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MIDWINTER BREAK Here's two stories about faltering marriages - both featuring Ciaran Hinds. First up is 'Midwinter Break,' Olivier award winning theatre director Polly Findlay's debut feature. An adaptation of Bernard MacLaverty's acclaimed. 2017 novel of the same name, it has been brought to the screen by the author and the Olivier and Tony Award nominated playwright Nick Payne. Lesley Manville and Hinds play Stella and Gerry, a couple entering the winter of a long marriage. Stella's a devout Catholic.  Gerry has lost his faith and is fond of music, art and a glass of whisky or three. Originally from Northern Ireland, they fled the Troubles in the 1970s with their infant son after a heavily pregnant Stella was wounded in an IRA gun attack on the British Army. Miraculously, the bullet passed through her belly but she and her son somehow survived. In the present day, Stella gives Gerry a Christmas present of a short break in Amsterdam - booking flights and a hote...

RORY McILROY: THE MASTERS WAIT Is there any professional sportsman more compelling than Rory McIlroy? A terrific ambassador for golf, by the age of 35 the Northern Irishman won just about every major tournament in the game. But the journey getting there has been arduous. While McIlroy has won 40 tournaments, including five Major championships in his career, there have been so many near misses including four runner up spots in the Majors. Expectations that he'd just slot into the space occupied by Tiger Woods surged when he won the US Open in 2011, the PGA Championship in 2012 and the Open and PGA again in 2014. Just one Major win away from taking his place alongside the greats of the game who completed the career Grand Slam - Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Woods - all he had to do was win the US Masters. But what looks easy on paper is more difficult on grass. It would be 11 years before McIlroy would complete the career Grand Slam or even win another Major...

  POWER: THE DOWNFALL OF HUW EDWARDS It's a fair bet that Channel 5's drama 'Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards' was always going to be a difficult watch. However the other challenge facing writer Marc Burt, the cast and crew of the one-off docudrama is how to fashion a convincing retelling of one of the most high profile celebrity scandals in the UK of recent times. Welshman Huw Edwards was one of the most recognisable faces in British broadcasting until his downfall in July 2023. Just months before, BBC News' main  anchorman sombrely announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II  to the nation in September 2022. Within a year,  his career collapsed   when The Sun newspaper revealed an unnamed, high profile BBC presenter had paid a young man from the age of 17 a total of £35,000 for a series of 'sordid images' . While the daily newspaper did not name him,  Edwards was eventually outed by his own wife Vicki  after days of fevered speculation on social medi...

  LOL: LAST ONE LAUGHING UK, S2 When the first season of 'LOL: Last One Laughing UK ' landed on Amazon Prime last year, it achieved a couple of things. The comedy competition confirmed what national treasures, Bob Mortimer and Richard Ayoade are. The show was also enthusiastically gobbled up by a British public desperate for laughs, thanks to a daily diet of depressing news on mainstream TV channels, radio stations and the rage bait populating their social media feeds. Amazon Prime UK secured its biggest ever audience - with around two million people streaming it. With Amazon quickly commissioning a second season for 2026, the immediate question facing the producers was: could lightning strike twice? Very cleverly, the producers hit on one way to give the show a fighting chance of doing exactly that by bringing back last year's winner Bob Mortimer to defend his crown. Let's explain the show's premise for those unfamiliar with it. 'LOL: Last One Laughing UK' ...

SPILT MILK Recently I got to rewatch Lenny Abrahamson's ' Adam and Paul '. The heartbreaking story of two Dublin heroin addicts, Abrahamson's debut film is a rare example of an Irish director directly confronting the disparity between rich and poor in the age of the Celtic Tiger.  A ' Ulysses ' style trek through the Irish capital with two characters who are also like something out of a Samuel Beckett play mixed with Vittorio da Sica's ' Bicycle Thieves ,' 22 years on its humour and shade still hit hard. Sadly, it remains pertinent. The drugs may have changed in Dublin since Abrahamson's film was initially screened but the problems of addiction and homelessness remain. Brian Durnin's period family drama 'Spilt Milk' also deals with addiction in a different way - telling it from the perspective of a 11 year old ' Kojak ' obsessed boy. Set in Dublin in the 1980s when unemployment and immigration gripped the nation, we gradually ...

  THE WALSH SISTERS What is it about dramas in recent years with dysfunctional Dublin families? First we had the Garveys in Sharon Horgan's Apple TV series ' Bad Sisters '. Then there we got the Sheridans in Nancy Harris' ITV and RTE collaboration ' The Dry '. Then, of course, there was the murderous Kinsellas in AMC and RTE's gangland drama ' KIN '. Now we've got 'The Walsh Sisters,' RTE's six part adaptation of a series of Marian Keyes' books. At the heart is Louisa Harland's Anna Walsh, a great girl altogether whose life of bliss is suddenly overturned when her American boyfriend, Samuel Anderson 's Aidan is seriously injured in a car crash. Then there's Danielle Galligan's single mum Claire who is struggling with raising a young kid weekdays and sharing custody with her ex husband at weekends while desiring his more carefree life. Stefanie Preissner's Maggie desperately wants to conceive and is trying to do...