Patrick Kielty’s first Late Late New Year’s Eve special was a damp squib, an underwhelming countdown to 2024 not helped by the decision to film it in the dreariest depths of mid-November.
Twelve months later the Late Late is once more rapping at the door of a new year with a prerecorded one-off. But The Late Late NYE Show (RTÉ One, Tuesday, 10.20pm) is a much-improved affair that corrects course and (largely) avoids the stale whiff of desperation that infused the 2023 broadcast.
The big gimmick is that it’s not only the Late Late but also RTÉ’s version of Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny, a long-running BBC institution featuring the baron of boogie-woogie piano and assorted musical guests (including, this year, the Irish star CMAT).
Kielty can’t boogie, much less woogie, but he does a good line in take-no-prisoner jokes, as he demonstrates with a quip about his guest James Blunt having served in the British army yet still being more popular in Ireland than the host.
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Blunt is here to promote some Irish dates in February and March and to play two of his biggest hits, Goodbye My Lover and You’re Beautiful. He then sits down for an interview during which he banters about his friendship with the late Carrie Fisher.
The music continues with a turn by Picture This, who are a snapshot of Irish beige rock – our national speciality if you look around – and although Dublin Gospel Choir do their best as backing singers, the band’s performance is nonetheless a rapid plunge into the 10th circle of soft-pop purgatory.
There are also some blink-and-it’s-over conversations with wildly mismatched guests, including the comedian Fred Cooke and the Olympic athletes Mona McSharry and Orla Comerford. Cooke is appropriately jolly but seems confused about why he’s there: did a third athlete cancel at the last minute?
Kielty’s interview style is the chatshow equivalent of speed dating. Another sit-down with the actors Alisha Weir, Clinton Liberty and Emmet J Scanlan brings some starry energy. There’s lots to discuss. Weir, at 15, is too young to watch Abigail, her gory vampire hit, and there are (unconfirmed) rumours that she is in the frame to portray Dorothy in the second Wicked film. Liberty, meanwhile, broke through as a dragon rider in House of the Dragon. What a fascinating year it has been for them both.
That has to be worth more than a few brief back-and-forths with Kielty. Seemingly not: who has time to natter when Picture This are in the wings? There’s jam-packed, and then there’s overstuffed and rushed, and tonight the Late Late occasionally veers towards the latter.
A serviceable 90-minute special concludes with The Undertones performing their punk classic Teenage Kicks and then, mystifyingly, the late-1990s Swedish band The Wannadies doing their mid-level hit the You & Me Song – a quirky ending to a new year Kieltynanny that, if lacking fireworks, doesn’t make you hate staying in on December 31st. By the standard of RTÉ New Year coverage, that almost rates as mission accomplished.
