Pick of the week
At Your Service
Sunday, RTÉ1, 7.30pm
A lot has happened in the hospitality industry since the last time John and Francis Brennan were on our screens helping small hotels and B&Bs reach their guest-attracting potential. The cost-of-living crisis has bitten hard, forcing many hoteliers and restaurateurs out of business, and even the Brennan brothers have felt the pinch – they sold their iconic Park Hotel in Kenmare last year to Dublin-born, US-based entrepreneur Bryan Meehan. Still, the brothers are very much an active force in the hotel business, and in the 13th series of At Your Service they use their experience and expertise – and renowned eye for detail – to help another batch of intrepid entrepreneurs navigate the choppy waters of Irish hospitality. Among them are a former jet-setter who is trying to get her farmhouse B&B off the ground, and an Irish-Latvian couple who want to turn their farm in landlocked Co Laois into a beach resort. Episode one features the O’Carroll family, who run a wood and stone work company in Tralee, and who have transformed an old inn to a spanking new 26-room hotel. They know how to build it, but can they run it?
Joan
Sunday, UTV, 9pm
Joan Hannington had all the odds stacked against her: growing up with abuse in the home, pregnant at 17, and unhappily married to a violent gangster named Gary. But Hannington used her good looks and glamorous style to turn her fortunes around, becoming the most notorious jewel thief in 1980s London, known as the Godmother. Her true-life story is dramatised in this six-part series written by Anna Symon (who also wrote scripts for The Essex Serpent, and Mrs Wilson) and starring Sophie Turner from Game of Thrones as the chic criminal chameleon who created a series of fake identities to stay one step ahead of the law.
Extraordinary Life: The Ben Dunne Story
Monday, RTÉ1, 9.35pm
Businessman Ben Dunne’s story reads like a season of Succession, say the makers of this new documentary looking back on a life that was anything but ordinary. Dunne took over the Dunnes Stores family business aged 34, and his ruthless pursuit of a low-cost model made him and his family rich, but he was ousted from the company following a notorious cocaine-fuelled incident on a hotel balcony in Florida in 1992 and revelations of payments to politician Charles Haughey. Among the contributors to the programme are former politician Alan Dukes, broadcaster Joe Duffy, and journalists Cliff Taylor and Conor Pope.
How to Survive a Dictator: North Korea
Monday, Channel 4, 10pm
With the far right on the rise, we may all soon be living under totalitarian rule, but never fear: broadcaster and satirist Munya Chawawa is back with more advice on how to get by when your country turns from a democracy into a dictatorship. This is the follow-up to his previous programme focusing on Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, and this time Chawawa attempts to get inside the paranoid mind of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, and learn how he manages to cling on to power. Is Kim really a deadly threat to the world, or is he just a little big rocket man?
Industry
Tuesday, BBC1, 11.10pm
The young and restless financiers return to the shark tank for a third series of the drama set in the high-stakes world of investment banking. Brace yourself for another round of bed-hopping, back-stabbing and bondholder-burning as the bright young things of Pierpoint & Co scramble up the greasy pole in pursuit of wealth and power. The big buzz for series three is the arrival of Game of Thrones star Kit Harington as Sir Henry Muck, who heads up his own green tech energy company, and the big water-cooler talk is about Muck’s kinky shower scene with Yasmin (Marisa Abela).
The Case I Can’t Forget
Wednesday, RTÉ1, 9.35pm
Investigators recall their most memorable cases in this true-crime series, back for another season with a fresh batch of tales from the Garda files. This first episode looks back at the notorious ATM robberies across counties Monaghan, Meath and Cavan in 2018 and 2019, when a criminal gang stole diggers and brazenly drove them into towns and used them to rip ATMs out of the wall and make off with the cash. Worth watching just for the incredible CCTV footage of the robberies taking place.
Is Mise le Mess
Wednesday, TG4, 8.30pm
The jury’s out on the bilingual punning title, but the verdict is clear: your house is an absolute tip, and you need a craic team of cleaners to get your gaff back in order. In this new Irish-language series, Donegal women Derena, Síle and Colleen roam the country armed with detergent and J-cloths in search of dirt, grease and clutter (they won’t have far to look). They’re on a mission to spruce up the nation’s houses, but they also want to bring the fun back in to housework, and they’re ready to share their tips and tricks to help keep you smiling while keeping your home sparkling clean.
The 2 Johnnies Late Night Lock In
Thursday, RTÉ2, 9.35pm
If you’ve been missing the Tipp twosome since they left their drivetime radio show on 2FM in May, the good news is that Johnny B and Johnny Smacks (don’t ask me which is which) are back on our screens with a new series of their late-night lock-in, with the reassuring promise of more madness and mayhem to see out the week. We can’t reveal what’s on the menu for this new series, because the 2 Johnnies won’t tell us, but rest assured that there will be celebrity guests, singing and dancing, comedy, party games and general messing and acting the maggot.
Boris Johnson: The Laura Kuenssberg Interview
Thursday, BBC1, 7.30pm
Seems like ages ago since Boris Johnson was turfed out of Downing Street by his own party, so this interview with BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg will remind us of all those Covid-era antics by Boris and his band of merry Tories. But why choose now to grill Johnson on the British national broadcaster? Some are insinuating that it might be a thinly disguised plug for his new memoir, Unleashed, due to be published in October, but we wouldn’t dream of suggesting such a thing. Still, we don’t mind if he mentions his book – as long as he spills the beans about what really happened during his time as PM.
The Cleaner
Friday, BBC1, 9.30pm
You won’t get this kind of grisly task on Taskmaster. Fresh from fronting another fab series of the surreal comedy challenge show, Greg Davies returns to the role of Paul “Wicky” Wickstead, whose job cleaning up the mess after violent crime scenes requires more than a squirt of detergent. Wading through blood and gore is all in a day’s work for Wicky, but in the first episode of this third series, Wicky is feeling sick as a parrot when he arrives at his old school friend Justin’s luxury gaff and sees all the trappings of success – including the expensive grand piano that has just fallen on some poor unfortunate, leaving a pool of blood. Can Wicky hold down his envy long enough to get the job done?
Streaming
Where’s Wanda?
From October 2nd, Apple TV+
In a small suburb in Germany, where everyone follows the lifestyle template, 17-year-old Wanda Klatt is a free spirit, doing things her own way and letting no one put her in a corner. But then one day she disappears, and the only trace of her is her Little Red Riding Hood cape lying in the woods. The cops are baffled, so her parents, Dedo and Carlotta, take matters into their own hands and set out to find their missing daughter. This entails spying on their neighbours, using sophisticated surveillance equipment and donning various disguises to gain entry into everyone’s house. The more they snoop, the more they learn about their neighbourhood’s buried secrets. This dark German-language comedy sounds like the Coen brothers with a dash of Jo Nesbo.
The Last Days of the Space Age
From October 2nd, Disney+
It’s the year 1979, and the eyes of the world are on Perth, Australia, as it prepares to host the Miss Universe beauty pageant (such things were quite popular in those days). But a power strike threatens to plunge the region into a blackout – not good for viewership figures – and there’s an even bigger disaster on the horizon: the Skylab space station is about to crash to earth close to the city. This retro dramedy series focuses on three families living through these seismic changes. Will their relationships withstand the pressure in these apparent end-times? Or will the sky fall on their heads? And will Miss Universe go ahead? Radha Mitchell, Jesse Spencer and Deborah Mailman head the ensemble cast, along with Iain Glen from Game of Thrones.
Heartstopper
From October 3rd, Netflix
We’re back at school for a third series of Heartstopper, and those beating hearts just won’t stay still for a second. The series centres on the blossoming relationship between Charlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Conner), students at Truham Grammar School. As the new series begins, the summer holidays are coming to an end, and the new school year will bring lots of challenges – not all of them academic. Charlie is ready to declare his love for Nick, while Nick is starting to get a greater understanding of Charlie’s mental health issues. As Charlie, Nick and the rest of the Heartstopper gang grow older, it’s starting to dawn on them that they’re going to have to be more mature in their choices and behaviour.
