Starring: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall

In cinemas: 16 April

For some unknown reason the powers that be determined that while American audiences get the perfectly acceptable title The Ghost Writer, us Europeans were going to have to make do with the undeniably stupider title The Ghost. Sure, it’s the name of the source material, but as soon as you put that name into movieland all your brain can think is “Patrick Swayze!” repeated again and again in your mind until you pass out from dehydration. But no, this is no sequel or remake of the Swayze classic (RIP, my friend), it is instead the latest political thriller from prison-held Roman Polanski.

The story follows an unnamed ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) who has been hired to finish off the memoirs of ex-Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan), the previous ghost writer dying under somewhat mysterious circumstances. As McGregor is scribbling away the ex-Prime Minister gets involved with a more serious scandal, McGregor gets in over his head and had to escape with his life.

While Ewan McGregor is good it’s Pierce Brosnan who does a great job playing a clueless yet confident politician; he’s genuinely difficult to read meaning you’re double guessing him throughout. Sex and the City’s Kim Cattrell also makes an appearance as the PM’s secretary – and clearly the English-born actress has been spending too much time in New York, as she now has some weird hybrid accent.

There is a nice sense of intrigue throughout the whole thing and, mainly due to McGregor’s likability, you actually become caught up in his discoveries. If it all sounds very Hitchcock, that’s because it is… well, slightly worse Hitchcock with some unexplained implausibility and, at times, questionable pacing. Also, the plot seems to get lost within itself, at one stage awkwardly introducing a wise old man for three minutes to explain all the complicated parts.

While the majority of the film potters along quite well with a nice sense of imminent danger and suspense, there are most definitely parts that edge on dull, not surprising for a film based around rewriting a political memoir.  If you can put up with some slow pacing during the two hour running time this is a nicely satisfying thriller. Also, for all you

In a nutshell: Polanski fans, this may be the last thing you see from him in a while so savour it. My money’s on his next feature being prison based.

Conor Barry

Starring: Jon Hozier-Byrne, Heber Hanly, Forrest Whittaker

In cinemas: April 16^th

Let’s face it, time travel hasn’t been taken seriously ever since the ill-advised Sex and the City spin-off show single-handedly ruined the genre. Well, thank your lucky stars, general, because here comes Cop to the Future and Back. Think Back to the Future meets Kindergarten Cop. Then instantly forget that because this film is nothing like them.

The story follows ex-cop Harvey Price (Hozier-Byrne) who dropped out the force to play bass clarinet in the local synagogue band ‘Rhythm and Jews’. Ten years later the CIA steals his newborn baby (Hanly), who has the unique ability to open a portal through space and time. Price has to use everything he learned as a cop to time hop, find his child, and meet a woman in the first act that he marries in the last.

Sure, the plot’s clichéd, but director David Reilly has added a few sexy twists to keep things interesting. For example, the dance sequences move the action along swiftly, with a few musical gems such as “I don’t have a licence for this sex gun” and “My sex gun’s fully loaded” sure to be topping those popular music charts. However, the latter songs are a bit disappointing and don’t really fit the plot, mainly because they’re taken directly from Jesus Christ Superstar.

But don’t worry proportionally half of the audience (i.e. men); it’s not all girly singing. This film is jammers with action! One of the more impressive scenes finds British Prime Minister William Gladstone discussing the Irish Question when Harvey Price, courtesy of his time machine, bursts in shouting “Home Rule forever, mo-fo’s” before shooting up the place while wrapped in a burning British flag. Emotional stuff.

However, in what appears to be a complete tangent to the plot Price briefly decides to go for a prehistoric holiday, with the footage in this segment looking suspiciously like it was taken from Jurassic Park. Also, it seems that the studios pressured the film into utilising the recently popular 3D technology but clearly this was a rushed job, seeing as the 3D is used only during the sex scenes. Speaking of, while the first three sex scenes help move the plot along, the following eight just seem a bit tacked.

All in all, while Cop to the Future and Back may not be the best film in recent memory about a Jewish ex-cop travelling through space and time in search of his child (that honour goes to last decade’s Renegade Lemonade), it will definitely fill that emotional void in your lives.

In a Nutshell: Great movie? No. A movie? Definitely.

Conor Barry

If the 2000s proved anything it’s that, in the hallowed words of Huey Lewis and the News, it’s hip to be square. Yes, the noughties (and it makes me literally vomit up my dignity to use that term) was very much the decade of the nerd – be it that computer games actually started to be taken seriously by mainstream press, the rise of the internet as a legitimate way to socialise, or that whole Judd Apatow revolution thing opening the floodgates for lovable nerd to fill our screens. But what started it all was Hollywood realising that superheroes were not something to be scoffed at; not something purely that gave geeks something to do on a Saturday night. No, superhero films meant money – a lot of money.

It all started with X-Men which, much to the surprise of those crazy Hollywood execs, was shockingly profitable. And why wouldn’t it be? It was cool, a little bit sexy, and it had frickin’ Patrick Stewart as Xavier. Also, Hugh Jackman was literally born and bred to play Wolverine, so much so that I wouldn’t be surprised if those claws are genuinely his own. Hollywood, though, still remained sceptical, curious to see how this whole superhero thing would pan out. Then came along Spiderman, a rip-roaring, web-slinging classic that cemented the genre as something real and not just a passing fad. Spiderman proved that superheroes were most definitely here to stay, and the world went superhero crazy with studios buying up the rights to every comic book imaginable.

Unfortunately, the whole idea of what made these films in any way successful seemed to get lost in the process. Simply walking into a comic book shop, picking a hero at random and throwing a couple million dollars at it does not equal a successful film, as many terrible examples have shown. Fantastic Four suffered a pretty abysmal transition, replacing all the main characters with unlikable pricks. Shoving Ben Affleck into the title role of Daredevil sounds like a nice idea for a parody, but unfortunately it was a sincere attempt. Then Fantastic Four raised its arrogant head once again, because apparently one adventure with this team of knobs wasn’t enough. But, in fairness, the Silver Surfer was kind of slick.

Also, nerds were getting a bit uppity about having their favourite superheroes literally raped (not literally) through their leap from page to screen. This was a new dilemma that Hollywood had never really encountered before: the fury of the nerds. They had to walk a tightrope of satisfying the die-hard fans while still making it appealing enough for people who had never heard or couldn’t care less about the likes of The Hulk. Watchmen, the holy grail of “mature” comic books – sorry, graphic novels – in particular was going to be destroyed by fans regardless of how good an adaptation it was. Similarly, each Spiderman, Iron Man, and X-Men film has been closely monitored by on overly dedicated following to make sure the filmmakers don’t mess with the minor details, such as the style of the heroes’ costumes, who is cast as the villain, and so on. This huge number of fan demands lead most adaptations to almost ignore them entirely and instead turned into crowd-pleasing mindless action blockbusters that made nerds cry.

Having said that, anyone who strayed from the whole “cool action bits with cheesy dialogue formula” was generally shunned as not getting the point of superhero films. For example Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis, was a fantastically interesting take on what it would be like to be a superhero in a realistic world and is rarely given much credit. Similarly, the original Hulk film had more emotions than explosions so failed to garner much critical acclaim. It wasn’t until Mr Nolan came along and showed everyone how it’s done with Batman Begins, followed by the undeniably spectacular Dark Knight, that people sat up and took notice. Superhero films were, and hopefully will be, taken seriously.

The whole thing seems to on track at this stage with the majority of superhero films actually being pretty damn good. The likes of Iron Man provide the perfect mix of action and Robert Downey Jr charm, the new Nolan Batman films giving a sort of legitimacy to the genre. The whole superhero thing is roaring on, looking like it’ll be here for a bit, with studios lining up all their franchises and slowly interlinking them with the hopes of cashing in on a huge collaborative film. Next in line are the likes of The Green Lantern, Green Hornet, Green Arrow (noticing a trend here, superheroes?) to mention a few. And now, with the release of Kick-Ass, superhero films have gotten all fancy and post-modern.

It looks like the superhero genre is going to be our generation’s Western – hugely popular for our time, but future generations will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about. Except instead of cowboys we have flying robots and heroic spiders. Checkmate, Westerns.

It may have passed you by but, just so you know, we have entered a new cinematic age: the age of 3D cinema. Well, that’s the plan anyway, as long as we keep paying for it. With an increase in downloading and a drop in cinema-going, Hollywood has decided it needs to come up with a reason for people to actually leave their houses, rather than passively absorb stolen movies through their pirate eyes – and so a lot of the big budget movies are gaining an extra dimension. But is 3D really the final solution to get rid of those pesky pirates?

This isn’t 3D’s first attempt to revolutionise cinema – lest we forget the spectacularly crappy red-and-green-cardboard-glasses brand of 3D, which is slowly being shown the cinematic back door. This technology produced classics such as Jaws 3D, and Shark Boy and Lava Girl (don’t ask me why I picked two shark related 3D films; there are literally hundreds that hardly even mention sharks) and were quite clearly cash-ins using 3D novelty over interesting stories. This is fair enough – but it’s hard to take any film seriously when it’s being viewed in red and green blobs that are vaguely reminiscent of colour and shapes. There was a sort of charm to it, as if both the creators and the audience knew that it looked a bit terrible, but enjoyed it nonetheless. Eventually, and inevitably, the novelty wore off and everyone got in with their two dimensional lives.

Technology has come on leaps and bounds since then, though,and the cardboard 3D spectacles that you would’ve gotten free with the Beano have been replaced by new fangled glasses that make it look as if you’ve walked into a Blues Brothers convention. This made everything on the screen look more convincing and, well… real. For the first little while the novelty was exciting again. There was Journey to the Centre of the Earth, The Final Destination and the cream of the crop: My Bloody Valentine 3D, containing not only a fantastic amount of gore but, to my knowledge, the only sex scene in a mainstream 3D film (I say mainstream because I’m pretty sure there is 3D pornography. Horses for courses, I suppose). 3D films were back in all their novelty glory with stuff popping out of the screen left, right and centre. And that’s where it should have stopped. That was fun and everything, guys, but go away now.

But it didn’t go away. Real directors started to take 3D seriously and now we’ve ended up with Avatar. Sure, it looks very pretty but, as everyone knows, the story was complete piddle. Sure, 3D films don’t need a good plot if they can make up for it with simply being fun, but Avatar took itself way too seriously, as if it was changing the entirety of cinema once and for all. Hollywood has jumped on this bandwagon (“Would you like another Oscar nomination, Mr Cameron?”) because the 3D ploy legitimises their business strategy. According to Hollywood, 3D isn’t only for the fun-but-we-know-it’s-terrible films such as The Final Destination; Avatar is apparently proof that you can use 3D for proper films too.

But I don’t think I’m alone when I say that 3D films just look sillier. There’s something slightly farcical about the way the characters look when they’re in 3D, not to mention that the audience are wearing stupid sunglasses throughout. The next Citizen Kane will not be 3D, no matter how much Hollywood would like to think otherwise.

Now on one side, we have major directors like Spielberg and Peter Jackson heralding 3D as some sort of cinematic rebirth, and on the other we have Hollywood milking the cash cow for all it’s worth, rereleasing old films in 3D and forcing new ones to add on 3D as some apparent bonus. James Cameron and his cronies are single-handedly destroying what made 3D great in the first place – the fact that nobody took it seriously. Everybody was in on the joke that these films were stupider but more fun than proper films; you were just supposed watch and have a good time. But Avatar has the audacity to tell me I should feel emotions while watching it, and it’s opened the floodgates for other directors to take it seriously, to think of it as another tool in a serious filmmaker’s cinematic toolbox.

So where does that leave the future of 3D? While it’s come and gone in other decades, this time it might actually stick. Cinemas are refurbishing their screens with fancy new 3D technology – something they wouldn’t do if they weren’t in it for the long haul. It’s probably up to the audiences to see how long it takes before they’re bored of it. Of course, the hope is that eventually we expect 3D of the almost every film in the cinema, while the Hollywood fat cats laugh away on their thrones made of box office incomes. Then will come the inevitable rerelease of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Cool Runnings and so on. Then 3D films like Jaws 3D will be looked down upon as primitive rather than awesome, and we won’t notice Hollywood slyly stealing our wallets from our back pockets because we can’t see through these stupid glasses. Thanks, Avatar.

When a Hollywood King of Cool of the calibre of Samuel L. Jackson is describing to you what he’s been up to over the weekend, it’s not unreasonable to expect the conversation to go a certain way. Partying until the early morning? Hijacking a golf buggy and driving it down the M50? All definite possibilities, one might suspect. Well, as it transpires, not so. “I’ve been sleeping a lot,” he cheerfully suggests, a tone of inquisition in his voice, as if to say, ‘Is this what you were expecting?’

The difference between the public Samuel L. Jackson and the real life Sam Jackson is – seemingly – pretty vast. For a man renowned for lines such as “I’ve had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane” and “I’m the foot fucking master”, witnessing Samuel L. Jackson speak gently about making his own personal contribution to help the lives of Irish children with autism is an experience bordering on the surreal and the downright strange. Dressed in an impressive-looking tuxedo and managing to make his thick-framed, round, Harry Potter-style glasses actually look cool, Jackson speaks about why he uses his status to help the particular cause he has chosen.

“We do our best to create awareness, to give something back to all the people that support us and this is one of the ways we can do that,” he says. “You know, by supporting charities, supporting children that need our help. We spent a lot of our energies going to underdeveloped countries, and we kind of forget that there are people close by who need our help also.”

The ‘we’ that Jackson refers to is his own charity organisation, called (predictably) the Samuel L. Jackson foundation. Despite the profile inherently attached to the organisation by virtue of its A-list name, it is difficult to pin down what specifically the Foundation does – with its actions varying between donating money to educational foundations, Aids initiatives, orphanages and other worthy causes around the world as they come up.

Last Saturday, 13^th February, saw the Foundation providing for yet another cause, as UCD hosted the ‘Night of Love’ in the O’Reilly Hall – a red carpet, glitz-‘n’-glamour night of Irish celebrities and top class entertainment in association with Irish Autism Action. The night was a matter very close to the heart of co-organiser and co-host Keith Duffy, who has been involved with the latter charity since his own daughter, Mia, was born with autism nine years ago.

“What’s special about tonight is obviously we have a global superstar, Samuel L. Jackson, flying into Ireland to host the event,” Duffy says, outside the venue questionably described as ‘magnificent’ by the event’s publicity handlers. “Why it’s important to me is it’s not only about fundraising, it’s not only about making money and providing services. It’s also about awareness. It’s about helping people understand what autism is. There’s a huge ignorance out there and people don’t really know what autism is. So it’s trying to get that message across, and trying to educate people on this disability – and let people know that there are ways of helping these children, educating these children, and helping these children reach their true potential in life. And, unfortunately, that’s not provided through the state so we have to provide it ourselves. But the more noise we make, the more awareness we get.”

Jackson himself seemed to be in a similar vein about the issue. How did he become involved with the event – and how did he become aware of the work of Irish Autism Action? “I’d been doing events in Europe,” he says deeply, looking over the rims of his perfectly circular spectacles. “My European publicity person has been trying to put me together with different people in Europe to sponsor events. We started looking around for different charities in the country, and she discovered the Irish Autism Action. I have some friends in America who have a big autism society and they have an autistic child also. And having been around him and watching him grow, and watch it blossom because of all the work that they did – well, that was one of the things that made me say, ‘Well, that’s a wonderful thing that we should attach ourselves to’ – maybe bring those two charities together. Hopefully through my foundation, and their foundation, I’ll be able to spread the word to some other people in America – maybe be able to cross hands over this pond, and do some really good things for autism.”

Of course, when Jackson’s not doing his bit to help effect change within the wider world, he has been known to star in the odd film. So is Jackson conscious of his prolific cool guy image? “About four more years and I’ll be too old for it. We’ll see what happens.” This seems openly debatable: considering the man is already 61 years of age and seems to be looking better – and cooler – than ever, it seems unlikely that he’ll ever be able to shake off his public persona.

It’s this badass image that has shaped Jackson’s career, skyrocketing him to become one of the highest grossing film stars since his breakthrough performance in Pulp Fiction in 1994. Interestingly, Jackson has become renowned for actually enjoying watching his own films, his methodology for choosing his work being simple: he picks the sorts of roles that he would like to watch. What does he think, therefore, about the likes of Johnny Depp who famously insist on never watching their own performances? “Johnny Depp should get another job,” Jackson quips with a knowing smile. “Everybody feels about it differently. I don’t know why he wouldn’t. I’m sure there’s time he sits down and watches his films and he is very critical of them. I don’t know how he judges whether he can act or not. That’s Johnny.”

As it turns out, this is not Jackson’s first time setting foot on Irish soil. As well as having performed at the Gate Theatre, Jackson makes sure to visit from time to indulge in one of his lesser-known loves: a round of golf. Golf is so important to Jackson, in fact, that his film contracts contain a clause stating that Jackson must be given at least two days off each week of a film shoot, in order to allow him further his passion. On this visit, Jackson found himself in a bizarre golf pairing with Ronan Keating. How did he get on? “I played well, actually.  I had a good time out there. It wasn’t as cold as I thought it would be, and the golf course [The K Club in Straffan, Co Kildare] was a lot of fun and challenging. I’ll be back.” Jackson, however, remained strangely cryptic about the ultimate outcome of the game. “I have no idea who won because I was not part of the competition.  They made me play with a lot of different people so I didn’t get to actually keep a score.” Sounds suspiciously like the excuse of someone who didn’t win – not, of course, that one would dare say so to his face.

So what comes next in the Samuel L. Jackson story? Though the casual globetrotting, the high-calibre golfing (he later admits to playing off a respectable handicap of six, in comparison to Keating’s 18) lifestyle and the commendable charity work would themselves make for a sufficiently decadent lifestyle, naturally – and not at all unexpectedly for a man of his acting pedigree – the call of the camera will prove too small to resist for long.

After his brief appearance as Nick Fury (based on a comic book character who in turn was modelled after Jackson himself… I know, trippy, right?) after the closing credits of Iron Man, Jackson has been signed up for a whole host of superhero films. “I’m working on Iron Man 2 at the moment; then they’re doing Thor, and Captain America comes next, and I don’t know when The Avengers will come but eventually there will be one. It’s not happening just yet.”

While it’s great that Jackson is using his celebrity status to help out with worthy causes on a global scale, it’s good to know that we we’re still a few years away from losing the coolest member of Hollywood’s elite from the silver screen. Though he may question how long his cool guy image will last, if Nick Fury is anything to go, Samuel L. Jackson has a proverbial ton of coolness left in him yet.

Oscar buzz is at fever pitch… or so I’m told by people who talk like that. Yes, it’s that time of year again when the industry gathers together to give themselves a royal pat on the back and say, “We’re brilliant!” And, to be fair, the last year has been quite impressive, with 2009 being less franchise-encrusted than previous years. Does this mean that there’s going to be a close call for the number one spot? Well, no, but we’ll get to that.

A new addition for this year’s awards is the choice to have ten shortlisted nominations for Best Picture, rather than the standard five. Which begs the question: well, why? In theory, it sort of makes sense – it gives a broader group of films the opportunity of winning that little golden man of their filmmaking dreams. But in actuality it does no such thing, because it’s pretty much been pre-determined who’s going to win. Sure, there’s a little bit of fighting going on between Avatar and The Hurt Locker for that number one spot (and, at a push, Inglourious Basterds) but that leaves seven others being teased with their nomination. And apart from maybe District 9, there’s nothing especially unusual on the list.

There’s Crazy Heart – pretty much The Wrestler with a guitar. There’s Precious – which seems to be trying too hard to be “an Oscar film”. If the idea is to broaden the kind of films voted for, the Academy could, at least, have put Star Trek in there. Hell, if they were going for variety, why not throw in Paul Blart: Mall Cop?

Of course, there are more awards than just Best Picture and some of them are pretty tight races. For instance, the Best Actor category is anyone’s call between Jeff Bridges, George Clooney and Colin Firth. But other sections hardly even need to be contested, with the competitive aspect seeming more out of courtesy than anything else. Best Animation? Up. Best Supporting Actor? Christopher Waltz (the Nazi in Inglourious Basterds. Yeah, he was great). The Academy, in reality, might as well just skip the whole process and just send the inevitable winners their little men in the post. And is there really even any point in having any films other than Avatar in the visual effects category? Apart from the visuals it’s really not got much going for it.

Of particular interest this year is the Animated Feature category. Sure, Up will definitely win, but it has impressive competition. In comparison to last year’s Bolt, Kung Fu Panda and WALL-E, this year actually varies from the whole ‘CGI animal does something whacky’ genre, and has a mixture of stop-motion and hand-drawn features to liven things up – not to mention The Secret of Kells, an Irish-produced feature. Still, Up will slaughter it, but it’s lovely that we’re being considered nonetheless.

What else is there to look forward to? There are all the other nominations for documentaries, editing, and the illustrious sound mixing categories, but these people aren’t as attractive as the George Clooneys of the night, so let’s move swiftly on. According to fashionable women, the evening’s dresses are a point of interest. Here’s hoping that Marilyn Monroe outdoes herself this year, because last year’s ill-concieved gorilla costume was frankly a bit of an embarrassment. But what may actually turn out to be the most genuinely interesting part of the night is the choice of Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin as co-hosts. Although everyone would prefer to witness their inevitable on-screen chemistry in some sort of buddy cop sitcom, their sure to be charming segues should suffice.

All in all: women will wear nice clothes, the chosen favourites will probably win, and famous people will have a nice big party. Boy howdy, it’s going to be a tight race. Except it won’t; it will be a really unfair race with too many contestants. Perhaps I’m just bitter because I know A Serious Man has practically no chance – and  in fairness, The Hurt Locker more than deserves to win a statue or two. The main fear is Avatar. Sure it looks pretty, but if James Cameron’s 3D Pocahontas manages to pull another Titanic we may as well just give up on films now. But perhaps that’s a tad over-dramatic. We may live in hope.

For such a freakishly successful show, it seems bizarre that every time LOST is mentioned in conversation I feel as if I have to defend it. It’s like the child that everyone gave up on; he showed such promise when he was young, but grew up into a weird lanky freak ranting about time travel and magic. And while a lot of people have completely lost (ho ho!) hope, there’s enough to make me think that going into the final season, LOST might actually pull the whole thing off and prove the naysayers and abandoners wrong.

Part of the reason people have such a vendetta against the show is because they were duped into watching a science fiction programme. It started as a serving of “will they, won’t they” sexual tension with a bit of “hey, what’s in this hatch?” on the side, but by season five it had grown to have everyone travelling through time, becoming ghosts, and fighting a cloud of smoke while Kate and Sawyer shag in a bear cage. It’s safe to say the show has changed quite a bit. It’s as if you were watching Castaway and someone came into the room, snapped the DVD in half and shoved in The X-Files. So people are understandably peeved at being tricked.

But what’s just plain irritating is the crowd who claim that LOST either doesn’t make any sense, or that it will never come up with answers to the insane number of questions it has given. While there is a bunch of questions I’ll doubt they’ll ever properly answer (Remember Walt, the weird psychic boy? They’ll probably just silently ignore that one), the show’s writers, in fairness, have answered a bunch. What’s in the hatch? An lunatic Scottish man who has to push a button every 108 minutes or else the world will explode. Why would it explode? Magnets or something. Genius. Even the history of the island is being explained in part – there was the Dharma Initiative in the 70s, testing on sharks and so on; before that there was some Egyptian malarkey, and everyone praised a giant statue occupied by a ghost man named Jacob. See? They know what they’re doing.

People who gave up on the show early also missed out on some of the best characters. Anyone remember Nikki and Paolo? They were the couple crowbarred into the cast before audience uproar forced the writers to kill them off by burying them alive. Then there was the eye-patched former Soviet soldier whose brain was fried, was shot in the chest with a harpoon but still survived just to blow himself up underwater. And last, but by no means least, Daniel Faraday, the awkward physicist who gave the show some fake science credibility. Time travel is believable if Faraday says so!

Yes, the dialogue is cheesy and the writers have a strange fixation on getting rid of plot problems by blowing them up (the hatch, the submarine, Charlie), but that’s part of the charm. And despite LOST’s blatant stupidity it does actually have an interesting philosophical subtext that you don’t really see in shows like Desperate Housewives and House. Having said that, if the show wasn’t so stupidly over the top I’d more than likely have given up on it long ago. But perhaps the fact that someone needs to die or explode every five to ten minutes says more about my attention span than the quality of the show.

As for the coming final season, we should give the writers the benefit of the doubt that they know what they’re doing. Season five ended on the now-traditional ridiculous cliffhanger, which in this case was detonating a hydrogen bomb that may rip a hole in the time-space continuum and reverse everything that has happened so far in the show. Of course, that’s just one of many theories, which are what make LOST so much fun. You can endlessly try to figure out what the hell is happening, and it’s undeniably satisfying being proved either right or wrong. As easy as it is to poke holes in what has happened so far, overall LOST has been a cohesive, entertaining and genuinely clever series.

In short: lay off LOST. It’s a unique programme that, apart from a few minor slip-ups (bet the writers are regretting putting in that second island), has been consistently impressive since its 2004 debut. They have a stupid amount of questions to answer, and I’m looking forward to watching them try. Of course, if the last season turns out to be atrocious, this article is void and I was on the opposite side all along. And as for the smoke monster… yeah, they better explain that thing properly.

Season six of LOST begins on Sky One this Friday, 5^th February, at 9pm.

After eight seasons, there’s no denying that Family Guy has lost some of its charm. For a show that’s built upon parody and references, it’s tough to compete with the ultimate pop culture reference machine of the internet. What better way to remedy this stale humour then, than by making a spin-off show featuring one of the least popular members of the original!

Firstly there’s the racism issue that apparently is much talked about. Seth MacFarlane and Co. clearly anticipated accusations of racist stereotyping when devising the show, so they threw in some white stereotypes for good measure, in the form of Cleveland’s hipster and hick neighbours. The logic seems to be that if you make fun of everyone, then nobody can get offended. To be honest, though, I’d be puzzled about anyone who actually watched the show and found it offensive, since it actually makes fun of racism itself. So, now that it’s not racist, is it any good?

In short: sort of, if in a sub-par Family Guy kind of way. The Cleveland Show relies far less on pop culture and that sort of “funny because it’s weird” style of humour that Family Guy has patented. Instead, we have funny-because-its-clichéd humour. While the jokes are incredibly hit or miss, they are at least a little broader than mere pop culture references. Another difference that makes a surprisingly large change is the fact that the show is in widescreen: more attention has been given to detail, and the animation is more fluid which makes some of the visual jokes a fair bit funnier.

The problem is that I just can’t see the point in The Cleveland Show’s existence. In America all three MacFarlane shows are back to back, which is just too much identikit humour for one man to take, and when the best part of the show is the intro sequence, you know there’s a problem. Having said that, the intro is spectacular.

All in all, The Cleveland Show is mediocre and a tad unnecessary. Worse than Family Guy, better than American Dad, overly similar to both. The entire series could have been condensed into one episode of Family Guy rather than its own series, and probably would have been better off. Isn’t the idea of a spin-off to revive a dying franchise? As far as I can tell, Family Guy is still doing pretty well.

If you literally cannot get enough of Seth MacFarlane then hurrah for you, you’re in luck. For everyone else, I suggest you read a book or something. The Shining is pretty good.

David O’Doherty is puffing out his cheeks like a chipmunk. “It’s my new default face,” he declares. “I’ve been working on some new faces.” otwo has accompanied O’Doherty into town after a gig in the UCD Student Bar, modestly described as “semi-floundering”: “It had some nice moments and then some boring moments. It’s a lot like life, you know?”

Never one to let the press down, O’Doherty agrees to an interview as we stand under a tree, with drunken twenty-somethings squinting to see if it really was the Irish comedian there braving the elements. All of this, just so David can get across one key point that seems to have been bothering him.

“There is meant to be an O in my name. I’d like to make that clear,” he laughs. “The Irish Times made up this thing about two years ago that I added an O for showbiz reasons, which is the last thing you’d do if you were trying to be more showbiz – make your name sound like an Irish wrestler.”

O’Doherty began comedy in 1999 after failing to follow in his father’s footsteps of becoming a jazz musician. Not, admittedly, the most obvious of career shifts. “I was temping after college and I hated temping. So I did a stand up gig and the first couple went quite well. I was lucky because the first was with Tommy Tiernan in a tiny bar. Then the second gig was with Ardal O’Hanlon, and if I’d started in, say, London it would have been like five years before I’d even gotten to meet those sorts of people. The fact that it’s Dublin meant that I could just experience being around them and see how they operate. So I learnt a great deal in a short time. And I went to Edinburgh, and won the newcomer award, and they gave me an enormous cheque for £1500. By enormous, I mean it was cardboard. So I was officially pro then, which meant I never had to go back to temping.”

Does he still get nervous? “I get nervous doing some of these TV gigs, where you’ve got that feeling of mistrust of yourself, of power, where you could just pull down your pants live on Australian television in front of six million people. You could say ‘arseballs’ on Rick O’Shea’s afternoon show on 2FM and get him into trouble. But no, I don’t really get nervous anymore… If you go out on stage and you are nervous, it is very hard to make things up. The antithesis of improvisation is shitting yourself.”

In the cold with puddles surrounding us, O’Doherty muses about Twitter. “I’m really fascinated by the psychology of status updates on Twitter. People sending out these weirdly aspirational messages about their own life: ‘Just had a picnic on a hill. What a dream day’, Which is achieving nothing in the world… If you’re a newsmaker and you’re announcing that the new currency of Ireland is children, then you should have a Twitter, and Twitter as much as your tweeting heart desires, but to me it seems like filling the world with unnecessary information.”

It is this type of thinking that O’Doherty has built a career upon; otwo asks if a comedian’s lifestyle contributed to this. “Y’can go a bit insane because you don’t have much to do during the day, but that’s only if your head isn’t right. Just treat it as a sort of massive holiday. I certainly remember as a kid pulling a sicky from school one day, it being a nice day… sitting out in the garden and going, ‘All those losers are in school and I’m having some sweet sunshine.’ Sometimes I think my life is like that. Especially when I phone someone up at 2:30pm and go, ‘Let’s play pitch and putt,’ and they tell me to keep my voice down because the boss is near.”

It is this unique way of looking at the world that has been the cause of O’Doherty’s success. “I think part of being a good comedian is having the bravery to fail whereby you’re not put off your own thing. The world doesn’t really need more stand up comedians who’ve figured up how stand up comedy works and do the thing that works, which is to be reasonably high energy and talk about things that everybody knows. What the world needs are new people with unique standpoints. That’s why Maeve Higgins in this country is so unique. She is really getting the reputation she deserves overseas now; people going ‘where the fuck did this come from?’”

It’s getting wet, so otwo concludes by asking what other comedians inspire him. “I still get incredibly inspired every year going to Edinburgh or going to Montreal. You might see three or four people who really remind you of why you’re doing it in the first place, which is not to write jokes that other people laugh at. You hope they do, but the reason to do it is to write jokes that you find interesting and are a reflection of your own unique mind. It’s like when you hear a new band that you really, really like. And I still get a buzz from that.”

Reeling in the Years is a bit of a televisual oddity. Popular across generations, it uniquely provides a type of entertaining history lesson. It is strange to think that it is one of RTÉ’s most popular programmes, but the broad audience demographic and general interest factor goes a long way to explaining this.

Producer John O’Regan describes the show in as straightforward a way as possible: “Reeling in the Years takes a year, takes some of the major events in news, current affairs, sport, politics, culture, entertainment and it combines them together with a soundtrack of pop music, hits from that year and with text captions to keep the viewer informed as to the content of what’s happening on screen.” His explanation is similar to the show: simple, but effective.

Condensing a year into half an hour is a significant undertaking, one that O’Regan is all too familiar with. “The basic way in which we make a programme hasn’t really changed since the beginning. On paper at least, you start out by looking at the major events of a given year. And you just make a list of the Irish and international events. I would also scan the charts for every single week of that year and pick the music that I think might be relevant, or massive hits that people will obviously know. But in particular I look for music that might match the story. RTÉ obviously owns a lot of its own footage and that would be drawn, like I say, from news, music, sport, entertainment.”

“We always thought that it was very important to include international stories to give a balance and a context to what was going on in Ireland at the time, so we buy in the rights to transmit footage. There’s obviously a limited budget on what you can afford. We hold the view that that’s a very important and desirable part of the programme to be able to include, [and] being able to show what’s going on internationally does balance the Irish material.”

With internet forums bursting with pleads for DVD releases of the different years, there is clearly a dedicated fanbase. I was curious to see if O’Regan had any theories for why it is such a hit. “I don’t think there’s any one reason. I think Reeling in the Years is quite a modest programme and I would be quite modest about it. It doesn’t use a presenter; it doesn’t use talking-head guests who interrupt the footage to tell you about their memories.”

“The strength of not having the presenter or guests for this kind of programme is that you don’t really get in the way of people’s own memories or their own experience of the moment that you’re showing them on television. Whether or not you remember it directly and where you were when you saw that happen or whether you can sit through it and say ‘crikey’ this is what my parents would have seen that night if they’d been watching television of that event.”

One of the most notable points about the show is the fantastically ironic use of music, providing this history show with a kind of comedy. “The music provides a pace,” explains O’Regan. “It provides a mood and a context, and it allows you to combine events that you normally wouldn’t combine together. For example, we don’t just stop the show to say ‘well, it was a big year for sport’ and do all the sport in one go and do all the politics in one go. If you have the right tune you can combine politics, sport and entertainment all in one go, and it gives you a different pace. Then the unseen hand, if you like, is the script which I would personally spend a long time writing.

“The script is to me the critical thing because it has to be very concise but, at the same time, if you don’t have your own personal memories or you don’t know what’s going on this is the key. This is the minimum of what you need to know to understand what’s going on in front of you. That to me is critical; the role of the script is to tee up the sequence of events. So I think because it doesn’t have a presenter or guests it doesn’t age in the same way. So programmes that were made in, say, 1999 or 2000, can still be shown again, because the year 1987 doesn’t fundamentally change, no matter how far away you get from it. Your view of it will. Another layer of events and time will have come upon it and it may affect your view of certain events, but the events themselves, a lot of them, are exactly as they were, and people’s view of them are exactly as they were. It can become your own programme, in a way, because certain years will mean certain things to certain people.”

With only half an hour to cover each year, clearly some stories will have to be left out. So how do the producers choose which parts to leave in? “It has to be selective and it’s done largely on instinct. There are some events you’ve just go to put in because they’re obvious. How we make it is we start with notes on paper and think that maybe this will fit with this and that will fit with the other. Or, because of the nature of hindsight, it can be something that was inadvertent at the time that has acquired significance beyond it.

“For example, a clip that is often talked about is Charlie Haughey discussing what he would do if he won the lottery in 1987, which is a perfectly reasonable comment to make at the time, he says, ‘Well, I’d give a bit to charity, I’d give a bit to sporting organisations and I’d keep a bit for myself.’ Obviously, because of events and revelations subsequent to it, it has a significance that goes far beyond what was transmitted in 1987. So sometimes it’s small things, and what you’re looking to do by assembling this is to balance entertainment and information, to balance Irish with international, to balance lighter with more serious content. You don’t really know how that’s going to work out until you put it together and see how the music in particular works with certain images.”

Clearly there’s an audience hungry for some more edutainment. What, if anything, is the future for Reeling in the Years? “Sometime next year we will go into production on a new series that will cover the noughties, the years 2000-2009. My view is that you can only make a series at the end of a decade.”

Having brought so much nostalgic joy to Ireland for years already, let’s hope RTÉ keeps up this tradition for many decades to come.

Reeling in the 90s is out now on DVD.