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Sat, Jan 23, 2021

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It’s a Sin: the cast has a Trainspotting-esque quality of big names on the brink, such as Olly Alexander It’s a Sin: The first great, gut-punch TV drama of 2021 is here
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Ed Power
  • January 22, 2021, 22:00

TV review: This is a self-consciously sprawling chronicle of the Aids epidemic in London

Behind Her Eyes: Eve Hewson could have found star-making role in Netflix thriller Behind Her Eyes: Eve Hewson could have found star-making role in Netflix thriller
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Ed Power
  • January 22, 2021, 13:24

Bono’s daughter, cursed with obscure or badly written roles until now, plays cheated housewife

Call My Agent! season four: The best thing since buttered croissant Call My Agent! season four: The best thing since buttered croissant
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Ed Power
  • January 22, 2021, 05:40

There are no berets, no Emily in Paris chintz. This is just watchable, witty French television

Don’t sweat the big stuff: Top earner Tubridy sticks to small talk Don’t sweat the big stuff: Top earner Tubridy sticks to small talk
  • TV, Radio, Web
  • Mick Heaney
  • January 22, 2021, 05:00

Radio: Ryan Tubridy’s spiel shows his ability as a broadcaster. Sounding this effortless isn’t easy 

In Bling Empire people hang out of cars with their shirts off. Big deal. I did that in Newbridge In Bling Empire people hang out of cars with their shirts off. Big deal. I did that in Newbridge
  • Culture
  • Patrick Freyne
  • January 22, 2021, 05:00

Patrick Freyne: Netflix’s hit takes two random words and reverse-engineers a show from the result

James Bond film No Time to Die delayed again by Covid pandemic James Bond film No Time to Die delayed again by Covid pandemic
  • Film
  • January 22, 2021, 10:33

Daniel Craig’s final 007 outing hit by coronavirus disruption, along with Sopranos prequel

76 Days: Heart-stopping study of the Covid-19 outbreak 76 Days: Heart-stopping study of the Covid-19 outbreak
  • Film
  • Donald Clarke
  • January 21, 2021, 05:15

Film review: This documentary focusing on Wuhan is hugely impressive

Sick of lockdown? Fancy some culture? Here are the best events online this week Sick of lockdown? Fancy some culture? Here are the best events online this week
  • Culture
  • Kevin Courtney
  • January 21, 2021, 06:00

January 21st-27th: Winter Nights festival, Samuel Beckett, comedy with Karl Spain, and more

Radio still plays ‘staggeringly, shockingly’ more male Irish artists Radio still plays ‘staggeringly, shockingly’ more male Irish artists
  • Music
  • Deirdre Falvey
  • January 21, 2021, 06:00

Gender Disparity report shows boost for female Irish artists only on some radio stations

Glastonbury Festival 2021 cancelled due to coronavirus pandemic Glastonbury Festival 2021 cancelled due to coronavirus pandemic
  • Music
  • January 21, 2021, 14:35

Michael and Emily Eavis axe 210,000-capacity music and arts event ‘with great regret’

Latest Film

No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s final James Bond movies, will not be released until October. Photograph: Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty James Bond film No Time to Die delayed again by Covid pandemic
Gwyneth Paltrow in Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion (2011) The Movie Quiz: Which disease ravages the planet in Contagion?
76 Days Four new films to stream this weekend
  • The Masque of the Red Death – Rediscovering Poe through prism of Covid-19
  • Priyanka Chopra Jonas: ‘I’m grateful for my chances. But it took a lot of digging my heels in’

TV & Radio

It’s a Sin: the cast has a Trainspotting-esque quality of big names on the brink, such as Olly Alexander It’s a Sin: The first great, gut-punch TV drama of 2021 is here

TV review: This is a self-consciously sprawling chronicle of the Aids epidemic in London

Eve Hewson as Adele in Behind Her Eyes Behind Her Eyes: Eve Hewson could have found star-making role in Netflix thriller
The moral centre of the action is Andréa, played by Camille Cottin Call My Agent! season four: The best thing since buttered croissant
  • Don’t sweat the big stuff: Top earner Tubridy sticks to small talk
  • ‘Tonight, like every night, homeless people in hope of a bed will call the freephone number’

Latest Books

John McGahern in 1990 near his home in Leitrim. Delahaye’s careful work and the easy friendship that developed between the two men were important factors in the growing popularity of McGahern’s work in France. Photograph: Frank Miller Alain Delahaye (1944-2020): an appreciation

John McGahern’s French translator influenced a radical rewriting of The Leavetaking

Naoise Dolan and Caoilinn Hughes on Dylan Thomas Prize longlist
 Easter Aquorthies, a stone circle near Inverurie in north-east Scotland. Samuel Beckett in Scotland: parenthood, Pictish stones and pancakes
  • ‘An inspiration’: Young poet Amanda Gorman and her words capture the moment at Biden inauguration
  • New poetry: Life-affirming words from beyond the grave

Film Reviews

Thin stuff: Alison Steadman and Dave Johns in 23 Walks 23 Walks

 

The access is startling and occasionally disconcerting 76 Days

 

The White Tiger: Adarsh Gourav as Balram and Priyanka Chopra as Pinky Madam. Photograph: Singh Tejinder/Netflix White Tiger

 

In Away, a boy finds himself on a mysterious island Away

 

Latest Music

Glastonbury Festival: The Killers on the Pyramid Stage in 2019, the last time the event was held. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Glastonbury Festival 2021 cancelled due to coronavirus pandemic

Michael and Emily Eavis axe 210,000-capacity music and arts event ‘with great regret’

Women in Harmony covered Dreams to raise funds and awareness for Safe Ireland, a charity working with women and children experiencing domestic violence Radio still plays ‘staggeringly, shockingly’ more male Irish artists
‘It’s been the absolute craziest week of my life,’ Olivia Rodrigo said in an interview. Drivers License: Here’s how Olivia Rodrigo hit No 1 in a week
  • Van Morrison launches Covid-19 legal action over North’s live music ban
  • The Music Quiz: Which old punk rocker produced Declan O’Rourke’s new album?

Book Reviews

Memorial: The complicated love story of a young gay couple
Life Sentences: An ambitious and lyrical family saga
A Crooked Tree: A colourful, classic coming-of-age tale
Nazis and Nobles: The History of a Misalliance: Role of the nobility in Nazi Germany

Stage

Aisling O’Sullivan, Cathy Belton and Derbhle Crotty in The Approach by Mark O’Rowe. Photograph: Patrick Redmond '2020 was going to be the most amazing year ever for us'

Producer Anne Clarke on experiencing live performance for first time since pandemic

When the curtain came down on Our New Girl, did it come down on innovative programming along with it? Photograph: Ros Kavanagh Live theatre was getting interesting. Then Covid arrived
Owen Roe pictured  after winning Best Supporting Actor Award at the The Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards last year. Photograph: Aidan Crawley Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards for 2020 deferred because of Covid-19
  • Eddie Izzard to use the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’
  • Chief Justice Frank Clarke: ‘Judges are not immune from the human condition’

Art & Design

The two €3 stamps reproduce one of the artist’s trademark abstract compositions, Meditation 28. Patrick Scott: New An Post stamp marks centenary of the artist’s birth

Scott’s elegant work had a major modernising influence on Irish art and design

Painting Dublin: detail from Winetavern Street, 1934, by Harry Kernoff; The Fishmarket, Patrick Street, 1893 by Walter Frederick Osborne; The Leinster Market, c.1915, by  Estella Frances Solomons, Painting Dublin: A visual history of Ireland’s capital city
Raphael: a detail from The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament, at the Apostolic Palace Raphael: A celebration of his life and work, on his 500th anniversary
  • Perma-peeved: Melania Trump’s White House photo (plus 11 other revealing first lady portraits)
  • Forget social media. Nothing beats a real Christmas card

Unthinkable

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has been railing against state-led ‘health terror’ and ‘techno-medical despotism’. Photograph: European Graduate School The left’s lockdown critique: Right on, or dangerous prattle?

Unthinkable: Philosopher Giorgio Agamben carries the flame for anti-capitalism through the crisis

Wollstonecraft, painted by John Opie, was disgusted at how intelligent “society” women were groomed for submission under marriage. Photograph: The Print Collector/Getty Images Never mind the Bridgertons, meet England’s first feminist
An air guitarist, or is it a philosopher? Photograph: Bryan O’Brien Is philosophy becoming ‘air guitar to the music of science’?
  • Enough of the ‘hot takes’ already: A philosophical wish for 2021
  • Would Jesus approve of Christmas?

Heritage

The phrases and terminology that I was given made clear just how profound our understanding of coastal ecosystems had become The hundreds of Irish words for sea and sea life

The abundance of Irish words to describe every element of marine life is staggering

Culture television August 2019. Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby with his gang in Peaky Blinders series four. Photograph: Robert Viglasky/Caryn Mandabach/BBC Real-life Peaky Blinders: How the IRA sourced guns from the ‘Birmingham mob’
The Irish Government’s involvement with the Northern Ireland centenary will be the funding of a major conference in Queen’s University Belfast.  2021’s truce, treaty and Northern Ireland commemorations will test our goodwill
  • 100 years ago today the partition of Ireland was made official
  • Mystery of Sligo shipwreck solved 250 years after it sank

Michael Viney's Another Life

Gannet with fish: Anyone who has watched the birds plunging vertically from the sky to seize mackerel deep beneath the surface must marvel at their anatomy. Illustration: Michael Viney Gannet population continues to thrive despite human threat to its numbers

Michael Viney: Irish numbers have more than doubled since the counts of Operation Seafarer in 1970

Fox with prey: The urban adult is “thin and exhausted” from finding and ferrying food to its cubs. Illustration: Michael Viney Another Life: The fox as he dwells among us
Choughs. Illustration: Michael Viney The declining choughs of Dursey island need decision makers’ help
  • Super grass: the arching, architectural forms of wild meadows
  • Between cliff and sea: The curious trail of a puffin

Tuarascáil

Finné: Tugtar insint ar scéal Liam Uí Mhaolaodha ar an dara clár den tsraith nua de Finné. Tá an sraith is déanaí léirithe ag Aisling Ní Fhlaitheartha do Tua Films na Gaillimhe.   Finné: scéal tromchúiseach Liam Uí Mhaolaodha

Insint ar an drochíde a fuair sé ó dhuine a raibh aithne fhorleathan air i saol na Gaeilge

Ba dheacair a rá cé acu mórshiúl nó máirseáil a bhí i slógadh lucht leanúna Trump in Washington an tseachtain cheana. Grianghraf:  Saul Loeb/Getty Images Mórshiúl agus Máirseáil
Ba léiriú follasach é go bhfuil saol eile ag dul ar aghaidh lasmuigh den chóivid féin. Grianghraf:  Saul Loeb/Getty Images Aon scéal eile?
  • ‘Ní fheicim aon fáth nach dtabharfaí an cead’
  • Rialtas na hÉireann mí-shásta faoi chinneadh ar mhaoiniú Ghlór na nGael

Sponsored

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How digital technology can play a role in building workforce resilience How digital technology can play a role in building workforce resilience

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Subscriber Only

Author Bryan Washington describes his debut novel, Memorial, as ‘a gay slacker dramedy’. Memorial: The complicated love story of a young gay couple
The family history outlined in the closing section of the novel  is based on author Billy O’Callaghan’s own forebears. Life Sentences: An ambitious and lyrical family saga
Matthew Sweeney: Defiantly reloading his chief weapons: food and music. Photograph: Bloodaxe Books New poetry: Life-affirming words from beyond the grave

Most Read in Culture

1 Ryan’s World: Ryan Kaji ‘unboxes’ and reviews toys on his YouTube channel. Photograph: Kaji family/YouTube Nine-year-old earns €24m as the highest-paid YouTuber of 2020

2 It’s a Sin: the cast has a Trainspotting-esque quality of big names on the brink, such as Olly Alexander It’s a Sin: The first great, gut-punch TV drama of 2021 is here

3 Eve Hewson as Adele in Behind Her Eyes Behind Her Eyes: Eve Hewson could have found star-making role in Netflix thriller

4 Barry Gibb: ‘I care that the music lives, and I do everything in my power to enhance that.’ Photograph: Rose Marie Cromwell/New York Times Barry Gibb: ‘My brothers had to deal with their demons, but my wife wasn’t going to have it’

5 The moral centre of the action is Andréa, played by Camille Cottin Call My Agent! season four: The best thing since buttered croissant

6 Keanu Reeves: ‘We’re only getting to tell these stories because of the audience.’ Photograph: Emma McIntyre/Getty Keanu Reeves: ‘Grief and loss are things that don’t ever go away’

7 A history of Ireland in our favourite words: 22 – leprechaun. Their place in Irish folklore was solidified by the 1959 Disney film Darby O’Gill and the Little People Up to 90: Ireland in our favourite words and phrases

8 Gay Lynch with her novel Unsettled. Photograph: Flinders University Unsettled, a Galway-Australian frontier novel

9 Timeline of 1981 hunger strike

10 Christine Chubbuck: “Her story is just very emblematic of so many things that we are grappling with  right now. The notion of living your life in front of a camera. The notion that it didn’t happen unless it happened on camera. Fake news.” Why did reporter Christine Chubbuck shoot herself live on air?

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Music Quiz

The Music Quiz: Which old punk rocker produced Declan O’Rourke’s new album? The Music Quiz: Which old punk rocker produced Declan O’Rourke’s new album?

Plus: Vogue’s first cover boy and Victoria’s Secret’s garage rock theme tune

Macnas, whose parades are a core part of their work, receive this year’s special tribute award. Photograph: Brian Arthur
Irish Theatre Awards Find out who won this year, plus all our other coverage
 

The Books Podcast

The Irish Times Books Podcast - Darran Anderson, author of Inventory The Irish Times Books Podcast - Darran Anderson, author of Inventory 33:48
The Irish Times Books Podcast The best crime fiction of 2019 The Irish Times Books Podcast The best crime fiction of 2019 40:49
The Irish Times Books Podcast Remembering Maeve Binchy The Irish Times Books Podcast Remembering Maeve Binchy 35:01
The Irish Times Books Podcast Danielle McLaughlin The Irish Times Books Podcast Danielle McLaughlin 33:47

Culture Videos

Behind Her Eyes - preview 0:48 Behind Her Eyes - preview
40 Irish female artists cover Cranberries 'Dreams' to raise money for abuse victims 4:26 40 Irish female artists cover Cranberries 'Dreams' to raise money for abuse victims
Tanya Roberts, Bond girl and Charlie's Angel, dies aged 65 0:41 Tanya Roberts, Bond girl and Charlie's Angel, dies aged 65
Robin's Wish - official trailer 2:16 Robin's Wish - official trailer

Food & Drink Club

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Shelved: a selection of books by Irish women writers. Might some of these names figure in the final 12?
Women writers Putting Irish women writers back in the picture
 

Galleries

Late Late Toy Show 2020: Children from Spotlight Stage School and little puddle jumpers from Miss Ali Stage School rehearse Singin' in the Rain with show host Ryan Tubridy. Dublin. Photograph: Andres Poveda
The Late Late Toy Show 2020
Sean Connery will forever be associated with Ian Fleming's James Bond.  The actor most closely associated with the suave 007 operative. File photograph: PA
Sean Connery: A life
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