Pick of the Week
How to Cook Well at Christmas with Rory O’Connell
Sunday, RTÉ One, 8.30pm & Monday, RTÉ One, 6.30pm
You want to really up your kitchen game this Christmas? You’ve come to the right place. Rory O’Connell hosts a new two-part seasonal special, and besides showing off his prodigious cooking skills, he heads out of his foodie HQ in east Cork and takes a trip to London, where he sources some edible gifts to appeal to everyone’s taste buds. “Nothing tells someone you care for them quite like an edible gift,” says O’Connell. “I love spending Christmas in Ireland, but I also love London, which does Christmas so well.”
While in the UK capital, he meets some top chefs and restaurateurs, including celebrity chef and author Yotam Ottolenghi, and explores the “fabulous and over-the-top” food halls at Fortnum and Mason, a 300-year-old foodie tradition. Inspired by its famous chocolates, O’Connell creates a choccy treat of his own: burnt caramel and chocolate truffles. In the first episode, he visits Café Cecelia in East London to meet its owner, Dublin chef Max Rocha, and sample Rocha’s very popular Guinness bread and smoked mackerel with cucumber pickle. Rory also stops off at Sally Clarke’s Bakery and Delicatessen in Notting Hill Gate, which inspires him to make spiced apple chutney and baked eccles cakes back in east Cork.
The second episode, airing on Monday at 6.30pm, is when O’Connell meets Ottolenghi, at the celebrity chef’s original deli and bakery in Notting Hill Gate. Next stop is the acclaimed Fat Badger restaurant on Portobello Road, where O’Connell meets Corkonian head chef Beth O’Brien. One last stop at Fortnum and Mason’s cheese counter, and it’s back to east Cork to rustle up some miniature meringue Christmas trees, cranberry sauce and lemon curd, pickled beetroot with Christmas spices and wholemeal cheese biscuits and labneh cheese. Christmas - sorted.
Ireland’s Fittest Family Final
Sunday, RTÉ One, 6.30pm
Families across Ireland have been on a marathon endurance course as they run around trying to get everything ready in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, Ireland’s Fittest Family approaches the finish line, with just four families still standing, and in this last episode they’ll be squaring up for a feature-length final that promises to be almost as challenging as getting the Christmas turkey. New coaches Ellen Keane and Michael Darragh MacAuley have alas failed to get their families to the final, but new coach Andrew Trimble is still in contention, along with Anna Geary, Donncha O’Callaghan and Davy Fitzgerald. The final takes place at the Tower and Treetop Walk in Avondale in Co Wicklow, and the first challenge will be the terrifying Planking It, which involves a see-through platform suspended 20m high. That’s a good 65ft. That’s followed by Tower Power, a race to the top of the 38m Avondale Tower - while carrying heavy weights. The scary-sounding Buzz Kill will see one family eliminated, while Backs Against the Wall will see another family sent home. The last two families will take part in the Grand Final Race for the 15-grand prize and the title of Ireland’s Fittest Family 2025. Which reminds me - I’ve got to go and battle it out for that last Nintendo Switch 2.
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Christmas with Mark Moriarty
Monday, RTÉ One, 6.30pm
You’ve been lying awake at night wondering if you’ve left it too late to order your Christmas turkey, but what if you could do Christmas dinner without bothering with the turkey at all. Telly chef Mark Moriarty is doing something radical this year: leaving the turkey and ham off the festive menu. Not that he’s got anything against the traditional yuletide bird - it’s just that he reckons there’s no shortage of turkey recipes at this time of the year, so he’s going to suggest something different. For instance, instead of the usual smoked salmon starter, why not try scallops pil-pil roasted garlic butter, and for the main course, how about a slow-roasted strip loin steak that cooks faster than a turkey. Also featuring on Moriarty’s alternative Christmas dinner menu are roast beef dripping potatoes, cauliflower gratin and celeriac and sprout remoulade. What about dessert, says you. How about steamed marmalade pudding with homemade vanilla pod custard? Even Paddington would have to admit that sounds very Christmassy.
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Eva Pau’s Asian Christmas
Monday, RTÉ One, 7pm & Tuesday, RTÉ One, 8.30pm
How do you spice up your Christmas dinner while still keeping its traditional flavour? Chef Eva Pau has some tips and tricks to create delicious festive food with an Asian and put some sparkle into those boring old seasonal dishes. “I absolutely love this time of year – the decorations, the gifts, the precious time with family,” says Pau. “I can’t wait to share my own twist on some festive classics, from the Christmas Day roast to tasty, shareable party bites – perfect for anyone looking to mix things up this festive season.” Asian flavours are so vibrant and lend themselves perfectly to a colourful celebration such as Christmas, and Pau, who runs the famous Asia Market in Dublin, knows a thing or two about getting the perfect taste blend. In this two-part festive special, Pau will prepare an appetising starter of Thai fishcakes with a tangy dipping sauce, with the main course a mouthwatering five-spice roast duck with spicy hasselback roast potatoes. Dessert is mulled pears with candied ginger cream - a very Christmassy-sounding dish. Pau also shows you how to create bite-sized party food with the wow factor, including bang bang cauliflower, panko prawns and soy chocolate mousse with Szechuan peppercorn crumb. Only one problem: once your guests taste these treats, they’ll keep turning up at your door right through to New Year’s Eve.
GAA 70s - Réabhlóid Shóisíolta
Monday, TG4, 7.45pm
The 1970s was a defining decade for Gaelic games, and for Gaelic football in particular, and this bilingual feature-length documentary brings us back to a time of transformation both in the GAA and in wider Irish society. “It wasn’t just a cultural revolution; it was a sociological revolution,” says journalist Roy Curtis. Produced by Bankos Tales and shot in cinematic 4k, the film brings together GAA legends from Dublin, Galway and Kerry to don their county colours once again and relive some of the greatest moments, most inspiring performances and most riveting rivalries from a golden era of Gaelic football. Expect gripping tales of on-pitch derring-do, and stories from behind the scenes as the GAA underwent huge change and evolved into the modern organisation we know today. The film will weave intimate interviews with rare archive footage and re-enactments, with contributions from the likes of 1975 Kerry captain Mickey Ned Sullivan, Galway’s Tommy Joe Gilmore and Dublin’s David Hickey, plus the last-ever recorded interview with former Dublin captain Seán Doherty.
Santa’s Holiday
Wednesday, RTÉ One, 5.15pm
There’s always one in the office: that employee who just can’t switch off, but keeps on working long after all their colleagues have logged off and gone to the pub. There’s one in Santa’s workshop too, as we learn in this heartwarming animated feature with a seasonal message for workaholics everywhere. It’s Christmas Day in the North Pole, and Santa’s delivered all the presents to the good boys and girls around the world. The elves have been working hard all year making toys, but now it’s time for everyone to down tools and take a well-deserved break. With two weeks of fun and festivities planned in Santa’s Village, everyone is looking forward to winding down - all except one elf named Arthur. He can’t relax unless he’s got something to do, so he’s still toiling away in the workshop. A dutiful elf named Maeve - along with her faithful dog Rocket - takes on the task of persuading Arthur to stop working and join in the fun, but keeping Arthur off the treadmill is proving to be a full-time job. Who’s working harder this holiday - Arthur or Maeve?
A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Room in the Tower
Christmas Eve, BBC Two, 10pm
Roger Winstanley has been haunted by a recurring dream for most of his life. In the dream he arrives at a mysterious house where something unnameable lurks in a room in the tower. But is it just a dream? When he is invited to stay at a country house, he is shocked to find it looks very like the one in his nightmares. And when he’s told he’ll be staying in the room in the tower, well, he knows that his nightmare has just become reality. Mark Gatiss brings his eighth terrifying tale for Christmas, set during the second World War, and adapted from the short story by EF Benson. Tobias Menzies is the tormented Roger, with Joanna Lumley as the formidable matriarch Mrs Stone.
Call the Midwife Christmas Special
Christmas Day, BBC One, 8.15pm & Friday, BBC One, 8.30pm
The Nonnatus nuns launch a rescue mission to Hong Kong
If any seasonal programme is made for getting out the Quality Street, then it has to be the Call the Midwife Christmas special. This year, you’re going to need two tins of Quality Street, because this year there’s a double helping of festive drama from the nuns of Nonnatus House, with the second special airing on St Stephen’s Day (what they call Boxing Day over in Blighty). The producers are promising that this year’s specials will be very different from the series, and will take the nuns to “completely new territory”, as they embark on a rescue mission to the Far East. Violet and Fred have travelled out to Hong Kong to visit Violet’s son, where they come upon a terrible disaster: the collapse of the Branch House in Kowloon. There are many casualties and fatalities, so the nuns assemble an emergency team to fly out to HK and help with the rescue operation. And it wouldn’t be Christmas without one of the nuns finding an apparently abandoned newborn baby in a cardboard box. There’s also a storyline involving Sister Catherine and two expectant mothers who are Irish Travellers.
Keys to My Life Christmas special
St Stephen’s Day, RTÉ One, 6.30pm
Brendan Courtney presents a special hour-long episode of KTML, and this promises to be one magical journey from Dublin’s inner city to New York’s Hell’s Kitchen and, ultimately, Hollywood in the company of Oscar-winning film director Jim Sheridan. Accompanied by Courtney, Sheridan recalls his childhood growing up in a boarding house near Sheriff Street in Dublin, and revisits the three-bedroomed Victorian house in Ballybough which was his first married home. These period houses are much-sought after these days, but back in the 1970s, no one wanted to live in them. Then Sheridan goes back to the tenement rooms in New York where he lived with his young family in the early 1980s, broke and dreaming of a career in filmmaking. His time in New York was the inspiration for his 2002 film In America. Sheridan also brings Courtney to the architectural marvel he built in affluent Dalkey, overlooking the sea, which he sold in 2016 for more than €2.3 million.
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Westlife 25 at the Royal Albert Hall
St Stephen’s Day, RTÉ One, 7.30pm
It seems like only yesterday Westlife were playing their farewell concert at Croke Park, and now here they are celebrating 25 years of mega pop success with a special show, filmed earlier this year at London’s Royal Albert Hall. I was at one of those farewell gigs back in 2012: they sang their hits, they sat on stools, and they even danced a bit for Uptown Girl, but there was no denying their prodigious talent or the love between them and their fans, and no doubt they would be back, as big as ever. Now down to a trio of Shane Filan, Kian Egan and Nicky Byrne (Mark Feehily is, alas, unable to take part due to health reasons), the Westlifers played two concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, and this film is an early Christmas present for fans who are waiting patiently for the band’s 25th Anniversary World Tour in autumn 2026.
