DIY SOS: The Big Build Ireland
Sunday, RTÉ One, 6.30pm
Baz Ashmawy is back on the build and helping more people rebuild their lives in this new series of DIY SOS, and the team – including the designers Aoife Rhattigan and Kerry Hiddleston and the garden designers Diarmuid Gavin and Leonie Cornelius – is busier than ever, with four projects to complete over four episodes. In the first episode, the team head to Cork to renovate the family home of the former Irish international basketball player Adam Drummond, who has been using a wheelchair since falling from a height in May 2021. Baz is hoping the renovation will give Adam a confidence boost as he gets used to life in a wheelchair.
Succession
Monday, Sky Atlantic and Now, 9pm
We’ve been waiting for this for what seems like a generation, but at last, the fourth and final season of the Emmy-winning drama series is here, and we’re back in the thick of the media maelstrom as the Roy family battle to hold on to their waning political and pop-cultural influence. Brian Cox does one more magnificent turn as media mogul and patriarch Logan Roy, with Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin and Alan Ruck as his ambitious offspring Kendall, Siobhan, Roman and Connor. With tech titan Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard) moving in to complete his takeover of Waystar Royco, the Roy family descend into a power struggle as their futures are at stake.
Rabbit Hole
Monday, Paramount+ and Now
After the huge success of 24, we thought Kiefer Sutherland would bow out of the spy thriller circus. We thought wrong. This new thriller series finds Sutherland going back down the espionage rabbit hole – and the fate of the real world is at stake. He plays master spy John Weir, but it’s not governments in his looking-glass; Weir is offering his particular skills to corporations looking to play dirty, but when he’s framed for murder, he suddenly finds himself in a whole different world where nothing is as it seems.
War Zone: Bear Grylls Meets President Zelenskiy
Tuesday, Channel 4, 8pm
In the year since Russia launched its illegal invasion of Ukraine, the world’s leaders have queued up to be photographed with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Kyiv, despite the threat of Russian rocket attacks. In this special documentary, Bear Grylls – no slouch when it comes to surviving in adverse conditions – takes a dangerous journey deep into the war-torn country to meet its president and find out just what it is that makes him such an inspiring figure and how he finds the resilience to keep standing up to Putin’s aggression.,
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Murder in Mayfair
Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm
In March 2008, a 23-year-old Norwegian student, Martine Vik Magnussen, was found dead in the basement of a flat in Great Portland Street in London. She had been raped and murdered after a night out in the wealthy district of Mayfair and was last seen alive in the Maddox nightclub. There was only one suspect: a rich young man from Yemen named Farouk Abdulhak. But the police were unable to arrest him because he fled home to Yemen just hours after the student’s death and, with help from his well-connected billionaire dad and archaic Yemeni laws, frustrated all attempts to bring him back to the UK to face charges. This documentary looks at how money, political power and complete moral bankruptcy combined to pervert the course of justice.
Food Matters
Wednesday, RTÉ One, 8.30pm
Michael Kelly is the founder of Grow It Yourself (GIY), which promotes sustainability and good practice in our everyday food consumption. He believes the way we process and eat food as a society has an impact on climate change, and in this new series, he travels the length and breadth of the land to meet people who are working hard to produce more sustainable food and reduce the impact of food production on the environment. In the first episode, Kelly travels to West Cork to learn about regenerative agriculture and to visit a very unusual rooftop garden.
Dylan McGrath’s Secret Service
Wednesday, Virgin Media One, 9pm
Celebrity chef Dylan McGrath has come up with a plan to help people who are marginalised using his cheffing skills. In this new series, McGrath is serving gourmet dinner to a lucky group of well-heeled select customers. They’ll be paying for their meal, and the money will go to charities and community groups, but what the customers don’t know is that McGrath’s kitchen staff are all service users, so their dinners will be cooked and served up by the very people they are helping, including Travellers, prisoners, asylum seekers and people dealing with intellectual disabilities, all under the expert guidance of McGrath. Will this add a touch of spice to the meal, or will the customers find the idea unpalatable?
Davy’s Toughest Team
Wednesday, RTÉ One, 9.35pm
Hurling manager Davy Fitzgerald has taken on some challenging coaching tasks during his career, but they’ve all been a doddle compared to the team he has to train in this new series. In a time when young Irish men are in crisis, with drug addiction and suicide on the rise, these young men are in need of guidance and hope in their lives, and it’s Fitzgerald’s job to spark their passion and motivation and build up their resilience so they can see a brighter future for themselves. As part of their training, Fitzgerald is planning to bring his fledgling on a demanding trek through Iceland – can he help them build their mental and physical strength for the journey?
Sisters
Thursday, RTÉ One, 10.15pm
Written by and starring Susan Stanley and Sarah Goldberg, and directed by Declan Lowney of Father Ted and Ted Lasso fame, this half-hour comedy centres on a Canadian woman, Sare, who, following her mother’s death, learns the truth about her Irish roots. No, she’s not descended from a high king – she’s the progeny of a roguish busker her mother met while backpacking in Ireland. And when she goes to Ireland to find out about her dad, she learns she has a half-sister, Dubliner Suze, whose life is unravelling faster than an old Aran sweater. No sooner have the half-siblings gotten over this revelation than they’re embarking on a road trip across Ireland to track down their deadbeat dad.
Get on Up: The Triumph of Black America
Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm
Actor David Harewood had lots of heroes growing up who helped shape the person he is today, and in this documentary Harewood goes on a trip across the US to learn more about the African-American musicians, writers and film-makers whose work opened up a world of possibilities for black artists and performers. He meets the legendary Smokey Robinson to chat about how Motown records gave a voice to great black American singers, then learns how actor Sidney Potier changed the script to challenge racism. He also meets actor John Amos, who played Kunta Kinte in the hit 1970s TV series Roots.
The Power
Friday, Amazon Prime
Toni Collette and John Leguizamo are among the starry cast in this new series about young women’s empowerment. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Not necessarily. When teenage girls around the globe start displaying strange electrical powers, the balance of power in the world is upended. As their power grows, these teens realise they can destroy anyone and anything with a bolt of electricity. Soon, parents, teachers, shop assistants and other authority figures are trembling before their kilowatt power, and toxic males everywhere are bolting for cover. It might be a bit of a clunky metaphor, but it makes for a supercharged comedy drama.
The Late Late Show Country Music Special
Friday, RTÉ One, 9.35pm
The kids have the Toy Show; but now it’s time for ma and pa to have their fun, as Ry Tubs (aka Ryan Tubridy) hosts another Country Music Special, showcasing all that’s great about Ireland’s country scene. The annual hootenanny will feature a host of top talent, in every genre from country to western, including Daniel O’Donnell, Margo, Nathan Carter and Cliona Hagan. Tubridy is hanging up his Stetson after this season of The Late Late Show, so this is his final hayride, and his successor will have some big cowboy boots to fill along with that Christmas jumper.
