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Documentary
Great Lighthouses of Ireland tells the story of Ireland’s lighthouses and their continuing importance to the country’s survival. For all their romance and mystery, lighthouses remain a vital part of Ireland’s maritime infrastructure.
Ireland’s lighthouses are vital to the nation’s survival. As an island nation, almost everything we consume from food, to electronics, fuel and vehicles arrive by sea. Lighthouses aid the safe passage of ships around our dangerous coastal waters. The story begins at Hook Head, a treacherous peninsula known locally as “The graveyard of a thousand ships”. Hook Head is home to a 800-year-old lighthouse: the oldest working lighthouse in the world.
In the second episode, we discover how Ireland became a world leader in lighthouse engineering. Often working in hostile and treacherous natural locations, Ireland’s lighthouse engineers and builders used great ingenuity to achieve what seemed impossible.
In the third episode, we discover the surprising roles that lighthouse keepers played in both World Wars. As the First World War raged around Ireland’s coast, our lighthouse keepers acted as unofficial coastguards, keeping detailed logs of their observations. In the Second World War an Irish lighthouse keeper played a decisive role in the outcome. We travel to Blacksod Bay, Co. Mayo where in 1944 lighthouse keeper Ted Sweeney took a weather reading which was to determine the entire timing of the allied invasion on D Day.
In the last episode of the series, former lighthouse keeper Richard Foran makes a poignant return trip to the Skelligs lighthouse which was his final posting before the lighthouse was automated. Having worked for Irish Lights for fifty-two years in total, Richard reflects on his time at the Skelligs. Automation was truly the end of an era for lighthouse keepers – keepers were no longer required and centuries of tradition ended.
No cast information available.
Oceans is an eight-part series on BBC Two, which seeks to provide a better understanding of the state of the Earth's oceans today, their role in the past, present and future and their significance in global terms. Paul Rose also documents some of the scientific observations his team made as a feature for BBC News.
The 3-part documentary series The Irish Civil War tells the epic and often challenging story of the origins, conflict and legacy of the civil war that took place in Ireland in 1922 and 1923. Narrated by Brendan Gleeson, produced in partnership with University College Cork by RTÉ Cork as part of the Decade of Centenary commemorations and based on UCC’s “mammoth and magnificent” Atlas of the Irish Revolution, this documentary series features extensive archive film footage, photographs and materials, interviews with leading academics, archive interviews with contemporary participants and witnesses, firsthand witness accounts read by actors, detailed and dynamic graphic maps based on those featured in the Atlas of the Irish Revolution, and stunning cinematography of the very locations where events took place.
Sex & Sensibility is an RTÉ television series which reflects on changing attitudes to sex in Ireland. The four-part series was presented by Simon Delaney. Directed by Imogen Murphy, it was filmed in April and May 2008 on location in Dublin. It was broadcast in June and July 2008. Features included some commentary from Bill O'Herlihy, Mary O'Rourke, Michael McNiff, Claire Tully, John Kelleher and night club owners Valeria Roe and Maurice Boland. The series reflected on the changes that had taken place in Ireland since the 1960s, an era when the sexual revolution had not yet reached the shores of the island. It showed how television had played a major part in "loosening everyone up" and altered Irish society "from a gloomy 'Irish Taliban'-style theocracy to the nation of fun-loving sex maniacs we are today". Terry Prone demonstrated her view that soaps, rather than "dusty old current affairs programmes", had been central to social change. The Riordans caused scandal when one of the characters, named Maggie, went on the pill. The "contraceptive train" to Belfast was also focused on, evoking memories of an era when the devices were illegal in the Republic of Ireland, prompting people to travel to Northern Ireland to stock up on their contraceptive needs. Also featured was The Late Late Show and the uproar it caused when it gave airtime to a group of lesbian nuns, Bill Hughes, who spoke about the underground gay scene in Ireland, Senator David Norris having his sexuality called into question when he was asked if he was "sick" by a TV presenter, the Leeson Street clubbing scene in its early years and Toni the Exotic Dancer, a housewife from Tallaght, Dublin who flashed her ample bosom for the crowds who thronged the urban pubs after mass. Video of protesters with portable Virgin Mary statues at work outside the RTÉ studios were also shown.
