Netflix, All4, Vimeo, YouTube... The best TV shows to binge-watch on the webSummer is gone and the evenings are drawing in – fear not, there's a lot of great TV out there to get you through the coming monthsSat Aug 15 2015 - 05:00
From Amy Schumer to Waterford Whispers: two kinds of political comedyIt's funny... In US media over the past decade, thanks to the likes of Jon Stewart and Amy Schumer, comedy has found a central place in the culture wars; in Ireland, political comedy never even pretends to be able to effect changeThu Aug 13 2015 - 16:35
Goodbye True Detective, hello David Duchovny roughing up hippiesWhat a week it's been for cop shows - True Detective is finally over, and David Duchovny is back in 1960s-set crime drama Aquarius. The question is: who's the true detective?Thu Aug 13 2015 - 07:15
Lesser Spotted Ireland: Patrick Freyne goes on a ‘mancation’The Living Wilderness Bushcraft ‘mancation’ is educational and a whole lot of fun – but don’t go thinking it’s like Bear GryllsMon Aug 03 2015 - 06:00
‘O’Dynamite’ Rossa: Was Fenian leader the first terrorist?Radicalised by the Famine, his funeral became a propaganda coup for the movementSat Aug 01 2015 - 01:00
Patrick Freyne - Prince Philip: The Plot to Make a KingChannel 4's riveting tale of how major obstacles became minor in marrying a queenFri Jul 31 2015 - 11:41
Why do we argue online?The internet is now the world’s number-one debating forum, but online argument is more bitter and less productive than face-to-face discussion. Why do we do it and does anyone ever win?Fri Jul 24 2015 - 14:30
Even if they don’t seem real, participants in reality TV are most definitely harmed in the productionFri Jul 17 2015 - 05:45
Patrick Freyne: ‘True Detective’ is telly at its dourest‘OITNB’ on the other hand has compassion, wit and righteous angerFri Jul 03 2015 - 10:19
Power, politics and the press: the man who brought Rupert Murdoch to bookNick Davies’s pursuit of the phone-hacking scandal shut down the ‘News of the World’. Now he’ll show you how to be an investigative reporterSat Jun 27 2015 - 09:00
Patrick Freyne: It’s said that if you open up Marty Whelan’s suit you will find another suit, and so on unto eternity...Winning Streak is the longest running quiz show in the world and has seen many eras, none of them goldenFri Jun 26 2015 - 15:38
St Vincent: the art and soul of the guitar heroAnnie Clark talks music, performance and not taking things too seriouslyFri Jun 26 2015 - 05:30
Barack Obama: ‘We are not cured of racism . . . it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘nigger’ in public.’Obama in a US podcast interview from a comedian’s garage talks about Charleston, race relations and parentingMon Jun 22 2015 - 17:00
Watch in awe: from Jack Black to Super Pup, the greatest TV shows never madeFrom Jack Black's TV debut in 1999 to The Adventures of Super Pup, Patrick Freyne unearths the forgotten TV pilots that, disgracefully, were never turned into full series. (Well... except for Heil Honey I’m Home! which, unbelievably, made it past the pilot)Fri Jun 19 2015 - 16:59
Patrick Freyne: destroyer of culture Chris Evans is perfect for Top GearFirst, an uncalled for resurrection of TFI Friday, and now he's to replace Jeremy Clarkson in the noisiest job on televsion - is there no stopping Chris Evans?Wed Jun 17 2015 - 15:51
The Duke of Wellington’s drunken Dublin yearsLong before he introduced Napoleon to his Waterloo (200 years ago on June 18th), the idle young duke-to-be could be found carousing the hot spots of his native Dublin. Let’s take the tourMon Jun 15 2015 - 06:00
Johann Hari: ‘I should have to meet a higher bar’The newspaper columnist derailed a fiery career with plagiarism. Now he’s back with an exhaustive exploration of the war on drugs, and has a sideline helping Russell Brand. But, he says, he’s not looking for a second chanceSat Jun 13 2015 - 09:20
Patrick Freyne: meet the medium confusing the recently bereaved for moneyPatrick Freyne watches two new episodes of Long Island Medium, which is about a loud and terrifying woman who confuses the recently bereaved for moneyThu Jun 11 2015 - 23:33
Patrick Freyne: This week, Red Rock redefined car-crash telly, while Pat Kenny happily remembered the madnessRed Rock is nicely self-contained, focusing its melodrama around the local police station, with the rest of the suburb depicted as a desolate hellscape of empty warehouses where people go to schemeFri Jun 05 2015 - 11:50
Beck to the future: Musical chameleon returns to his originsBeck Hansen is now ready for a ‘deepening of the conversation’, he tells Patrick FreyneFri Jun 05 2015 - 11:21
Superhero-free zone: the weird comics of Daniel ClowesClowes, the artist behind such funny, melancholic comics as Ghost World and Eightball, is happy to work in obscurityWed Jun 03 2015 - 03:00
Patrick Freyne: A baby smuggling ring holding baby auctions? Better call the cybercrime unit“Any crimes involving electronic devices is by definition ‘cyber’,” Avery tells her boss, a little defensively, foreshadowing episodes in which they investigate shoplifted iPadsThu May 28 2015 - 12:00
Same-sex marriage: gay couples react to Yes vote‘It means that we’re the same as everybody else. We are now officially part of Ireland’Sun May 24 2015 - 14:26
From the archive: Patrick Freyne writes a song for the EurovisionIn an attempt to bring Ireland back to its glory days, Patrick Freyne asks the experts how to write a Eurovision song and co-writes his ownSat May 23 2015 - 13:00
Same-sex marriage: gay couples await people’s decision‘It’s a terrible thing to ask all the people can you get married and to think they might say No’Fri May 22 2015 - 23:20
How to write a Eurovision winnerOn tomorrow night's Late Late Show, five songs battle it out to represent Ireland at the Eurovision. Patrick Freyne asks the experts how to write a Eurovision song and co-writes his own.Thu May 21 2015 - 16:13
Patrick Freyne: Tears are currency in the Big Brother house and the overlord won’t be deprived of their salty goodnessAaron, who wishes to be seen as more than an underwear model, dances in his underwear and shouts: ‘I love wine. Wine is my friend.’ Later we watch him vomiting aloneWed May 20 2015 - 16:00
Gambling Big: ‘When you hear the poker chips rippling, there’s an energy’Our series on winners and losers in gambling concludes at an international poker tournament in Dublin, at which some of Ireland’s 50-odd professional players battle rivals from around Europe for a €50,000 prize, gobbling up a few ‘fish’ in the processTue May 19 2015 - 01:00
Paddy Power: online is 'the sexy part' of the businessPaddy Power made €167m in 2014, but how much comes from ‘problem gamblers’?Mon May 18 2015 - 01:00
Gambling 24/7: The addiction Ireland doesn’t know enough aboutAs betting moves out of the bookies’ and on to the mobile phone, a new kind of gambling addict is emerging. Who are the losers and winners in Ireland’s fast-changing gambling world?Sun May 17 2015 - 10:30
My gambling problem: ‘Online there’s no concept of the money’‘The bookies were open 24 hours a day online. There was always something to gamble on – racing in the US, football in South America’Sat May 16 2015 - 01:00
Footballer Oisín McConville: Gambling beat the sh*t out of meThe former Armagh GAA player spent years betting compulsively, losing tens of thousands of euro before confronting his problemsFri May 15 2015 - 14:30
Derek Davis: ‘Everybody comes off a little bit scarred by RTÉ’Patrick Freyne remembers a happy few hours spent with the broadcaster in 2008Wed May 13 2015 - 13:37
Patrick Freyne: Empire is built around Cookie but she’s not the only scene-chewing monsterCookie and Cookie Monster are fabulous divas who know what they want. Cookie Monster wants cookies. Cookie wants ‘what’s mine’ (possibly cookies)Fri May 08 2015 - 09:08
‘You don’t need to be suicidal to ring the Samaritans’At the Samaritans office in Dublin, the team talk about why people ring them, how they help those in distress, and those dreaded calls when the line goes deadMon May 04 2015 - 06:00
Oh lord: next generation takes the keys to Waterford countyWhen he inherited Curraghmore House – and the title of Lord Waterford – Henry de la Poer Beresford had to change the name on his bank cards. But he’s happy to embrace his newly conferred role, which includes hosting the Curraghmore Bluebell FestivalSat May 02 2015 - 01:00
Patrick Freyne: Remembering a time when murder was fun and shorts were skimpyWhen it comes to catching killers, Thomas Magnum will always have the edgeThu Apr 30 2015 - 15:04
‘Video is the internet’: meet the young Irish YouTubersAs YouTube celebrates its 10th birthday, Ireland’s vloggers discuss community, authenticity and the problems that come with putting their lives on showMon Apr 27 2015 - 06:00
Secrets of a ‘grassrootsy’ start-upCould you become a social entrepreneur? Paul O’Hara wants Irish people to launch 100 community projects in 100 days, and will provide the high-tech backup to make it happenSat Apr 25 2015 - 01:00
Patrick Freyne: Wannabe pop star Nadia Forde is chasing the dream; and when she catches up with it, it’s f***edThe poor dream. It doesn’t make you a screaming environmentalist to find dream-hunting cruel.Thu Apr 23 2015 - 17:45
Numb: war journalist ‘memoir’ originally written as novelAuthor Colin Carroll promoted his book as a work of non-fictionSun Apr 19 2015 - 14:52
‘Numb’: Louis La Roc and the war memoir mysteryA supposedly factual new book about ‘Alan Buckby’, a war reporter with a double lifeSat Apr 18 2015 - 01:00
The problem with politics: ‘Everyone wants to be the kids in the back seat’Journalist and author Zoe Williams thinks that we need to reclaim politics from politicians and that it’s folly to believe ‘the right party will come along and everything will be fine’Fri Apr 17 2015 - 06:00
Patrick Freyne: Game of Thrones is back and with it, more dragons and zombies and shapeshifters“The future is shit, just like the past,” Tyrion says before vomiting on the carpet, thus summing up the wider message of Game of ThronesWed Apr 15 2015 - 13:00
Ghost-writer denies memoir of war correspondent is fiction‘Louis La Roc’ says late British journalist was involved in gang rape, murder and other crimesFri Apr 10 2015 - 15:11
‘It’s quite terrifying’: staging To Kill a MockingbirdRacist Chelsea fans, Ukip, the shooting of Michael Brown . . . the stage adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird is not intended as a museum piece about 1930s AlabamaFri Apr 10 2015 - 02:00
Bear Grylls is the latest in a string of despots with islands. Will he have more luck than Dr Moreau?"I once hoped Bear Grylls was a programme about an ursine barbecue enthusiast. Sadly, this was not the case."Thu Apr 09 2015 - 22:00
Patrick Freyne: Look, it’s a drama made by E! – what did you expect, Downton Abbey?The Royals takes place in no identifiable time period, though the presence of Elizabeth Hurley suggests it’s probably 1994Wed Apr 01 2015 - 22:00
Mary Berry: Queen of puddingsMary Berry tells of her journey from teaching people how to use their ovens to fronting one of the most popular programmes on British television.Sat Mar 28 2015 - 19:00
Alastair Campbell: walking with winnersWhy should we win? The political strategist admits that’s one question he never asksFri Mar 27 2015 - 08:00
