What to watch on RTÉ Player this week? The RTÉ Player team share their top picks to watch on RTÉ Player this week.
What’s Trending?
The most romantic restaurant in town once again threw open its doors to welcome a host of nervous and not-so-nervous first daters in First Dates Ireland which returned to RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player! RTÉ Player was there to capture Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope writer, Stefanie Preissner’s, reaction to the cutest couple in town, Lauren and Paddy! Smitten by ‘adorable’ Paddy, you can catch Stephanie’s hilarious commentary on RTÉ Player. Poor Stefanie literally ‘can’t cope’ as she watches the delightful duo stumble through their very first date EVER! She then goes on to share an extremely cringe-worthy moment from a first date of her own. Did she actually just do that…? Over the coming weeks First Dates Ireland Extras on RTÉ Player will feature reactions from more famous faces including Home and Away’s George Mason (swoon!), Roz & Rachel Purcell and Eoghan McDermott, which will be available on RTÉ Player straight after each episode airs. It will also feature the most popular date of each episode. First Dates Ireland airs Thursdays, 9:30pm on RTÉ2 and is available to watch live and on-demand on RTÉ Player.
What's new?
Carrie Mathison is back! In the sixth series of Homeland, Mathison, played by Claire Danes, returns after saving the lives of many Berliners from an underground terrorist attack. The ever present Saul Berenson returns from spending most of last season trying to catch Allison Carr committing treason while we remain wondering did Quinn make it? This season sees Carrie back in the US with Franny, working as an advocate for Muslim Americans. In the season premiere, Dar and Saul brief President-elect Keane and…we’ll just have to wait and see if Quinn makes his return… Watch now on RTÉ Player!
What not to miss?
45 year old fashion designer and TV presenter Brendan Courtney’s father suffered a stroke 18 months ago and now Brendan, his still youthful mother Nuala, together with his brother and two sisters are facing the kind of heartrending decision that can tear families apart; do they try to care for their father at home? Do they let him go into long term care, or are there other options? Brendan looks at Fair Dealing Legislation and visits private and public care facilities as the entire sector deals with our increasingly ageing population. We follow the family’s application for FAIR DEAL, the HSE scheme which provides financial support to people who need long-term nursing home care. Is it unnecessarily complicated and Brendan questions, why is the State prepared to fund the cost of a care home but not home care when the costs are comparable? It’s not only a worry about physical care and all the emotion and guilt this throws up, it’s also the financial stress. How much will it all cost? Who’s going to shoulder the burden? An increasingly urgent and emotive topic, watch We Need to Talk About Dad now on RTÉ Player.
What’s coming up?
In this powerful and timely series, Generation F’d reveals life for Ireland’s 25-35 year-olds, who are struggling to get a secure foothold in their adult lives and whose future prospects look bleak. Things go wrong in society all the time, but rarely do they go wrong for an entire generation. A lack of job security and pensionable jobs, huge levels of personal and mortgage debt – if they are even allowed to borrow – are just some of the generational challenges they face. The long term impact of the 2008 crash is being most profoundly felt by this group, known as ‘Generation Y’, a cohort impacted by high rates of unemployment, emigration and associated mental health issues.
Over three episodes, Generation F’d follows a cross section of contributors from Ireland’s many socio-economic groups, revealing their day-to-day lives and giving the viewer a sense of their aspirations, frustrations and ultimate hopes. The contributors hail from a range of different social strata with a mix of educational backgrounds and situations. In Episode 1 we meet, plasterer/foreman Andy Farrell from Lusk, Co Dublin who sometimes goes hungry to feed his children; Susie Mc Gowan originally from Cavan who found out she lost her job in Clery’s on social media; Keira Gill from Coolock who has set up her own soup kitchen, Lending Hand, which feeds 200 people every Monday evening on the steps of the Central Bank; Ciara O’Shaughnessy and Colin Bale from Donabate from Dublin who are currently in emergency accommodation, after a period of homelessness where they squatted in an abandoned psychiatric hospital and Luke McGahren, Dundrum, Dublin a newly qualified teacher trying to make ends meet by working as a sub teacher and in a men’s retail clothes store. A candid portrait of being a young adult in a country where getting a fair crack of the whip is becoming tougher and tougher, watch Generation F’d now on RTÉ Player.
