Patrick Freyne: Real Housewives of London shows what happens when you try to abolish shame
The real star of the show is a sanity-troubled canine companion to the owner of the longest legs in Belgravia
Patrick Freyne
Patrick Freyne columns
I’ve promised to give a speech, but am freaking out. You see, I’m a big thick
This was supposed to be the year I would slow down, say no to things
Tubs in a topper, RTÉ on its uppers: Patrick Freyne can see clearly now
Ryan Tubridy’s return of €150,000 to his old employer, plus eight other TV moments I missed while I was away reading books and smelling flowers
‘On which dating show did your parents meet?’ is a classic 2025 icebreaker
On E4’s The Honesty Box, a bunch of hunks and hunkettes must obey the whims of a glowing red cube. Would that life were so simple for the rest of us!
The nine biggest TV shows of 2025 so far: Why you should watch them, and where you can catch them
Including Andor, Severance, The Last of Us, Your Friends & Neighbors, and Adolescence
Sanctimonious Soc Dems find themselves on shaky high moral ground
Inside Politics podcast with Hugh Linehan
Severance is brilliant and relatable. These are eight other similar shows you might love
Apple TV+’s stylish dystopian drama Severance is one of the best workplace TV shows. Here are eight more to watch
A bunch of influencers are sitting in a windowless bunker. It’s hard not to agree this is the future humanity deserves
Fighting its future format death, Netflix has tempted YouTube phenomena ‘the Sidemen’ over to its doomed cause for Inside
Patrick Freyne: Here’s what I see when I see Irish people at their best
We are hospitable and irreverent, but also cynical and parochial. When things get difficult, who do we want to be?
Ryan owns a tanning business. Yolanda is a Mel B impersonator. These are Britain’s main industries since Brexit
Patrick Freyne: Love Triangle UK’s contestants are earnest and well meaning – not, as so often on dating shows, monstrous, sexually prolific sociopaths
I feel we’re close now, Meghan, so I can speak freely. The right pitch is crucial in lifestyle hucksterism like yours
On With Love, Meghan, you mainly cook. Given how long the Meghan-and-Harry industrial complex took to create this series, I feel a little let down
On Prime, Jack Reacher is still wandering from town to town, much like the 2FM Roadcaster
Reacher’s inevitable fisticuffs are an adorable masculine power fantasy, there to soothe struggling menfolk in the audience
We already have Great House Revival. What we need now is Feck the Preservation Order, Let’s Knock It and Build an Office Block
Or maybe If We Just Leave It Derelict We’ll Make Money on the Land Value Alone. Hugh Wallace could still present it
‘It’s boobing out!’ Kim Kardashian cries. Irish Times readers will recognise this reference to the Heaney poem of that name
The celebrity clan have so Truman Show-ed their existence that all significant events in their lives have occurred on camera
Holly Willoughby is well used to troublesome co-hosts. Bear Grylls may like insects and urine, but he’s not Phillip Schofield
Celebrity Bear Hunt review: From the dawn of reality TV it has been clear it would culminate with an apparently unhinged survivalist hunting helpless celebs
‘Young men aren’t just b****rds running around on their bikes ... everyone has their own dreams’
A Dublin project explores how the world shapes young men by helping some of them to create ‘boys’ as they really see them
I am now very fit. I am ready for Ireland’s fittest family to adopt me
What golden specimens they are, you think, as they propel themselves across God’s good earth like Accenture employees here to rationalise a business
On Beast Games, MrBeast gives away islands. This will be familiar to the Irish as ‘colonialism’
There is no rhyme or reason to success or failure on Prime Video’s gameshow. MrBeast’s message for our children seems to be that life is arbitrary chaos
Meghan Markle’s lifestyle tips, plus other TV for your glazed-but-happy eyes in 2025: ‘One must be firm with one’s butler’
Including Severance, White Lotus, The Studio, Poker Face, Stranger Things and Black Mirror
Culchiecore, bonkbusters, murder, more murder and Nationwide: What I’ve seen on TV in 2024
Patrick Freyne on the 2 Johnnies, Rivals, Say Nothing, Baby Reindeer and television trends of the past 12 months
Patrick Freyne: I am becoming a demotivational speaker – let’s all have an averagely productive December
I keep meeting people who are extremely burned out. I meet them so often that I’m beginning to think burnout is something that exists by design
Letters to the Editor, December 14th: On the Green effect, grief and the humble Brussels sprout
Youth work is not an optional extra, it is essential to our communities
Wake up, people: Here’s what the mainstream media don’t want you to know about Christmas
From Santy and selection boxes to Christmas pudding and Mariah Carey, these are some of the truths you won’t hear elsewhere
What do women want? A hunky idiot without a past, that’s what
Hot Frosty, Netflix’s latest reboot of The Snowman, at last brings some ‘hubba-hubba, vroom-vroom, arooooga!’ to Raymond Briggs’s family favourite
Read this before you vote: Patrick Freyne’s vibes-based guide to Election 2024
From HR Pufnstuf to Battlestar Galactica, what can we learn from political television shows through the ages before we go to the ballot box?
Patrick Freyne: My favourite corporate psy-ops of the season – or Christmas ads, as they’re called in the suburbs
Patrick Freyne: here are my favourite corporate psy-ops of the season – or Christmas TV ads, as I believe you call them in the suburbs
Doctor Odyssey’s core message: just imagine Pacey from Dawson’s Creek holding you tight and saying, ‘Shhh, it’s okay’
Patrick Freyne: Cruising takes on an alternative meaning in this medical melodrama, with Joshua Jackson visiting multiple ports of call
Rivals: The thrusting bum is intercut with spurting soap and overflowing champagne. We are in safe, if filthy, hands
Patrick Freyne: If I was in Disney+’s Jilly Cooper adaptation, someone would surely compliment my ‘magnificent column’
The 2 Johnnies – what you get if you feed Ant and Dec a Tayto sandwich after midnight – are taunting us now
As I get sucked into this regional boosterism, I feel something change in me. Do I ... actually like it?
Patrick Freyne: Where does Love in the Country find its taciturn Irishmen? I thought they had gone from this isle, like elk and shame
Anna Geary is such a good host that she’d probably want to help rural romantics find the partner of their dreams even if RTÉ wasn’t filming it
Watch as these bellowing beasts – the three kinds of ageing Englishman – roam the plains one last time
On The Grand Tour: One for the Road, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May bow out of their Prime Video car show
Outlast feels like another trial run for the collapse of civilisation
The reality for the survivalists on this terribly named Netflix show is a bit mundane and not even particularly wolf filled
Anthony Hopkins’s new prestige drama has given me a great idea. It involves buttocks
Those About to Die: Anyone can achieve their dreams if their father is an emperor
Danny Dyer could play a flautist in wartime Budapest, Percy Bysshe Shelley or Jesus Christ. He’s just that good
Instead he must play a cockney geezer with a penchant for violence but a heart of gold, over and over. He’s good at that, too
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Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
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