As I rarely ‘read the deaths’ in the daily newspapers, notable departures sometimes escape me. This happened recently with the death on November 9 of the doyen of our composers, John Kinsella. We first met in the 1970s serving on the organising committee of Dublin’s ‘20th Century Music Festival’. At the time John was RTÉ’s…
One of the welcome things about the extended holiday period is that we get a greater variety of presenters, on the radio shows in particular. And so it was that Katie Hannon stood in for Joe Duffy on Liveline (RTÉ Radio One) last week. Thursday’s show was dominated by a discussion of Pope Francis’ words…
When you cut off sound, everything you hear afterwards becomes more precious. Maybe that’s why A Quiet Place resonated with so many people. Or why we laughed so much when mime artist Marcel Marceau spoke the only line of dialogue in Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie. Tilda Swinton has all but cornered the market on quirky…
Maybe it’s a bit of a grim start to the first media column of the year, but the topic of domestic violence never ceases to be important. It has been highlighted recently in adult dramas such as Angela (ITV), The Maid (Netflix) and The Other Girl (BBC One) and plot-wise can be both gripping and…
The story is told, by the Victorian writer H.C. Adams, of a student in the 1870s who was asked by an academic in an early exam in divinity at Oxford, “What is the distance from Bethany to Jerusalem?” “A mile and a half,” was the immediate reply. “I think not sir,” re-joined the examiner: “the…
There’s usually a glut of programmes with religious elements in the media over the Christmas period, and I’m usually on the lookout for something distinctive or shows that stand out for a variety of reasons. Heaven Made at Christmas (BBC One and Two) was particularly engaging. Over two episodes on Christmas week (on repeat from…
Seasonably festooned with Christmas trees and wreathes, the National Concert Hall was in celebratory mode earlier this month. And why not? After all, it was marking its 40th anniversary with an RTÉ NSO gala under principal conductor Jaime Martín. The music brought the première of an NCH/NSO commissioned work, The Treaty Debates by Brian Byrne,…
Film Review 2021 “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” For the first half of the year, Covid-19 had us under house arrest. Starved of cinemas we found sustenance in mini-series, box-sets, the occasional gem from streaming platforms. The Oscar ceremonies went ahead in February in the kind of funereal…
TV & Radio Review 2021 I had hoped that I wouldn’t be writing about Covid-19 again at the end of 2021, but it has dominated the media for the year. But should it be so? One night in early December I was listening to the BBC Radio 4 news headlines and the only mention of…
World of Books Selected by the Books Editor The December and January holiday season is the most important sales period of the year for many publishers and bookshops. The tables in the books-sellers are piled with books of all kinds, many on topics that would get better attention at another time of the year, such…
Brendan O’Regan
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello