‘On which dating show did your parents meet?’ is a classic 2025 icebreaker
On E4’s The Honesty Box, a bunch of hunks and hunkettes must obey the whims of a glowing red cube. Would that life were so simple for the rest of us!
Patrick Freyne
Patrick Freyne columns
The nine biggest TV shows of 2025 so far: Why you should watch them, and where you can catch them
Including Andor, Severance, The Last of Us, Your Friends & Neighbors, and Adolescence
Sanctimonious Soc Dems find themselves on shaky high moral ground
Inside Politics podcast with Hugh Linehan
Severance is brilliant and relatable. These are eight other similar shows you might love
Apple TV+’s stylish dystopian drama Severance is one of the best workplace TV shows. Here are eight more to watch
A bunch of influencers are sitting in a windowless bunker. It’s hard not to agree this is the future humanity deserves
Fighting its future format death, Netflix has tempted YouTube phenomena ‘the Sidemen’ over to its doomed cause for Inside
Patrick Freyne: Here’s what I see when I see Irish people at their best
We are hospitable and irreverent, but also cynical and parochial. When things get difficult, who do we want to be?
Ryan owns a tanning business. Yolanda is a Mel B impersonator. These are Britain’s main industries since Brexit
Patrick Freyne: Love Triangle UK’s contestants are earnest and well meaning – not, as so often on dating shows, monstrous, sexually prolific sociopaths
I feel we’re close now, Meghan, so I can speak freely. The right pitch is crucial in lifestyle hucksterism like yours
On With Love, Meghan, you mainly cook. Given how long the Meghan-and-Harry industrial complex took to create this series, I feel a little let down
On Prime, Jack Reacher is still wandering from town to town, much like the 2FM Roadcaster
Reacher’s inevitable fisticuffs are an adorable masculine power fantasy, there to soothe struggling menfolk in the audience
We already have Great House Revival. What we need now is Feck the Preservation Order, Let’s Knock It and Build an Office Block
Or maybe If We Just Leave It Derelict We’ll Make Money on the Land Value Alone. Hugh Wallace could still present it
‘It’s boobing out!’ Kim Kardashian cries. Irish Times readers will recognise this reference to the Heaney poem of that name
The celebrity clan have so Truman Show-ed their existence that all significant events in their lives have occurred on camera
Holly Willoughby is well used to troublesome co-hosts. Bear Grylls may like insects and urine, but he’s not Phillip Schofield
Celebrity Bear Hunt review: From the dawn of reality TV it has been clear it would culminate with an apparently unhinged survivalist hunting helpless celebs
‘Young men aren’t just b****rds running around on their bikes ... everyone has their own dreams’
A Dublin project explores how the world shapes young men by helping some of them to create ‘boys’ as they really see them
I am now very fit. I am ready for Ireland’s fittest family to adopt me
What golden specimens they are, you think, as they propel themselves across God’s good earth like Accenture employees here to rationalise a business
On Beast Games, MrBeast gives away islands. This will be familiar to the Irish as ‘colonialism’
There is no rhyme or reason to success or failure on Prime Video’s gameshow. MrBeast’s message for our children seems to be that life is arbitrary chaos
Meghan Markle’s lifestyle tips, plus other TV for your glazed-but-happy eyes in 2025: ‘One must be firm with one’s butler’
Including Severance, White Lotus, The Studio, Poker Face, Stranger Things and Black Mirror
Culchiecore, bonkbusters, murder, more murder and Nationwide: What I’ve seen on TV in 2024
Patrick Freyne on the 2 Johnnies, Rivals, Say Nothing, Baby Reindeer and television trends of the past 12 months
Patrick Freyne: I am becoming a demotivational speaker – let’s all have an averagely productive December
I keep meeting people who are extremely burned out. I meet them so often that I’m beginning to think burnout is something that exists by design
Letters to the Editor, December 14th: On the Green effect, grief and the humble Brussels sprout
Youth work is not an optional extra, it is essential to our communities
Wake up, people: Here’s what the mainstream media don’t want you to know about Christmas
From Santy and selection boxes to Christmas pudding and Mariah Carey, these are some of the truths you won’t hear elsewhere
What do women want? A hunky idiot without a past, that’s what
Hot Frosty, Netflix’s latest reboot of The Snowman, at last brings some ‘hubba-hubba, vroom-vroom, arooooga!’ to Raymond Briggs’s family favourite
Read this before you vote: Patrick Freyne’s vibes-based guide to Election 2024
From HR Pufnstuf to Battlestar Galactica, what can we learn from political television shows through the ages before we go to the ballot box?
Patrick Freyne: My favourite corporate psy-ops of the season – or Christmas ads, as they’re called in the suburbs
Patrick Freyne: here are my favourite corporate psy-ops of the season – or Christmas TV ads, as I believe you call them in the suburbs
Doctor Odyssey’s core message: just imagine Pacey from Dawson’s Creek holding you tight and saying, ‘Shhh, it’s okay’
Patrick Freyne: Cruising takes on an alternative meaning in this medical melodrama, with Joshua Jackson visiting multiple ports of call
Rivals: The thrusting bum is intercut with spurting soap and overflowing champagne. We are in safe, if filthy, hands
Patrick Freyne: If I was in Disney+’s Jilly Cooper adaptation, someone would surely compliment my ‘magnificent column’
The 2 Johnnies – what you get if you feed Ant and Dec a Tayto sandwich after midnight – are taunting us now
As I get sucked into this regional boosterism, I feel something change in me. Do I ... actually like it?
Patrick Freyne: Where does Love in the Country find its taciturn Irishmen? I thought they had gone from this isle, like elk and shame
Anna Geary is such a good host that she’d probably want to help rural romantics find the partner of their dreams even if RTÉ wasn’t filming it
Watch as these bellowing beasts – the three kinds of ageing Englishman – roam the plains one last time
On The Grand Tour: One for the Road, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May bow out of their Prime Video car show
Outlast feels like another trial run for the collapse of civilisation
The reality for the survivalists on this terribly named Netflix show is a bit mundane and not even particularly wolf filled
Anthony Hopkins’s new prestige drama has given me a great idea. It involves buttocks
Those About to Die: Anyone can achieve their dreams if their father is an emperor
Danny Dyer could play a flautist in wartime Budapest, Percy Bysshe Shelley or Jesus Christ. He’s just that good
Instead he must play a cockney geezer with a penchant for violence but a heart of gold, over and over. He’s good at that, too
Fish-out-of-water TV is back and it’s great fun altogether
Literal fish-out-of-water dramas are short and sadly predictable but here are my figurative favourites
These Criminal Minds folks look and sound as if they work for Accenture
The behavioural-analysis unit all feel like the sort of people who can do accounts. That might be why I default to the A-Team when I try to think about them
Joey Essex was raised by television, his mother a camera, his father a boom microphone
I’m pretty sure even Joey Essex doesn’t know he’s on Love Island. He probably thinks he’s just on holiday with his family, the camera equipment
Jedis were once a seasoning, like salt. We liked the salt, and now Disney is serving us big bowls of salt
The Acolyte, Disney’s emotionally and visually flat new Star Wars spin-off, needs to stop with all the confusing lightsabre fights
From Nicola Coughlan’s hunks in landscaped gardens to Cillian Murphy’s gripping gangster romp: Patrick Freyne’s costume drama guide
With the return of Bridgerton, here’s a guide to costume drama
Doctor Who’s Space Babies definitely went to an Educate Together school
Patrick Freyne: Doctor Who allows adults to enjoy swashbuckling adventures without feeling patronised and allows children to access something dark and weird while feeling safe
Patrick Freyne: On Selling the OC, Alex has the recipe for a good relationship. It’s a nice, alliterative list – all the C-words
The Netflix reality show involves glamorous ladies and hunky gentlemen quaffing champagne and talking about their problems at length
Claudia Winkleman could be in your midst right now. Security forces live in fear of the day she goes rogue
Patrick Freyne: On The Piano, she shows why she’s the best light-entertainment presenter. Jon Bon Jovi, on the other hand, is both cheesy and hammy
‘I have lived so long. Why am I still here?’ Simon Cowell’s beady little eyes seem to say
Patrick Freyne: Britain’s Got Talent is back, its name now less a triumphalist boast than a pleading sales pitch from a waning superpower
The Full Irish Hidden Camera Show understands the craic must be baited, captured and solemnly clubbed to death
Patrick Freyne: Frequently it seems as if those ‘duped’ by Doireann Garrihy, Carl Mullan and Donncha O’Callaghan are playing along, much as you would indulge the tomfoolery of a child
Is it cake? Do not show your worst child this programme! They already suspect everything is cake
Patrick Freyne: I’m taking the existence of this Netflix gameshow as a sign that the jig is up for the human race
Patrick Freyne’s favourite TV shows of 2024: An Irish national treasure, bickering hitfolk and the best actor of her generation
Andrew Scott in Ripley and Donald Glover and Maya Erskine in Mr & Mrs Smith are among the highlights thus far
Patrick Freyne: The English now have both our fourth green field and Lindsay Lohan
We meet Lindsay Lohan’s character Maddie on the way to a book launch as her scarf gets shut in the door of a taxi that then zooms off with it
Patrick Freyne: 12 reasons why it hasn’t always been cool to be Irish - including Murder, She Wrote and Batman
Young Irish people are growing up with an unreasonable sense of confidence. St Patrick’s weekend is an ideal chance to correct the record
Patrick Freyne: I suspect some of the Celebrity Big Brother participants booked beds on Airbnb - the producers thought, good enough
Louis Walsh and Sharon Osborne both seem grumpy. They have either been conscripted against their will under new legislation or they’re each here so they can pay an unexpected bill
Formula 1 drivers are the dullest stars that have ever bothered reality-television
Patrick Freyne: Why do Formula 1 drivers bother with expensive, uncomfortable cars? I have a cost-effective Nissan Micra that smells of Haribo Supermix
JLo seems not so much to mix metaphors as to cut them with coke
Patrick Freyne: As the singer clambers into her own heart in her musical fantasia, an uncharitable critic might suggest she is climbing up a different body part
I feel a swell of national pride when I see a big Irish hunk do well on the telly
Patrick Freyne: On Love Island – All Stars, Adam spends much of his time wearing a hat and tiny pants and little else. It’s a classic Irish look
Put the Dancing with the Stars judges in charge of RTÉ. They’d give Mattie McGrath a run for his money
Patrick Freyne: ‘Have all the money that you want and spend it on what you like,’ the TD would have told the majesterial Lorraine Barry
Patrick Freyne: In a housing crisis, Room to Improve feels like a barometer of our national derangement
There are three people in every Room to Improve marriage if you include Dermot Bannon
A charismatic perpetual child star performing lots of grisly operations? What more could you ask for?
Patrick Freyne: Disney+ having the beloved Artful Dodger carry out surgery is a wonderfully deranged, and actually pretty Dickensian, choice
If I was on Gladiators my name would be Lump or Wheeze, and my ‘little dance’ would be falling over with a grunt
Patrick Freyne: Oddly, none of the rebooted show’s contestants says, ‘Well, Bradley, on my days off I like to binge-watch YouTube videos while eating an obscene amount of cheese’
Say what you like about Hannibal Lecter, but he had joie de vivre. Unlike Jack Reacher
Patrick Freyne: The show, which stars the widest Alan in existence, is the United States’ id as expressed by a malfunctioning AI
Crosswords & Puzzles
Crosswords & puzzles to keep you challenged and entertained
Stardust
Inquests into the nightclub fire that led to the deaths of 48 people
Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
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Weddings, Births, Deaths and other family notices