Patrick Freyne columns
Including the attractive conformists of Wednesday’s posh private school, the paranormal Baywatch spinoff and the Joanna Lumley show that scarred an Irish child for life
Dublin Jackeens will quake as a new series of The 2 Johnnies’ Late Night Lock In takes over our TV screens
Perfidious Albion has, in fairness, assembled quite a crop of celebrities - though Claudia Winkleman is no Siobhán McSweeney
Much like Downton Abbey, House of Guinness is best treated as a delightful hallucinatory cheese dream
Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon’s show is an enjoyable but chaotic mess that makes a compelling argument for tearing the Fourth Estate to the ground
The former leader of a country added another artefact into his record of domestic life - a dinner photo
Stranded on Honeymoon Island isn’t a survival show so much as TV producers’ latest attempt to destroy the institution of marriage
From Ferris Bueller to Beverly Hills 90210 and The OC, teen dramas have helped turn us all back into adolescents
Plus: Which now-defunct Irish band included journalists/authors Anna Carey and Patrick Freyne?
My favourite character is Eamon the garda, who is being radicalised before our eyes
The real star of the show is a sanity-troubled canine companion to the owner of the longest legs in Belgravia
This was supposed to be the year I would slow down, say no to things
Ryan Tubridy’s return of €150,000 to his old employer, plus eight other TV moments I missed while I was away reading books and smelling flowers
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!
Including Andor, Severance, The Last of Us, Your Friends & Neighbors, and Adolescence
Inside Politics podcast with Hugh Linehan
Apple TV+’s stylish dystopian drama Severance is one of the best workplace TV shows. Here are eight more to watch
Fighting its future format death, Netflix has tempted YouTube phenomena ‘the Sidemen’ over to its doomed cause for Inside
We are hospitable and irreverent, but also cynical and parochial. When things get difficult, who do we want to be?
Patrick Freyne: Love Triangle UK’s contestants are earnest and well meaning – not, as so often on dating shows, monstrous, sexually prolific sociopaths
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
Reacher’s inevitable fisticuffs are an adorable masculine power fantasy, there to soothe struggling menfolk in the audience
Or maybe If We Just Leave It Derelict We’ll Make Money on the Land Value Alone. Hugh Wallace could still present it
The celebrity clan have so Truman Show-ed their existence that all significant events in their lives have occurred on camera
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
A Dublin project explores how the world shapes young men by helping some of them to create ‘boys’ as they really see them
What golden specimens they are, you think, as they propel themselves across God’s good earth like Accenture employees here to rationalise a business
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
Including Severance, White Lotus, The Studio, Poker Face, Stranger Things and Black Mirror
Patrick Freyne on the 2 Johnnies, Rivals, Say Nothing, Baby Reindeer and television trends of the past 12 months
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
Youth work is not an optional extra, it is essential to our communities
From Santy and selection boxes to Christmas pudding and Mariah Carey, these are some of the truths you won’t hear elsewhere
Hot Frosty, Netflix’s latest reboot of The Snowman, at last brings some ‘hubba-hubba, vroom-vroom, arooooga!’ to Raymond Briggs’s family favourite
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: here are my favourite corporate psy-ops of the season – or Christmas TV ads, as I believe you call them in the suburbs
Patrick Freyne: Cruising takes on an alternative meaning in this medical melodrama, with Joshua Jackson visiting multiple ports of call
Patrick Freyne: If I was in Disney+’s Jilly Cooper adaptation, someone would surely compliment my ‘magnificent column’
As I get sucked into this regional boosterism, I feel something change in me. Do I ... actually like it?
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
On The Grand Tour: One for the Road, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May bow out of their Prime Video car show
The reality for the survivalists on this terribly named Netflix show is a bit mundane and not even particularly wolf filled
Those About to Die: Anyone can achieve their dreams if their father is an emperor
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
Literal fish-out-of-water dramas are short and sadly predictable but here are my figurative favourites
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
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
The Acolyte, Disney’s emotionally and visually flat new Star Wars spin-off, needs to stop with all the confusing lightsabre fights
With the return of Bridgerton, here’s a guide to costume drama
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
The Netflix reality show involves glamorous ladies and hunky gentlemen quaffing champagne and talking about their problems at length
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
Patrick Freyne: Britain’s Got Talent is back, its name now less a triumphalist boast than a pleading sales pitch from a waning superpower
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
Crosswords & puzzles to keep you challenged and entertained
Inquests into the nightclub fire that led to the deaths of 48 people
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
Weddings, Births, Deaths and other family notices
