Our Own Correspondent: Arts/Culture writer Eoghan O'Sullivan's picks of the year
The White Lotus, Get Back, and For Those I Love.
For Those I Love, Olympia Theatre, November 17: Long-awaited, David Balfe didn’t disappoint for his debut FTIL outing in front of a Dublin audience. Part-theatrical, tears poured while dancing prevailed.
Gemma Dunleavy, Academy, November 6: The local girl done good as this homecoming show was filled with friends and family, who spilled onstage for the boisterous ‘Up De Flats’.
It Takes a Village, Trabolgan, September 17-19: The withdrawal symptoms from lack of festivals are very real. Thankfully the vibes resonated around Trabolgan - helped by the sheer energy of TPM/Mary Wallopers, whether in a small living room session or rap pool party.
What is a summer without festival season? Let’s hope 2022 more than makes up for it.
Denise Chaila is as amazing as you might think. We talked for a couple of hours either side of the 70 or so minutes of recorded conversation. So smart, 2022 is hers for the taking.
I've already recommended Kerri ni Dochartaigh’s Thin Places, a wonderful blend of genres.
Fiction-wise, I thought Rebecca Watson’s Little Scratch was brilliant, Lisa McInerney’s The Rules of Revelation was a fitting end to her superlative Cork trilogy, and Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World Where Are You lived up to the hype.
Roisin Kiberd’s essay collection about technology creep, The Disconnect, was thought-provoking. I tried to preempt the Ulysses centenary by finally reading Joyce’s tome - pretty good, to be fair.
Cinema suffered as much as live entertainment this year, and there was a lack of excitement around ‘big’ movies.
Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary, Get Back, felt like a true event though. The most joyous eight hours imaginable, you leave feeling as if you’re friends with the band. I’ve never truly ‘got’ the Beatles before this - and am left scratching my head as to why exactly they broke up…
My hot take that I’m wary of revealing to people is that Succession is the most overhyped TV show of the decade - and yet I still watch it. The season three finale had acting at its finest, Brian Cox in particular.
However, The White Lotus was my favourite show of the year. Offbeat, I couldn’t figure out where it was taking us next. Bonus points for not drawing it out more than it needed to be.
The power of podcasting really hit me on the death of one of the stars of the Around the NFL podcast. A sports podcast, it had also charted the cancer battles of one of its hosts, Chris Wesseling, over the years: He beat it once, lived life to the fullest, found love, and became a father, before cancer returned last year.
He died on the eve of the Super Bowl, so what should have been a recap episode of the biggest sporting event in the US became a tribute simply titled ‘Wess’. It felt like I had lost a good friend.
The toll of the first five months mired in lockdown took a considerable toll on fans and creators alike. Let’s hope the current restrictions don’t need to last past mid-January.
