The contemporary Irish are a simple people, content to be shown pictures of nice housesOne of our favourite things in Ireland is looking inside other people’s houses. Yes, of course I like Home of the Year. What am I? Dutch?Fri Feb 17 2023 - 05:00
‘Like a liquidised My Little Pony’: Prime Hydration is €12.99 a bottle. Our wine critic joins a tastingTeens are going wild for the soft drink being marketed by the YouTubers Logan Paul and KSI. It’s sending prices sky high. Is it worth the money?Thu Feb 16 2023 - 05:00
Why am I sexually attracted to that jacket potato singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah?Patrick Freyne: I enjoy The Masked Singer. It makes me feel drunk. And inevitably Rita Ora is thereFri Feb 10 2023 - 05:00
The Apprentices are basically why the world went wrong and you’re working for a jargon-gibbering loonPatrick Freyne: Lord Sugar’s swaggering go-getters believe they can turn their hand to anything, no specific knowledge requiredFri Feb 03 2023 - 05:00
Refugees welcome: ‘Chanting ‘get them out’ to the most vulnerable. What does that achieve?’‘My message to other communities? “Get out, get involved and you will feel much more in control”’Sat Jan 28 2023 - 05:00
Stubbly British soldiers shouting at people in hoods: what’s not to like?Patrick Freyne: If you enjoy muck, tears and vomit and feel nothing but warmness towards the British military, then SAS: Who Dares Wins is for youFri Jan 27 2023 - 05:00
253 people, 253 stories, 253 words each: The re-creation of an internet novelGeoff Ryman’s 1996 hypertext fiction about passengers on a doomed London Underground train is back on the web, a chronicle of a different worldWed Jan 25 2023 - 05:00
How to be a patient: It’s okay to make a fuss about yourselfIt’s an Irish thing not wanting to be a bother, but you have a right to good careSun Jan 22 2023 - 05:00
Patrick Freyne: Just look at your da’s happy little face as he gets to say ‘Well I’ve never heard of him!’Dancing with the Stars does a useful service for the households of grumpy das, distracting them much as one might use colourful mobiles with babiesFri Jan 20 2023 - 05:00
Patrick Freyne: With its overconfident boors and swaggering sexpots, it’s like any small Irish townAn outlandishly dressed foreigner arrives in France, where she struggles to adapt to their sexy Gallic ways. No, it’s not Emily in Paris but Marie AntoinetteFri Jan 13 2023 - 05:00
Patrick Freyne’s TV of 2022: Liam Neeson’s bitter words, The Love Boat with full frontal nudity, and a farewell to a legendThe White Lotus, The Bear, Severance and Somebody Somewhere were unmissableFri Dec 30 2022 - 05:00
Emily in Paris: An adorable psychopath with a fatal inability to speak French. What’s not to like? Patrick Freyne: Emily in Paris is a work of evil genius. I’m obsessed by it – and I think I’ve figured out the rules that underpin its successFri Dec 23 2022 - 05:00
‘I think about sex every five seconds. It might be an illness’Patrick Freyne: The Too Hot to Handle hunks have been lured to an island where they’ll lose a $200,000 prize if they have sexFri Dec 16 2022 - 05:00
Patrick Freyne: My schemes to ruin God’s birthday have not been going wellIf I’ve learned anything from Netflix’s Christmas films, it’s that people can’t get enough of bereaved single parents with adorable children and badly run businessesFri Dec 09 2022 - 05:00
Patrick Freyne: As a toad sits on his head, it’s clear Matt Hancock is inured to all humiliationOn I’m a Celebrity, the former UK health secretary eventually wears down his appalled jungle mates with his vague and masochistic pleasantnessFri Dec 02 2022 - 05:00
Life in a homeless hub: ‘I have nowhere to go... If I’m upset, I get under my bed’Rachel (9) travels from Gardiner Street in Dublin to her school near her former home in TallaghtFri Nov 25 2022 - 19:39
‘Out of my way!’ Ryan Tubridy cries, terrifyingly: Behind the scenes at The Late Late Toy ShowWe join the host for a sneak peek behind the scenes at the biggest TV show of the yearFri Nov 25 2022 - 06:00
I know Irish Times readers, and many of you think you have a supernaturally gifted teen. You do notPatrick Freyne: Wednesday Addams’s school is filled with vampires, werewolves and sirens. Your perfectly average child just read some books onceFri Nov 25 2022 - 05:30
Patrick Freyne: If these men don’t do the back-pat thing, they will accidentally have sexThe high-fiving hunks work for the silver-haired real-estate Svengali at the heart of Buying Beverly Hills. Which is basically Selling Sunset meets King LearFri Nov 18 2022 - 05:00
Tesco’s weird take on Irishness, Boots’ night-bus terror: The Christmas TV ads, 2022Patrick Freyne: John Lewis’s skateboarding ad is moving. Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot is still theologically perplexingTue Nov 15 2022 - 10:22
Matt Hancock burrows in the dankness, sniffing out treats amid the vermin. He also does this on I’m a CelebrityPatrick Freyne: I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! is a haven for celebrities in reduced circumstances, a debtors’ prison where they go to rebrandFri Nov 11 2022 - 05:00
Fergal Keane, war addict: ‘You feel like a bit of a freak,’ he says quietlyBBC reporter writes about conflict zones, breakdown and recovery in his new memoirSun Nov 06 2022 - 05:00
Teenagers talk porn: ‘Whoever’s got a smart phone watches it. It’s free. It’s everywhere’Children as young as eight find pornographic images. A pioneering programme helps teenagers deal with itSat Nov 05 2022 - 06:00
Patrick Freyne on Ireland’s Fittest Family: Screaming at people to be better used to be known as parentingI sometimes find it hard to relate to the people on the RTÉ series. They’re so lithe and sinewy and uplifted and in motionFri Nov 04 2022 - 05:00
From north Ukraine to south Dublin, aged 12: ‘I worried about things a child shouldn’t’Yeva Skalietska was 12 when she fled the war. Patrick Freyne interviews the young Dublin-based authorSat Oct 29 2022 - 05:00
Patrick Freyne: Nurses! They think they’re so great, healing the sick and comforting the dyingOn Love Is Blind, ‘The pods are now open’ is the sort of thing you might hear in a 1970s sci-fi film about an imagined dystopian 2022Fri Oct 28 2022 - 05:00
Patrick Freyne: Jessica Fletcher is a child-free, middle-aged writer having the time of her life, and she is my role modelWhen she joyfully finishes typing a story, much as I am joyfully typing this now, she places it in a leather-bound folder, which is also what I doFri Oct 21 2022 - 05:30
Panti Bliss and Tara Flynn: ‘We are slipping backwards’ ... ‘We are vulnerable now’ Homophobia is resurgent, and reproductive rights are under pressure, say the performersSat Oct 15 2022 - 06:00
Legally, I can’t suggest ‘Alex Wagner’ crashed the plane. But, between us, I reckon she crashed the planePatrick Freyne: If I were the mole in The Mole, ‘Alex Wagner’ would be the sort of solid collection of syllables that said ‘legitimate human name’ to meFri Oct 14 2022 - 06:00
ME: ‘I spend 20 hours a day lying down. I have four upright hours in the day’Myalgic Encephalomyelitis sufferers live with a range of conditions some have described as being ‘buried alive’ or a ‘living death’Tue Oct 11 2022 - 06:01
Marina Hyde: ‘People like football and movies and pop music, and they really hate politics’The acerbic Guardian columnist on being ‘sort of posh’, showbiz writing and how far she'll go for a jokeSun Oct 09 2022 - 00:01
Patrick Freyne: Monster — The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is cynical, voyeuristic and morally weirdYet people are watching it in droves. For weeks it has been Netflix’s top show in IrelandFri Oct 07 2022 - 05:00
Patrick Freyne: In this reality, privilege and narcissism are leadership skillsMake Me Prime Minister’s attempt at education wholly distorts political reality in BritainFri Sept 30 2022 - 04:45
Dara McAnulty: They asked, ‘Do you want to turn your blog into a book?’ I was like, ‘sure’The award-winning author on writing, autism and the wonder of the natural worldSat Sept 24 2022 - 05:00
Patrick Freyne: Intellectuals, you can stop writing. I’ve the perfect sentence to sum up Irish identityRings of Power: My favourite subplot is the befuddled man finding himself among a bunch of whimsical, Irish-accented little peopleFri Sept 23 2022 - 04:55
Jessie Buckley: ‘Life’s not some shiny box. Sometimes it’s really hard’Oscar-nominated actor and musician records film for RTÉ for Culture Night on Matt Talbot Community TrustSat Sept 10 2022 - 05:00
Kevin McAleer: ‘Nighthawks was amazing. It was so good they had to get rid of it’Ireland’s great absurdist comedian on dying on stage in the US, avoiding the Troubles, and Derry GirlsSun Sept 04 2022 - 05:00
Documenting dereliction in Ireland: ‘Why have we accepted it as a country?’Patrick Freyne takes a tour of Cork city to see the derelict properties that have inspired Jude Sherry and Frank O’Connor to take actionSat Sept 03 2022 - 05:00
Patrick Freyne: ‘I want to show everyone in the office not to f**k with me.’ Gio is just like meI’ve decided I have a lot in common with Gio, one of the real-estate agents on Selling the OCFri Sept 02 2022 - 05:00
Andrew Tate’s banned from YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. What’s he said that’s so bad?The brash, shaven-headed grifter targets children, teenagers and young men with toxic, misogynistic opinionsFri Aug 26 2022 - 09:53
Patrick Freyne: This new show is about politicians and the real estate they feel entitled to. I’d say Robert Troy loves itPatrick Freyne: It doesn’t take long for House of the Dragon to make clear the upsides, downsides and sore backsides of sitting on the Iron ThroneFri Aug 26 2022 - 05:00
Rose of Tralee 2022: ‘My escort is called Podge. He thinks pasta is ‘fancy’, and bright colours give him sunburn’ The festival escort is an adult man sent there by his desperate mother in the hope he can be passed on to a new generation of female caretakerMon Aug 22 2022 - 13:10
Patrick Freyne: Psychedelic research could hold key to treatment-resistant depressionLatest data is ‘promising’, says psychiatrist and clinical senior lecturer at Trinity and Tallaght University Hospital and an investigator with the new trialSat Aug 20 2022 - 05:00
You’ll like this Netflix show if you like Michelle Monaghan, Foghorn Leghorn, twins and feeling confusedPatrick Freyne: Echoes, the new thriller TV series, is about twins because it is felt they haven’t suffered enoughFri Aug 19 2022 - 05:00
Patrick Freyne: Today’s children won’t be able to afford a house unless it’s actively on firePatrick Freyne: If Shea McGee had a medieval job title it would be “cushioner” and if she had an Irish job title it might be “chancer”Fri Aug 12 2022 - 05:00
Farewell, Neighbours. Much like Rathgar or Blackrock, Ramsay Street was a troubled place that discouraged hopePatrick Freyne: Still, Neighbours offered a sunnily optimistic alternative to EastEnders’ grey dystopiaFri Aug 05 2022 - 07:49
It is now clear that heterosexuality is not working and that Love Island has been twerking on its gravePatrick Freyne: This is basically Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days with extra sun damage and top bantsFri Jul 29 2022 - 05:00
Katie Hannon: ‘It wasn’t just rage with Golfgate. People were so broken’The journalist on writing a social diary for the Herald to becoming one of RTÉ's most respected investigative reporters and presentersSat Jul 23 2022 - 06:00
Patrick Freyne: I had no idea how cool Bob Dylan thought war was until I saw Terminal ListChris Pratt plays a sick man on a rampage in Amazon Prime Video’s unpleasant new showFri Jul 22 2022 - 05:00
Resident Evil’s Umbrella Corporation would make short work of lobbying Irish politiciansPatrick Freyne: The problem with adapting video games is that you remove the player’s own hopes from the equationFri Jul 15 2022 - 06:00
