THE REMOTE IS our weekly look at upcoming TV highlights.
Across TV and streaming services, we bring you some suggestions for your week’s viewing, based on quality, intrigue, and the simple likelihood that something might end up sparking an interesting discussion. Here’s what you should watch out for this week.
Televised coverage of RTÉ’s secret payment scandal is set to hit something of a climax tomorrow as Ryan Tubridy and his agent Noel Kelly will appear before two Oireachtas committees in a marathon broadcast.
Tubridy has been off-air since it came to light that he was paid €345,000 more than was reported by RTÉ over six years, and the question-and-answer event sees the former Late Late Show return to the airwaves for the first time in weeks.
In what is surely an unprecedented occurrence, some pubs in Ireland will be broadcasting the sessions, according to the Licensed Vintners Association. In a similarly unusual move, both sessions will be broadcast live on Virgin Media One.
In addition to usual broadcasting on Oireachtas TV and RTÉ News, Virgin Media One will be broadcasting a News Special, beginning at 11am for the Public Accounts Committee and resuming at 3pm for the Media Committee.
Amid the controversial suggestion by Green Party TD Patrick Costello of making 12 July a national holiday in the Republic of Ireland, viewers might also be interested in watching Wednesday’s recap of the Twelfth celebrations, airing at 9pm on BBC One on Wednesday.
Coverage is set to include parades, though whether there will be coverage of planned bonfires which are being investigated as hate-crimes is unclear.
Turning to streaming, in what is either a spark of innovation or simply a stroke of a cash cow, Netflix will this week upload Bird Box Barcelona.
The movie is a half-sequel to the original Bird Box, a 2018 psychological horror based on the premise of otherworldly entities that cause anyone who looks upon them to kill themselves. The follow-up is an extension of that premise, but set in Barcelona rather than the US. It lands on July 14.
At the time, Netflix claimed that the original Bird Box was its most successful original film, and it was eventually released that the film had been watched by 89 million households in the first week of its release.
Whether the Catalan addition to the franchise can recreate those numbers without the star power of Sandra Bullock remains to be seen.
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