Telly Talks on Galway Talks With Katie Finnegan – Friday June 18th 2021

Katie’s recommendations on what to keep an eye out for this week on your TV.

TV News

First to some Love island news.
Fans of Love Island will be lapping up the news that the show’s bosses are reportedly putting the new contestants through quarantine measures this week ahead of the show’s return.

The ITV2 reality show will air exclusively in Ireland on Virgin Media One, starting on Monday June 28 at 9pm.

And according to reports in the UK press, the latest batch of Island folk looking to find love at the villa are currently isolating in Majorca to ensure that any positive COVID-19 tests won’t delay the resumption of the reality show.

The new episodes, hosted by Laura Whitmore, are thought to be once again taking place in the villa near Sant Llorenç des Cardassar, although the show is rumoured to have also arranged a UK-based location as a back-up option.

And some more Love Island News

Love Island breakout star Maura Higgins will make her Irish TV presenting debut this Autumn as the host of Glow Up Ireland, RTÉ’s version of the hit TV format which will see amateur make-up artists compete to be crowned Ireland’s next make-up star.

30-year-old Longford woman Higgins came to fame on Love Island on ITV and went on to front her own one-off show Maura Higgins: You’re Joking Me! and appeared on the 2019 series of Dancing On Ice, as well as landing a hosting role on This Morning.

Sticking with reality TV – we’re going to some Bake Off News

The Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain will present a new cookery show for the BBC.

It’s called Nadiya’s Fast Flavours and will feature the star sharing her favourite recipes with viewers, from healthy snacks to comfort food, the broadcaster said.

Hussain, who won the sixth season of Bake Off in 2015, also hosts Nadiya Bakes on BBC Two.

The 36-year-old said: “I’m so excited for Nadiya’s Fast Flavours! I’m going to be bringing a whole host of new everyday recipes to the table, that are easily achievable but fizzing with flavour.

Chip n’Dale are back on the screens

A new video reveals the opening credits for the upcoming Chip ‘n’ Dale: Park Life animated series. The series will feature the mischievous chipmunk brothers in 39 seven-minute episodes told in a non-verbal fashion. Releasing exclusively to Disney+, the new animated series will debut weekly starting on July 28.

3 Chip n Dale (Play under)

The Disney Plus YouTube channel just dropped a 34-second video that reveals the opening credits for Chip ‘n’ Dale Park Life. The video teases the vibrant and colorful animation of the show, whose style is a bit different than previous iterations of Chip ‘n’ Dale series. The opening credit sequence also teases a glimpse of other Disney characters set to appear, which includes Butch and Pluto. View the opening credits below:

Watching this week…

Inside Cadbury: Chocolate Secrets Unwrapped – Channel 4

This aired on Tuesday 9pm and was sold as ‘an xclusive behind the scenes peek at how iconic confectionary company Cadbury’s became a global brand over a 200 year history”

It was clearly intended as an entertainment piece. It would offer us “unique access inside its secretive Willy Wonka world”.

I was really looking forward to this – you might have seen the video doing the rounds on social media recently of a Wall’s Viennetta being made – and that’s what I was expecting. If you saw the trailer, you would have been looking forward to plenty of footage of melted chocolate being poured into moulds and crème eggs being made… However…

What we got was an hour of boredom – achieved by various means. My first observation is there was not enough footage of chocolate being made, bar a shot of crème eggs being filled and smashed together.

How to Cook Well with Rory O’Connell

Monday, RTÉ One, 7.30pm

The TV schedules have been cleared this week to make room for the Euro 2020s, but if cooking is more your sport then tune in as master chef Rory O’Connell wraps up another series in which he shows us mere mortals how to whip up Michelin-worthy meals. It’s like watching Eric Claption demonstrate how to do guitar solos – all sounds very tasty but I’d probably make a dog’s dinner of it. He’s ending the series with a flourish: a starter of spelt, pearl barley and lentil broth followed by a grilled T-bone steak and arborio rice and coconut pudding with sour cherry and orange compote. He also meets Éamonn O’Sullivan of Hewn in Ennistymon, Co Clare, which makes wonderful wooden utensils for the kitchen, used by Michelin-starred Aniar restaurant in Galway.

The Nest is all up on the RTE player – with a familiar face

The Nest is a BBC One five-part television drama series starring Sophie Rundle and Martin Compston as a married couple unable to conceive .

On parole teenager Kaya steps out in front of Emily’s car, damaging her knee. At the hospital, Kaya discovers that Emily and Dan, her husband, want a baby. Their surrogate mother, Dan’s sister, loses the baby and Kaya approaches Emily, offering to be their surrogate. Dan is strongly against the idea but Emily finally persuades him to agree.

The Nest does a nice job of thickening the plot with wider questions about the morality of “buying a baby” and exploiting the vulnerabilities of others without letting it hold up the plot or dissipate suspense. Dan is a self-made man and the couple enjoy every material comfort and they are happy together. Should this be enough? Dan could manage without a baby. Emily says she cannot. Is that self-indulgence, or is baby hunger a quite different kind of appetite from all the ones we try to limit and control?

Katla

The nation’s thirst for Scandi dramas thrillers has certainly not waned in recent years, as this new addition to Netflix proves.

Katla is a large volcano in southern Iceland. It is very active; twenty eruptions have been documented between 930 and 1918, at intervals of 20–90 years. It has not erupted violently for 103 years, although there may have been small eruptions that did not break the ice cover, including ones in 1955, 1999, and 2011.

One year after the violent eruption of the subglacial volcano Katla in Iceland, the peace and tranquility in the small town of Vik has been dramatically disturbed.

As people evacuate the area, mysterious elements – that have been deeply frozen into the glacier from prehistoric times – start to emerge from the melting ice and cause consequences no-one could have ever foreseen.

What’s coming up this week?

Together
Thursday, BBC2, 9pm

James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan in Together

At last, terrestrial TV has some major new dramas, and this one has a big-name cast to boot. James McAvoy (X-Men, His Dark Materials) plays a self-made man who runs his own computing consultancy. His wife, played by Catastrophe’s Sharon Horgan, is a co-ordinator for all of Europe at a refugee charity. Their 10-year-old son Arty is all that is keeping their marriage going – until the country goes into lockdown. The couple are forced to re-evaluate themselves and their relationship, as well as dad’s fresh passion for growing vegetables and Arty’s socialist grandmother. Written by Dennis Kelly (The Third Day) and directed by The Crown’s Stephen Daldry, this promises to be a big hitter.

Physical

From Friday, Apple TV+
This 10-part tale is set in a southern Californian beach community during the 1980s. Rose Byrne stars as Sheila Rubin, a dutiful housewife supporting her husband as he attempts to develop a political career. However, Sheila’s seemingly perfect mask hides a heap of personal demons, but she’s about to find an unlikely way to work through them – via the newly burgeoning world of aerobics. At first, she’s simply hooked on exercise, but eventually realises her passion could develop into a groundbreaking business.

The dark comedy series has been executive produced by Annie Weisman — the same brain behind Desperate Housewives — so expect lots of similar dark housewife twists, turns and explosions along the way…

The Handmaids Tale – Season 4

The highly anticipated fourth instalment of Margaret Atwood’s hit book finished up this week – but if you’re watching on RTE you still have 3 episodes left.

Season four has been packed with dramatic moments of its own, if the gripping trailer is anything to go by. From June’s evasion of the authorities to her apparent escape to Canada.

Catch up on seasons one to now on the RTE Player

Murder at the Cottage: The Search for Justice for Sophie is set to premiere on Sky Crime & NOW on Sunday, June 20^th. 

The five-part series examines the brutal murder of French filmmaker Sophie Toscan du Plantier in West Cork.

According to the filmmaker Jim Sheridan, Murder at the Cottage pieces together original evidence, never-before-seen footage, and interviews with those closest to the case, including du Plantier’s family.

West Cork resident Ian Bailey will also feature. Bailey was convicted of the crime in absentia by a French court but has always maintained his innocence and was never charged for the murder in Ireland. 

Less than two weeks after the series drops, viewers can also tune into Netflix’s documentary on the case. Sophie: A Murder in West Cork is three-part series that was created with the blessing of the du Plantier family, who wish to put Sophie back at the centre of the story.

Bailey will also feature in the Netflix series, as well as du Plantier’s son Pierre-Louis Baudey and residents from Schull.

A couple of films – Fatherhood is the first one..

Yes, this only landed on Netflix today

Kevin Hart stars in this heartwarming tale about a father fighting to raise his daughter alone, after his wife unexpectedly dies one day after giving birth.

Based on the bestselling memoir, Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss & Love by Matthew Logelin, expect tears and laughter.

Gunda

With a certain Babe-like charm, this B&W documentary follows a pig and her newborn children at ground level, patiently revealing the nuances of their behaviour.

It’s an extended, black-and-white study of a farmyard sow whose name is presumably Gunda, although the humans who would have given her this name are never shown. There are no people. No dialogue. Just animals. The camera follows this sow around the farm, just after farrowing, and we see the tiny piglets suckling; and later these same piglets, much bigger, still suckling and jostling. We also see the sow’s fellow beasts, including a one-legged chicken and some cows who are shown running in slo-mo. At one worrying point, a piglet gets lost in the straw and looks to be in some danger.