Love Island
Monday, June 6th, ITV2, 9pm
Nothing signals the start of the summer quite like the annual telly shiftathon returning to our screens. And sure where else would you be going on your holliers except the famous villa where buffed young people in bikinis and Speedos gather with just one thing on their minds: getting more followers on their social media feed. Every year, a hand-picked bunch of influencers and Instagrammers wash up on the shore of Love Island, like loggerhead turtles with mobile phones, and perform their complex mating ritual in front of a few zillion eager viewers who will never, ever get tired of this format. Who will be the lucky castaways on the atoll of amour this year? Rumours are rife that Ronan Keating’s daughter Missy might be taking part, and there’s talk of Irish TikTok star Eabha O’Donoghue and Dublin microbiologist Dami Hope also stepping onto the tropical petri dish. One thing is for sure: the mercury is sure to hit boiling point as the hormonal heatwave kicks in.
On the Roads with Simon Delaney
Monday, June 6th, RTÉ One, 8.30pm
How can we make our roads safer, greener and less congested? In this new series, actor and presenter Simon Delaney sets off on a journey to learn how travel and transport in Ireland is set to change over the next few years, and whether Ireland will reach its ambitious road safety targets by 2050. Delaney joins up with the Naas Garda roads policing units to track the behaviour of Irish motorists, and goes to Sweden to see how that country is tackling road congestion, and how climate action is directly linked to reductions in emissions from cars and trucks. It doesn’t take a leap of logic to see that making roads safer is good for the environment, as it encourages more people to use alternative forms of transport such as buses, bicycles or shank’s mare. Delaney will be joined by journalists Geraldine Herbert and Conor Pope to look at the state of our road networks, and the challenges of getting people out of their cars and onto greener forms of transport.
Zoo Live
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, RTÉ One, 7pm
It’s a formula that works every time: set up a temporary studio at a farm/hospital/school/airport, point the cameras and mics at everything that moves, and you’ve potentially got a week-long run of compelling telly. So where to next? RTÉ have bravely set up a studio at Dublin Zoo’s African Savannah, presumably well away from charging rhinoceroses, and over three nights Sinead Kennedy will chat to various guests about the animal goings-on in this part of the zoo, while Ella McSweeney gets behind the scenes with the zookeepers to find out just what it takes to care for these animals and their environment. Celebrities Doireann Garrihy, Kevin McGahern and Jedward become zookeepers for a day and have to muck in — literally. And the programmes will also look at the wider issues of conservation and how species are constantly under threat from climate change.
The Newsreader
Tuesday, RTÉ2, 9pm
This Australian drama series is set in the super-competitive world of TV news in 1986, at time when the world was “on the cusp of change”. Anna Torv plays volatile star newsreader Helen Norville, who locks horns with ambitious reporter Dale Jennings (Sam Reid). When they are paired up to cover some big news events, the sparks really start flying. Certainly, it was a busy year in the global news cycle, with the Challenger shuttle disaster, the return of Halley’s Comet, the “dingo baby” case, and the Chernobyl disaster all serving as backdrops to the drama playing out in the news studio.
Young Plato
Thursday, RTÉ One, 10.15pm
How does the principal of an inner-city Belfast primary school tackle povertry, drug addiction and the influence of paramilitaries? Simple: he consults the ancient Greek philosophers to help him deal with an age-old problem, using their timeless wisdom to bring hope to a community ravaged by violence, sectarianism and urban decay. This documentary tracks the work of Kevin McArevey, the headmaster of Holy Cross School in the Ardoyne area of Belfast, who uses the teachings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to steer pupils towards a better way of thinking and living. Armed with new perspectives from the old world, the pupils learn to challenge their parents’ prejudices and begin to break the cycle of conflict that has kept this community from thriving.
