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© ITV, RTE & Element Pictures After delivering a really impressive debut season , the pressure has been on Nancy Harris' series on ITV and RTE to really raise the bar. Not only does her Dublin comedy drama do that, it does it with ease. Directed by Paddy Breatnach, 'The Dry' tells the story of Roisin Gallagher's Shiv Sheridan, an alcoholic who returns from London to live with her dysfunctional middle class family. (SPOILERS ALERT) At the end of Series One, Shiv's battle to stay sober spectacularly came off the rails. © ITV, RTE & Element Pictures An affair with the posey, vain, feckless love of her life, Moe Dunford's artist Jack saw her lose her job. Treated as a screw up by the rest of her family, she ditched a plan to return to London and instead turned up drunk at a reception for her uptight sister, Siobhan Cullen's doctor Caroline and her doormat of a boyfriend, Eoin Duffy's Rory in the art gallery where she had been working. Her parents'

© HBO Max Ahoy me hearties! It's time to set sail for a second time as we follow the adventures of the Gentleman Pirate Stede Bonnet, Blackbeard, Spanish Jackie et al. After a delightful first season  streamed in the US in 2022 and the UK in 2023, HBO Max's handsome ' Blackadder ' style pirate sitcom 'Our Flag Means Death' has returned. But can David Jenkins' nautical sitcom maintain the magic? © HBO Max (SPOILER ALERT!!) Having returned to his wife Mary and then left her again by mutual agreement, season Two find Rhys Darby's Stede back at sea desperate to rekindle the love he has for Taika Waititi's Ed 'Blackbeard' Teach. However a heartbroken Ed has returned to his monstrous pirate ways on Stede's old vessel The Revenge and behaves like a tyrant towards his crew who include his longtime first mate, Con O'Neill's Izzy Hands, David Fane's highly emotional Fang and two of Stede's old crewmates Joel Fry's Frenchie and V

© Amazon MGM Studios We've had new versions of ' Point Blank ' and ' Red Dawn '. But now with Doug Liman remaking ' Road House ,' is there no Patrick Swayze movie Hollywood wouldn't remake? The original 1989 action movie was a cheesy thriller about a professional bouncer haunted by the memory of a man he killed in self defence. Swayze's James Dalton is hired to clean up a notoriously rough club in Missouri known for outbreaks or violence and ends up brushing up against a local crimelord. © Amazon MGM Studios A ridiculous sweaty action movie, it was a minor hit that was slated by critics but subsequently built up a cult reputation as one of those films that are so bad they might be fun. The 2024 version of 'Road House' sees Liman and his screenwriters Anthony Bagarozzi, David Lee Hendry and Charles Mondry reimagine Swayze's character as Jake Gyllenhaal's Elwood Dalton, a former UCF middleweight cage fighter haunted by a past contest. I

© Netflix Whether it's ' Leap Year ' or ' PS I Love You ' or ' Wild Mountain Thyme ,' we've been down this road before. Woeful romcoms that trade in dodgy Irish stereotypes and even dodgier Irish accents are nothing new. So it's all too easy to put the boot into Netflix's latest offering, the Lindsay Lohan vehicle 'Irish Wish' which the streamer has released to coincide with this weekend's St Patrick's festivities. However Lohan is on something of a long haul back to career rehabilitation after becoming tabloid fodder for many years for her problems with substance abuse, her turbulent love life and her brushes with the law, including prison sentences. © Netflix So perhaps her latest movie deserves a fair wind.  Right? Expectations in the run-up to the release of Janeen Damian's romcom, though, have been on the floor. So it's safe to assume we'll have to set this at a very low bar - perhaps ankle height. © Netflix Unfor

© Getty Images In the end, the Academy decided to go nuclear. As expected, Christopher Nolan's ' Oppenheimer ' was the big winner on Oscar night winning a total of seven statuettes from 13 nominations. The haul comprised of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing and Best Musical Score. Cillian Murphy also took home his first statuette at his first attempt in the Best Actor category, looking relieved that his time in the awards season spotlight was over and declaring himself "a proud Irishman". © Getty Images Robert Downey Jr celebrated a Best Supporting Actor win with a self-deprecating quip, thanking his "terrible childhood and the Academy in that order". Christopher Nolan saluted his wife and the producer of his film and his children, Emma Thomas on a night that saw him join the ranks of Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, John Ford and David Lean as an Oscar winning direct