The Walshes
Thursday, RTE 1 - 10.15 (episode 2) or BBC4 - 10pm (episode 1)
The Walshes is an old-fashioned domestic sitcom mixed with the over-the-top acting of a sketch show; it comes without a laughter track or a studio audience.
The three-part sitcom is directed and co-written by Graham Linehan and the young Irish comedy troupe Diet of Worms, and produced by RTÉ and the BBC. The troupe also make up most of the cast.
The show centres on a west Dublin family made up of Irish mammy Carmel (Philippa Dunne), a taxi-driving messer da (Niall Gaffney) and adult children Ciara (Amy Stephenson) and Rory (Rory Connolly).
However, there has been much criticism of the show on Twitter. One viewer even tweeted him directly critiquing the episode, to which Graham replied: 'Who don't you stop tweeting and watch the f**king thing. Moron.'
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The Michael McIntyre Show
Monday, BBC1 - 10:35pm
Last person who had a Monday night chat show on BBC1 was Terry Wogan.
Terry Wogan is one of the TV host greats, and Lily Allen eponymous talk show hit trouble almost immediately when the audience walked out during the filming of episode one and was cancelled after the first season.
Michael Parkinson says that it’s journalists, not comedians, who make the best chat-show hosts. “If you look at the number of people who tried talk shows since I started in 1971, it’s like a tombstone,” he said recently. “The graveyard is full of people who tried talk shows and didn’t make it, mainly because they weren’t journalists. There isn’t one talk show on television today that asks questions or listens to answers.
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Film of the Week: My Week with Marilyn
Thursday BBC2 - 9PM
My Week with Marilyn is a 2011 British drama film directed by Simon Curtis and written by Adrian Hodges.
The cast includes names such as Michelle Williams, Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Redmayne, Dominic Cooper, Julia Ormond, Emma Watson and Judi Dench.
Based on two books by Colin Clark, it depicts the making of the 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl, which starred Marilyn Monroe (Williams) and Laurence Olivier (Branagh).
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New Fargo (TV series)
Channel 4 is to broadcast the TV adaptation of the Coen brothers' Oscar-winning film Fargo, starring Billy Bob Thornton and Sherlock's Martin Freeman.
The 10-part series will have its US premiere in April on cable channel FX and air in the UK shortly afterward
Set in Minnesota, it will focus on a small-town insurance salesman preyed upon by a manipulative drifter.
Colin Hanks, Oliver Platt and Breaking Bad's Bob Odenkirk also have roles in the MGM Television production.British star Freeman plays the role of Lester Nygaard, an insurance salesman based on the character William H Macy played in the film.
Thornton plays Lorne Malvo, a character the actor described as a "mysterious stranger from out of town" at a Fargo press event in January.
