6 shows our TV reviewer recommends binge-watching over Christmas
The Traitors, available on RTÉ Player
Looking for a family binge watch over Christmas? Here are a few shows we watched in our place in 2025, with two extras that are a bit too tasty for the kids.
The most surprising thing this year, after Tipperary winning the hurling. Our kids (aged 11 and 13) couldn’t get enough of Clarkson making a mess of ploughing a field while pretending not to understand rural folk. Neither could I. It’s the most satisfying show on TV, the spring and summer scenes will help you through days when it gets dark straight after lunch.
My 11 year-old-son only had eyes for Manchester United and his Play Station. Until we put on Derry Girls. He openly admits it’s the best TV show ever, which isn’t what you’d expect given that it’s mainly about girls. It’s aged really well. There isn’t a word wasted in the script and you could probably watch Siobhán McSweeney doing her Sister Michael face for a good hour.
That Sister Michael face also kept us going on the Irish version of The Traitors. I got tired of the format eventually, but the kids lapped it up. And RTE have lapped it up as well with the US, UK and Australian version of the show available on RTE Player.
Call child services, we made our kids watch Family Guy. Our kids were already familiar with Peter Griffin because he crops up in their video game world, but I had never watched any of the 23 (23!!) seasons of this show because I thought Griffin was just a Homer Simpson knock-off. He is actually, and a very funny one too, with a sharper edge to the humour. We stopped watching eventually because it was a bit too edgy for our two . But before Peter Griffin’s son got a lap-dance from a stripper, we were all in. Now we’re on The Simpsons.
We didn’t watch this with the kids, they’re too young. It’s not lap-dances here, but brutality, in the fictionalised story of an Australian doctor who tends to his captured comrades as they work and die on a railroad in Burma for the Japanese military during World War Two. It’s gripping and awful and the best thing on TV in 2025. Show it to anyone who thinks that war is a good idea.
The best TV show in the last decade. If you haven’t seen it, then Happy Christmas, you’re in for a treat.
