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. 

Now that everyone’s favourite drama – the RTÉ Oireachtas hearings – are on hiatus for the Dáil recess (or at least until Dee Forbes makes herself available for questioning), we’re forced to return to more traditional forms of entertainment.

First and foremost, RTÉ’s coverage of the Women’s World Cup begins on Thursday, 20 July. The ninth iteration of the competition – and the first to feature the girls in green – will kick off at 8am Ireland time with the opening match that sees co-hosts New Zealand take on Norway.

Ireland have the honour of playing in the tournament’s second game against the other co-hosts Australia, and will kick off at 11am on Thursday. RTÉ will be covering the tournament from 7.30m that morning.

Looking to the weekend, which will see two major blockbusters hit movie theatres in Oppenheimer and Barbie, you can get in the mood for the first of these with a new documentary available now on Sky GO and Now TV.

Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb takes a factual look at the work of the American scientist in developing the the weapon which caused untold destruction and rewrote the fate of humanity. It might also get you in the mood for Barbie, who knows?

Over on Netflix, the new documentary Unknown: Cave of Bones follows paleoanthropologist Lee Berger’s journey into what may be the world’s oldest known graveyard. 

This first episode of a four-part series (each episode will look at a different theme) drops today, and posits that the grave holds bones which belong to a pre-human creature which had elaborate burial practices. If Berger and his team are right, it would have major implications for human developmental history — did prehistoric man believe there were spiritual reasons to bury their dead?

It is a freaky question with a potentially freaky answer, and seems like as good of a reason as any to watch a documentary.

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