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Irish Times
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Other potential new names for the Department of Arts: Smacc, Cacs, Scam and – my favourite
The Government has lost the arts down the back of the sofa again. Look, it happens. It's probably nothing to worry about. It knows it's there. It hasn't abandoned the arts as if it were a failed IT project or anything. Not yet. This is about nomenclature. 'Arts' has been dropped from the name of the department in charge of it as part of a string of shake-ups, with the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media losing responsibility for tourism and the Gaeltacht and becoming the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport. [ Arts Council wrote to officials almost 60 times over botched IT project without issue being escalated Opens in new window ] On Wednesday we were treated to an official denial that this penalty was for the crime of starting with a vowel. Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport Patrick O'Donovan , as he's now known, was reportedly wary of a name change to the Department of Sport, Media, Arts, Culture and Communications because he didn't want to be Minister for Smacc. READ MORE Other acronyms were available. We could have had Cacs, which would have conjured up a lovely image every time, or Scam. My personal choice would have been to name it the Department of Sport, Arts and Communications and then dub it DoSac, in homage to the chaotic Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship from Armando Iannucci 's BBC satire The Thick of It. Asked about the Smacc theory at this week's meeting of the relevant Oireachtas committee – which still has arts in its title – the department's secretary general, Feargal Ó Coigligh , said the previous name was 'seen to be a mouthful' and the Minister was anxious that the new one be 'accessible'. Across European ministries, 'culture' was the term usually favoured. 'Culture is the normal word that's used,' he said, seeming relieved to take a break from raking over how the Arts Council spent €6.7 million on a botched, bug-riddled IT project. The upshot of the committee meeting, as summarised by its chairman, Alan Kelly of the Labour Party, was that the department has more questions to answer about its handling of that fandango. With O'Donovan opting not to appoint Maureen Kennelly for a further five-year term as director of the Arts Council , Kelly couldn't help feeling that she had become 'a sacrificial lamb'. There was some eagerness, too, about O'Donovan's scheduled appearance before the committee in early July. He may no longer be minister for the arts, but he is still, after all, the Minister in charge of the Arts Council. He's also the Minister who has backed extending the Basic Income for the Arts scheme beyond its pilot phase, though that doesn't, of course, guarantee the introduction of these financial lifelines for artists. This Coalition, like the one before it, is so good at being non-committal, and so adept at being angered and disappointed by various agencies and semi-States, that it seems a stretch to think it would bother vanishing 'arts' from the department name as part of any distancing exercise. But some believe the ditching bodes ill. Labour's arts spokesman, Rob O'Donoghue, has blasted the rebrand as shameful, saying that it sends a message – some might say an unnecessary one – to artists 'that they don't matter and aren't a priority'. Subsuming arts into 'merely culture' is symbolic of artists' status as 'the poor relation within the department', O'Donoghue suggests. It's a Smacc-down. Naturally, no one cares about 'media' being swallowed up by 'communications'. And few will remember that before the last name change, in 2020, the reconfigured department was first announced as the Department of Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht before someone realised that this was not the correct pecking order and booted 'media' down the back. 'Arts' has, by comparison, enjoyed long spells on departmental stationery. Responsibility for it escaped the Department of the Taoiseach in 1993, when Michael D Higgins became minister for arts, culture and the Gaeltacht. Since then there have been two artsless periods – May 2010-June 2011 and August 2017-September 2020 – with culture reigning supreme both times. [ Up to 90: The best Irish words and phrases Opens in new window ] I haven't always been a fan of the term 'the arts'. I've recoiled from it because of the precious way that a minority invoke it as a kind of extension of their privilege, trumpeting it as a rarefied and narrowly defined practice, replete with gatekeeping and entitlement. 'Culture', by contrast, is a word that seems to reflect the entire sweep of creativity embedded in our lives. Culture is not 'merely culture'. It's inseparable from who we are. But these semantics are only safe to explore in the abstract, divorced from concerns about political expediency – even the slightest hint that it might be convenient for the Government to jettison 'arts' from the department name is enough to render the demotion ominous and, well, artless. It's possibly either too late or too soon for a Save the Arts campaign. Still, prepare your placards. We must start one in support of the establishment of the Department of Smacc right away.
Irish Post
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Post
Top Irish cast to join Love/Hate creator Stuart Carolan for darkly-comic crime drama, Tall Tales & Murder
A CAST of top Irish talent has been lined up for a new darkly-comic crime drama, which is being adapted for the small screen by Love/Hate creator Stuart Carolan. Tall Tales & Murder is based on Irish writer Caimh McDonnell's Dublin Trilogy, whch, despite its name, is a series of eight books that follows the exploits of former garda Bunny McGarry. British comedian Chris Addison has co-created the show with Carolan, while the series will star Love/Hate alumnus Aidan Gillen. Also among the cast are Irish stars Ella Lily Hyland (Towards Zero), Philippa Dunne (Derry Girls) and Packy Lee (Peaky Blinders). Two six-part series have been commissioned by RTÉ and BBC Northern Ireland, in association with Screen Ireland, while the show is produced by Avalon. 'Dark and delicious' Carolan expressed his delight at working with Addison on the series, which began filming in Ireland this week and is set to premiere in 2026. "I've been a fan of the brilliant Chris Addison since The Thick of It — it's been incredible fun working with him to bring this insane story to life," he said. Addison will serve as director and producer on the series. As well as starring in The Thick of It, the comedian and writer will also be familiar to fans of TV panel show, Mock the Week, where he was a regular guest. The Tall Tales & Murder team (clockwise from top left) includes Ella Lily Hyland, Aidan Gillen, Philippa Dunne, Chris Addison, Stuart Carolan and Packy Lee (Image: BBC Media) Addison co-created the comedy series Breeders, directing several episodes, and received an Emmy nomination for his directorial work on the US sitcom, Veep. "I'm frankly giddy with delight to get to team up with the twisted and highly-original mind of Stuart Carolan to create this show," he said. "We've taken Caimh's wonderful novel as a jumping off point and ended up with what I like to think of as a dark and delicious screwball drama." Shining a light on modern Ireland Eddie Doyle, Head of Content Commissioning at BBC Northern Ireland, described Carolan and Addison as 'masters of their craft'. "Tall Tales & Murder is storytelling at its darkest, funniest and most surreal," he said. "We're looking forward to bringing audiences with us on this wild and thrilling ride from Stuart Carolan and Chris Addison, masters of their craft. "There's a fantastic cast already on board and we can't wait to work with Avalon, in association with Metropolitan Pictures, and RTÉ to take it from script to screen." Meanwhile, Rob Aslett, Executive Producer for Avalon, added: "Stuart's brilliant scripts have created a wildly-original crime drama that shines a light on a modern Ireland and we can't wait to bring this show to life with a fantastic cast led by Ella, Aidan, Philippa and Packy."
Irish Examiner
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
TV review: I was glad to see the closing credits of Mountainhead
I was in two minds about Mountainhead (Sky Atlantic and NOW). Every now and again I wished this movie was a series but mainly I was glad that I didn't have to spend more than 90 minutes with the main characters. I wanted it to be a series because it's directed by Jesse Armstrong, who was involved with The Thick of It and Succession, two of the best 21st century telly satires. But this one is about four super-rich tech titans, awful men who are happy to set the world on fire as long as their net worth is bigger than the next guy. In this case, the world is literally in flames as the four former frat-boys gather in a Bond-villain mountain retreat to play poker and rekindle their time in The Brewsters. I think that's a fraternity, we're not told. The chief villain is Venis – his social-media platform Traam has just released new features which make it too easy to produce deep-fake videos, which are then used to incite hatred and sectarianism across the globe. His goofy friend Jeff has an AI platform that could douse the flames by identifying any false videos, if only he'd make that technology available to Traam. Overseeing it all is Randall, AKA Papa Bear, which sees Steve Carrell in top Steve Carrell form, playing the original tech God, who likes to name-drop philosophers to justify making money no matter what. The fourth character is the host, Souper, the poorest of the group with a net worth of $550 million. Fans of Succession will like the look and feel of Mountainhead. You've got your fleets of private jets and expensive 4x4s, whisking middle-aged white people here and there. There are put-upon personal assistants making knowing glances at the camera. Everyone is terribly dressed, expensively. But there isn't enough fun. Succession and The Thick of It allowed their characters sufficient humanity and awareness to make jokes about themselves and each other. The four tech bros here are too consumed by themselves to get a decent laugh. There is oodles of acting talent here, but it's wasted with long monologues that could have been lifted from Elon Musk's twitter account. We don't need a telly drama to tell us that super-rich white American nerds are a danger to the planet, we can get that from the news. There are some very funny bits. Souper being parachuted in to head a coup in Argentina is a lovely touch; the bit where Venis tries to bond with his baby boy is gold; the scene around the sauna terrifyingly hilarious. But I was glad to see the closing credits and the back of The Brewsters.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Lancashire are tearing themselves apart on and off the pitch
The crisis enveloping Lancashire has deepened, as Dale Benkenstein left the club 'by mutual consent' on Wednesday, just a day before an AGM that promises to be explosive. Lancashire are enduring a desperate season on the field. Relegated from Division One of the County Championship last season, they are winless and a single point off bottom place in the second tier as the competition takes its mid-point break for the Vitality T20 Blast. Promotion, for which they were widely tipped, is slipping beyond their reach. A fortnight ago, Lancashire issued an unprecedented apology to members for the 'disappointing start' to the season, bemoaning the flat pitches at Old Trafford, but crucially backing Benkenstein and his coaching team. That statement was issued at 11.25am, but a little over three hours later in a move reminiscent of a scene from The Thick of It, another missive followed saying Keaton Jennings was resigning as captain of the County Championship team with in-form Australian Marcus Harris taking over. After a draw against Derbyshire and a thumping defeat at leaders Leicestershire in Harris's two games in charge, Benkenstein has now followed Jennings in leaving his post. Steven Croft, the 40-year-old who retired from playing last season, has been placed in interim charge. The messy, muddled triptych of statements act as an emblem for the club's start to a season in which Lancashire have been so bad that barely anyone noticed Yorkshire's slide to the lower reaches of Division One. South African Benkenstein, who enjoyed a fine career as a player, arrived from Gloucestershire, who finished bottom of Division Two in his last season in 2023 and had won just two Championship matches in two years. At Lancashire, he managed just three red-ball wins, all of them in a relegation campaign last year, out of 21 matches. It leaves the club at a low ebb; a far cry from 2022, when they finished second in all three county competitions. To compete on all three fronts is a fine achievement. All the while, a host of Lancashire products thrive elsewhere, such as Nottinghamshire captain Haseeb Hameed, Warwickshire captain Alex Davies, and Surrey's lynchpin Jordan Clark. It is unusual for a county coach to depart mid-season, but this one was greeted with little surprise and few complaints. Now, attention among a restless, angry support base will turn to those who hired him just 18 months ago with such a modest record: Mark Chilton, the director of cricket, Daniel Gidney, the chief executive, and Andy Anson, the chairman. They may feel that the departure of Benkenstein will slightly quieten the music they face at the annual general meeting at 4pm on Thursday, but that seems optimistic. Many will see the coach leaving as mere window dressing. Lancashire are as busy as any county cricket club. On the cricket side, they host men's and women's internationals, a Hundred franchise (which they are partnering with Indian Premier League side Lucknow Super Giants), a men's county team, and a tier-one women's team. They are also developing a playing and training base away from Old Trafford at Farington near Preston. Off the field, at their headquarters they have two hotels, a successful conferencing and events business, and have hosted major concerts. This makes them, and Surrey, the envy of other counties in terms of year-round non-cricket business. The two sides of the business should be able to coexist, but the sense among those close to the club is that the building of the off-field business has contributed to a loss of focus on cricket. Club legend David 'Bumble' Lloyd used his column in the Daily Mail last week to opine on the club's demise. 'There is a feeling, from both within and outside the club, that cricket isn't the main priority,' he wrote. 'Rather the balance sheet is. That is a real concern. We must get back to being a cricket club.' Lloyd described Anson, who is also CEO of the British Olympic Association, as a 'thoroughly decent bloke who is very busy doing lots of other things, so he can't be hands-on', adding that the well-respected board member John Abrahams is the 'only one with any cricket knowledge at senior level'. For context, Lloyd's lifetime in and around the club has led to him becoming one of 29 vice-presidents at Lancashire, and he still works for the club in commentary and commercial roles. He knows the place like the back of his hand, and his words carry weight. Lloyd's words would chime with many of Lancashire's members, who have been vocal in their dissent for some years. As one says: 'Lancashire and Old Trafford have become an events business attached to an inconvenient cricket team, and an even more inconvenient membership alongside that.' The members have a fraught relationship with the club's leaders. Anson has been in charge since 2020, and Gidney was appointed CEO in 2012, making him one of the longest-serving officials in county cricket. He has helped transform Lancashire off the field, has been innovative in his courting of the lucrative Indian market, and has been a great champion of women's cricket. It should be noted that Lancashire won the inaugural Vitality Women's County Cup on Monday, so it has not all been bad on the field at the start of the season. But he has also had a way of angering cricket fans, not least when he told a Lancashire members' forum that some non-host counties were like 'heroin addicts' in their reliance on the England and Wales Cricket Board. This matter is understood to have been raised at meeting of county leaders. On the more extreme fringe of the Red Rose membership was the Lancashire Action Group, which was founded in 2014 and replaced by Lancashire CC Members Group last year. Earlier this month, their leader Alan Higham wrote an open letter looking ahead to the AGM, saying 'the club is struggling – both on the pitch, financially and for the continued support of loyal fans'. They laid out a series of complaints, including the failure of the club to allow members to be represented on the board, and the stifling of dissent. Some of these issues can be expected to dominate proceedings at the AGM on Thursday. But chief among their complaints was 'a loss of focus on Lancashire CCC'. They accuse the club of failing to encourage attendances at Lancashire matches. In 2019, the last season before the pandemic and the inaugural Hundred, Lancashire's Blast attendances averaged more than 10,000. In 2024, not helped by a washed-out Roses match, that dropped to under 5,500. The highest attendance was still the Yorkshire fixture, at 7,699, with the lowest just 3,768. Blast numbers have been declining across the country since the Hundred (and will continue to do so this year, with advanced sales very poor), but Lancashire's is an extreme example. Membership figures have been dropping, too; in 2006, Lancashire had more than 12,000 members. Now they have just 1,400 full annual members, along with a few thousand others in lower categories that allow access to international tickets. This group clearly fluctuates year-on-year; there were a total of 8,604 members for the Ashes year of 2023, but that dropped to 5,022 in 2024. Members are always likely to grumble when a team perform as poorly as Lancashire are now. But for all that the off-field business is well set up, the club's finances are in a tight spot. When their last accounts (for 2023) were published, Lancashire had £32.2 million of debt, which is expensive to service. The club's finances are tied to the England calendar, and are vulnerable to the whims of the weather. In 2023, they hosted an Ashes Test, but two days were badly affected by rain, costing them revenue. Last year, their Test against Sri Lanka was a low-key affair, while the Roses match and T20 international against Australia were both rained off – bad luck, and brutal for the balance sheet. Next year, Old Trafford does not host a Test match of any sort, denying the club income from advance ticket sales, and in 2027 they are due to host a Test, but not in the Ashes. Last summer, concern about the club's cash flow rose among the playing group when there was a delay in their expenses being paid, affecting some players' personal financial position. When contacted by Telegraph Sport about this last year, the club accepted that one payment was delayed, putting it down to a change of system. Concerts, like Test matches, have been a sure-fire money-spinner for Lancashire in recent decades. There are currently no concerts in the diary, which the club say is because they are focusing on cricket. But reports in local and national media earlier this year revealed that Trafford Council, the local authority, had taken Lancashire CCC and mega-promoter Live Nation to court over an incident in which a member of the public was injured at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert three years ago. The trial will not happen until March 2027, and Lancashire are still able to host concerts while this happens, although it could be that the opening of the Co-Op Live arena in Manchester affects who performs there. Later this year, Lancashire will be offered a route out of their financial difficulties by the Hundred sale. Gidney, Anson and former board member James Sheridan deserve credit for their work on this, which secured them the IPL partner they so desperately sought, Lucknow's billionaire owner Sanjiv Goenka, and a good overall value of £116 million. Lancashire were gifted 51 per cent of the franchise by the ECB, and chose to sell 21 per cent and keep 30 per cent of it, meaning Goenka is buying 70 per cent overall. When the deal is eventually done – and it is not Lancashire or their partners dragging their feet – the club could receive upwards of £40 million and an opportunity to write off some of that debt and build the business further. That can wait, though. The first step out of Lancashire's crisis will be to win a few games.
Belfast Telegraph
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Belfast Telegraph
‘Just sprinkle your swearing s*** all over it': How The Thick of It redefined expletives on TV
Armando Iannucci wanted to make something 'rough and ready' about what politics was really like in the 2000s. With a team of talented writers, he created a classic comedy that still resonates today. Katie Rosseinsky dissects the anatomy of its foul-mouthed invective It takes about one minute for a verbal grenade to be lobbed in The Thick of It's first episode. Spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, played by Peter Capaldi, is on the phone, mouthing off about an MP, who, in Tucker's estimation at least, is not just totally rubbish at his job, he's 'as useless as a marzipan dildo'. As insults go, it's lewd but also ludicrous, utterly damning yet surreally silly. And, as the show's creator Armando Iannucci says, it 'sets the tone for everything' to come. Over the course of four series and one Oscar-nominated spin-off film, The Thick of It raised the bar with some of the most creative invective ever heard on television. The political sitcom, which debuted in an appropriately post-watershed late slot on BBC Four on 19 May 2005, ushered viewers behind the scenes in the fictional – but all too realistic – Department for Social Affairs (it would add Citizenship to its cumbersome remit in later seasons).
