Pick of the Week
DJ Carey: The Dodger
Monday, RTÉ One, 9.35pm
Earlier this month, former Kilkenny hurling star DJ Carey was convicted on charges of defrauding people out of hundreds of thousands of euro by falsely claiming to have cancer. It was a shocking betrayal of trust and a dizzying fall from grace for the GAA legend, but how did someone so revered both at home and internationally throw it all away by deceiving friends, family and well-wishers on such a huge scale? This two-part documentary by Emmy award-nominated director Trevor Birney traces the Kilkenny prodigy’s rise to sporting fame, as he led his county to five All-Ireland victories, earning nine All Star medals along the way, and looks at Carey’s mounting problems behind the scenes, as his marriage broke down and his business interests ran into difficulties. Amid intense media scrutiny, Carey embarked on a new relationship with business mogul and Dragons’ Den investor Sarah Newman, but the pressures of keeping up with his new, glitzy lifestyle began to take its toll, and soon Carey was hatching tales about his health to get financial dig-outs from unsuspecting friends.
Highlights
Prisoner 951
Sunday, BBC One, 9pm
In 2016, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual British-Iranian national, was arrested in Iran on trumped-up charges of spying, effectively held hostage and separated from her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, and their two-year-old daughter. Nazanin would remain incarcerated in an Iranian jail for the next six years, as Richard desperately campaigned to have her released, meeting politicians, gathering petitions and even going on hunger strike. He also faced incompetence from the Tory government of the day, with foreign secretary Boris Johnson only making things worse with ill-judged public remarks. This intense four-part drama stars Narges Rashidi as Nazarin, and Joseph Fiennes as Richard, and tells the full story of the couple’s six-year ordeal, based on their upcoming book A Yard of Sky.
Chris McCausland: Seeing Into the Future
Sunday, BBC Two, 8pm
Chris McCausland has always been a tech-head, and in this new programme, co-produced by the Open University, the comedian and Strictly Come Dancing winner taps into his inner geek to learn how new advances in technology are transforming the world and have changed his own life for the better. McCausland used to work as a website designer, but a degenerative eye condition saw him gradually lose his eyesight, until he was completely blind by his early 20s. In this programme he shows how such inventions as the smartphone, AI and driverless cars have the capacity to improve his everyday life, allowing him do many of the things sighted people can do. “Through my phone, I can do banking, order taxis, go shopping, just like you all do. It’s revolutionary,” he told an audience at a Royal Television Society convention in Cambridge. “The iPhone provided me with a level of autonomy and independence I’d not experienced before, and now AI is doing the same.” McCausland explains how voice-controlled smart assistants are invaluable for people like him, and explores how new tech inventions might continue to enhance his life in the future. He also goes to San Francisco and gets behind the wheel of an autonomous car, his first time driving unaccompanied. If you’ve taken the tech revolution for granted, this documentary might make you look at it in a new way.
Civilisations: Rise and Fall
Monday, BBC Two, 9pm
We like watching entire civilisations rise to greatness and then collapse into dust – gives us a bit of a break from the endless drama of the soaps. This epic new series focuses on four big civilisations from the past – ancient Rome, Egypt of the pharaohs, the Aztecs and the Japanese samurai – and takes the art and artefacts left behind as the starting points for a deep exploration of life in these places at the peak of their power, and the events that led to their decline and eventual collapse. In the first episode we visit Rome at the end of the fourth century, when the emperor Honorius rules over a fracturing empire and the barbarians are – literally – gathering at the gates. Honorius must try to keep cohesion despite a corrupt elite, growing rebellion and a citizenship increasingly disillusioned by economic inequality, where 1 per cent of the population holds most of the wealth. It all comes to a head when a vengeful Alaric leads his Visigoths to attack Rome, signalling the beginning of the end for the empire.
RM Block
Joan
Tuesday, RTÉ One, 10.15pm
Joan Hannington had all the odds stacked against her: growing up with abuse in the home, pregnant at 17, and unhappily married to a violent gangster. But she used her good looks and glamorous style to turn her fortunes around, becoming the most notorious jewel thief in 1980s London, known as the Godmother. Her true-life story is dramatised in this six-part series, originally aired on UTV in September 2024, written by Anna Symon (who also wrote scripts for The Essex Serpent, and Mrs Wilson) and starring Sophie Turner from Game of Thrones as the chic criminal chameleon who created a series of fake identities to stay one step ahead of the law.
Beo Faoin bhFód
Wednesday, TG4, 9.30pm
In 1968, long before David Blaine was doing his death-defying stunts, Irish man Mick Meaney survived 61 days buried alive in a coffin six feet underground. The Tipperary barman was working in London at a time when endurance challenges were a big fad, and he and his boss, local strongman Michael “Butty” Sugrue, hatched the idea as a publicity stunt, setting up a “wake” where friends bade Meaney farewell, and a public burial attended by hundreds of spectators. There were no health and safety precautions in place should anything go wrong and, worse, Meaney didn’t even bother to tell his pregnant wife about his planned stunt – she only found out about it when she turned on the radio. And when Meaney was finally “exhumed” after two months beneath the London soil, he didn’t qualify for an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as there was no one on hand to officially record the world record attempt. This documentary by Daire Collins digs up some archive footage to tell the story and interviews Meaney’s daughter Mary.
Poison Water
Wednesday, BBC One, 9pm
In Thatcher’s Britain in 1988, Camelford in Cornwall was the scene of Britain’s biggest mass poisoning, when 20,000 people were exposed to harmful levels of aluminium in their drinking water, causing stomach cramps, diarrhoea and rashes and, in one case, death. The cause was a misplaced delivery to a water treatment plant, and at the time the water authority assured people that the water was safe to drink, advising them to add orange juice to it to disguise the bad taste, or to boil the water. But in a time when Thatcher’s government was privatising the country’s water supply, leaked information suggested a possible cover-up within the water authority, as executives worried that its share price might suffer if the truth got out. This documentary tells the story of this public health disaster whose repercussions are still being felt.
Streaming
The Beatles Anthology
From November 26th, Disney+
Next time Dad complains that the kids are spending too much time watching endless Star Wars spin-offs on Disney+, just remind him that he happily spent the entire Christmas watching The Beatles sitting around the studio twiddling their guitars on Get Back. Now Dad is about to disappear again because Disney+ is launching the restored and remastered Anthology series tracing the Fab Four’s journey from the working-class streets of Liverpool to total global domination to their acrimonious break-up. It’s all told in the Beatles’ own words, with incredible restored footage from every stage of the band’s career. Dad’s already got the Anthology on DVD, but the original eight-part series has been expanded with a brand-new ninth episode featuring behind-the-scenes footage of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr reuniting in the mid-1990s to work on the Anthology series. No surprise to find the hand of Peter Jackson on this restoration, or that Giles Martin is the man behind the new audio mixes. And just to ensure Dad won’t be seen again until Easter, there’s a restored and expanded 12-LP vinyl collection to go with it, plus a Beatles Anthology 25th anniversary book.
Stranger Things 5
From November 27th, Netflix
We’ve watched the kids of Hawkins, Indiana, grow up into young adults over four series of Stranger Things. We’ve also watched them being attacked by all sorts of scary monsters from that alternative reality known as the Upside-Down, hell-bent on preventing them from reaching adulthood. But, just like the 1980s, all good things must come to an end, and so we come to the final reckoning, and the show’s creators, the Duffer brothers, are promising an ending of epic proportions. It’s autumn 1987, and Hawkins has been quarantined by the military, who of course haven’t a clue how to deal with the paranormal apocalypse that is about to rain down on the town. So it’s up to the gang – Will (Noah Schnapp), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Max (Sadie Sink), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and Steve (Joe Keery) – to hunt down the evil Vecna and kill him before he sucks out everybody’s life-force. But Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is still in hiding, being chased by every government agency around, and the anniversary of Will’s disappearance is approaching, bringing up dark memories, but also summoning even darker forces. They have some help from the older generation – Joyce (Winona Ryder), Hopper (David Harbour) and Murray (Brett Gelman) – but they too will be tested to the limit by the terrifying new threats about to emerge from the slimy depths. We’re gonna miss those kids after everything goes back to right side up.
