Christmas & New Year on RT One, RT 2 & RT jr 02 December 2014: RT today unveiled its bumper festive line-up across RT One, RT 2 and RT jr with a huge range of programming to keep everyone entertained over the Christmas season.
This Christmas viewers can look forward to comedy specials from Mrs. Brown's Boys, Callan's Kicks, The Savage Eye and Mario Rosenstock; explosive drama from Fair City; heart warming specials from At Your Service To The Rescue, Una's Dream Ticket and RTEjr's Made with Love. Alongside brand new festive entertainment shows and documentaries including Mark Pollacks's Unbreakable, When Ryan Met Niall, Man On Bridge, The Longford Phoenix, What's Another Year: The Life and Times of Shay Healy and Weather Beaten, a John Creedon weather special.
Plus we'll have our annual favourites including The RT Sports Awards 2014 and Christmas Carols from Kilkenny. Big movie premi res to entertain young and old include; Argo, Django Unchained, The Help, War Horse, Happy Feet Two, The Dark Knight Rises and Anna Karenina.
Meanwhile Kathryn Thomas and Paddy McKenna will be ringing in 2015 live on RT One and we'll be kicking off the New Year with a bang with Charlie, a trilogy of feature-length television dramas, based on real events, as well as the big return of The Voice of Ireland and an explosive hour-long episode of Fair City.
Highlights across the channels include:
RT One
The phenomenon that is the award-winning Mrs Brown's Boys returns to RT One this Christmas for a double dose of mayhem and laughs. Christmas is just around the corner and Agnes already has her tinsel in a twist. Cathy's hiding something from her and the family are insisting upon a cost-cutting Secret Santa! And, after a spate of burglaries in Finglas, Agnes asks Buster Brady to fit a new alarm system.
It's Christmas at The Zoo, and narrator Tom Dunne is getting his skates on to join the zookeepers for a well earned day out at the ice-rink after another busy year taking care of the animals at Dublin Zoo.
Fair City fans can look forward to two separate hour long specials of their favourite soap over the festive season on Christmas day and Sunday, 4th January. Paul gets a surprise when an unexpected visitor shows up on his doorstep, Charlie struggles with his first Christmas without Esther, Pete tries to keep both his families happy on Christmas day and a gas leak at the Station bar has devastating consequences for one of the Carrigstown residents.
Donal Skehan's Kitchen Hero: Donal's Christmas Feast will have a Christmas theme with Donal visiting a turkey farm and a bakery selling mince pies while Rachel Allen will show us how to shake up your traditional dessert menu and serve up something a little different with some exciting flavours and aromas that will make your Christmas one to remember in Rachel Allen's Sweet Christmas.
Oliver Callan is back as Callan Kicks the Year returns for its second Christmas special outing with Dobbo at the helm of an acerbic and funny look at Ireland and the world in 2014.
Ireland's top hoteliers John and Francis Brennan are back to undertake their biggest project to date. This hour long special At Your Service To The Rescue, follows the brothers as they take on Padhraic Dormer's challenge to help Enable Ireland, a charity close to his heart.
RT One also sees a host of special one-off documentaries and festive entertainment shows.
Unbreakable tells the inspirational story of Mark Pollocks amazing strength and positivity in the face of incredible obstacles throughout his life.
One Direction are the biggest pop phenomenon in history, in When Ryan Met Niall Ryan Tubridy goes to Mullingar to talk to some of the people who helped make Niall Horan the man he is today. Ryan then catches up with him during the middle of One Direction's sold out stadium tour of America for a back stage chat.
Man On Bridge tells the extraordinary story of legendary Dublin street photographer Arthur Fields. Having spent fifty years from the 1930s to the 1980s taking photographs on O'Connell Bridge, Arthur left a lasting impression on the lives of many Irish families and indeed on the fabric of the city itself.
As 2014 draws to a close, RT News looks back at the stories that made the headlines in their News Review of the Year a year that roared in with storms and flooding, and went on to be dominated by protests over water charges; a year that saw a Garda Commissioner, a Minister for Justice and a Labour leader stand-down and saw politicians of many hues under pressure.
In Weather Beaten John Creedon is joined by Nuala Carey and George Lee as we look back at the remarkable year of weather in 2014 and the people in the eye of the storms.
On Christmas Morning, 2009, the people of Longford woke up to the devastating news that their beloved St Mel's Cathedral was engulfed by flames. In a Would You Believe? special The Longford Phoenix, RT s Midlands Correspondent, Ciar n Mullooly, and Would You Believe? filmmaker, Birthe Tonseth, chart the long and arduous process of transforming the cathedral from a roofless ruin back to its former glory.
See a whole new side to your favourite stars as they team up with their dogs to compete in the Superstar Dogs arena in the ultimate team game in Superstar Dogs presented by Ray D'Arcy.
In What's Another Year: The Life and Times of Shay Healy Shay, along with friends, colleagues and family members, looks back on a long, distinguished and occasionally turbulent life and times.
Mary Kennedy presents this year's Christmas Eve carols from the atmospheric surroundings of Kilkenny Castle and features Donal Lunny , Zoe Conway, M irt n Connor, The Riptide Movement, Eimear Quinn, The Voice Squad, Hermitage Green, Fr Ray Kelly, Henry Shefflin and the RT Concert Orchestra.
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