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.
Anyone who has seen Jim Sheridan’s Oscar-nominated historical drama In The Name of the Father, which told the story of the Guildford Four, will want to tune in to RTÉ One this evening.
A documentary – titled In The Name of Gerry Conlon – revisits Conlon’s life in his own words, as he speaks about his experience in prison for a bombing he didn’t commit, his release, the addiction and depression that followed, and his time spent campaigning for justice for others. It airs this evening (Monday 14 August) at 9.35pm.
Director Lorenzo Moscia conducted the interviews with Conlon just two months before Conlon’s death in 2014, and later crafted the interview into a documentary, featuring testimony from the likes of Alistair Logan, Paddy Joe Hill, Paddy Armstrong, Patrick Maguire, Jim Sheridan.
In far less serious fare, this Wednesday Netflix will upload a film you may have heard of, titled The Pope’s Exorcist, starring Russell Crowe.
Crowe plays Gabriele Amorth, who was a real man, founder of the International Association of Exorcists, which is a real thing, and an exorcist who operated in the Vatican.
I have yet to see the film, but the trailer has me entirely convinced. It features Russell Crowe doing a barely passable Italian accent, and a moment in which he says: “You have a problem with me, you talk to my boss.” For the avoidance of confusion, Crowe goes on to clarify that he means the Pope. At one point he also rides a little Vatican moped.
While almost certainly a very amusing watch, the plot looks like one that horror movie enthusiasts will be familiar with. Crowe is an exorcist and he’s got a pretty tricky exorcism on his hands. Snippets of the exorcism look quite a lot like that other film about an exorcism. The Exorcist. Still, we should all watch this. Russell Crowe has earned our attention.
If you’ve ever wanted to see 11 British people dropped into the Canadian wilderness and left to fend for themselves, then boy does Channel 4 have the show for you.
Alone is seemingly the UK’s answer to the US’s 15-season Discovery Channel smash hit Naked and Afraid. Contestants on Alone don’t need to be naked, but they occasionally are, which is an interesting strategy for surviving in a desolate forest. The premise of the game is simple: whoever survives the longest in the wild will win £100,000.
The first three episodes of the series have already aired, but you can catch up on the All4 streaming service, and watch along every Sunday at 9pm.
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