RTÉ pledges to beef up TV programming
“In recent years RTÉ Television has significantly increased our investment in quality home-produced programming over the summer period,” he said. “This trend will continue for summer 2007.”
This summer’s offerings see Saturday Night with Miriam (O’Callaghan) coming live from Studio 4 for the duration of its run.
Hector Ó hEochagáin and Jason Byrne are back with Hanging with Hector and Anonymous, while three new short comedy series are being launched.
Class Clowns will send comedians back to school, and Laura Woods fronts the new National Lottery game show, Trump Card.
RTÉ is offering “a huge range” of new lifestyle programming — from health to interior design. Diarmuid Gavin is back with last summer’s hit, I Want A Garden.
Damage is a new full-length contemporary drama set in Dublin. It was written and directed by Aisling Walsh. RTÉ Two has scooped the final series of The Sopranos ahead of other European broadcasters.
The archive unit will present a range of new series, including programmes looking at some of Ireland’s biggest disasters.
Storybook is a four-part factual series that examines the lives of Third World children. Tom Dunne gets to know Sao Paolo’s street children in Brazil; Colin Murphy visits Uganda, a country with one million Aids orphans; Kathy Sheridan meets children forced into child labour in Cambodia and Lucia Evans travels to Burkina Faso to see how young girls survive in a male-dominated society.
The Panel Election Special will do what it says on the tin — except with a dollop of wit thrown in. Regulars Colin Murphy, Neil Delamere, Andrew Maxwell, Máiréad Farrell, Karl Spain and Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabháin will be joined by Taragh Loughrey Grant to test the political pulse.
And there’s lots of sports coverage, too.
