Ireland excels at a lot of things. Literature. Preachy rock stars. Potato-based snacks. But in television we have long punched below our weight: compare and contrast our history of underachievement on the small screen with the ambitious, cutting-edge TV produced by nations of a similar size, from Borgen (Denmark) to Wellington Paranormal (New Zealand). Still, … Read more
Somewhat ironically, 2026 has been declared by online influencers as the year people will move their lives offline. Videos of people assembling “analogue bags” – essentially holdalls of entertainment to keep boredom at bay – have gone viral on Instagram and TikTok. People are swapping Spotify for radio, Kindles for books, and phone cameras for … Read more
A few ground rules and a few apologies. First, this is a list of the most unlikely Academy Award results on the evening, not a compilation of the most inexcusable decisions. So you won’t see mention of, say, the sappy Forrest Gump, a considerable favourite, beating the ground-breaking Pulp Fiction to the best-picture Oscar in … Read more