s funding.
He wants to “create technologies enabling the transfer of an individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier”, or attaining immortality by uploading the human mind to a computer.
Not even Julia Roberts’ awful Irish accent managed to drag down Neil Jordan’s 1996 take on the life of the revolutionary hero.
THURSDAY
Derval McGovern shows off her Leitrim cottage where she replaced the tin roof with traditional thatch; we see how a Westmeath-based couple have made the most of their beautiful lakeside setting; and bakery owners near Clifden, Co Galway, who have transformed a 1980s bungalow in a fine example of contemporary architecture.
FRIDAY
A documentary on the Shannon scheme of the 1920s, a massive undertaking of the nascent state which used about 20% of the annual budget to create a hydroelectric power station at Ardnacrusha.
The great country singer will be 84 next month, and in this documentary talks about how she went from a Kentucky log cabin to becoming the queen of her genre.
Along the way, she was played by Sissy Spacek in The Coalminer’s Daughter; and her 1975 song, The Pill, was banned by numerous radio stations for such lyrics as:
“There`s gonna be some changes made right here on Nursery Hill, You`ve set this chicken your last time `cause now I`ve got the pill.”
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