From the Millennium Bug to the Jumbo Breakfast Roll, from Saipan to the Special Olympics, from Bachelors Walk to the BertieBowl, from SSIAs to the smoking ban, Reeling In The Years – The 2000s showcases the stories and the soundtrack of Ireland in the Noughties. Each half-hour programme features a specific year from the 2000s, combining contemporary pop music hits with the year’s most memorable moments in news, current affairs, sport and entertainment.
This is the fifth series of Reeling In The Years. Previous series have covered the years 1962 to 1999. Reeling In The Years is consistently one of RTÉ Television’s highest-rating shows. It has been nominated for ITFA and TV Now awards, and was voted the most popular home-produced TV show ever in an RTÉ Guide poll of Ireland’s Top 100 TV shows.
Programme One: Reeing In The Years – 2000
Reeling In The Years begins its fifth series by showcasing the hits and the headlines of the year 2000, when fears over the computer ‘Millennium Bug’ proved groundless. It was the year that saw U2 get the Freedom of Dublin, an award that allowed Bono and The Edge to graze their sheep on St Stephen’s Green. The American presidential election descended into political farce in November, when George W Bush and Al Gore fought a legal battle over a handful of votes in the state of Florida.
Irish rugby got a bright new star when 21 year-old Brian O’Driscoll scored three tries in a 27-25 victory over France in Paris, while Sonia O’Sullivan took silver in the 5000m at the Sydney Olympic Games in Australia.
In Abbeylara, Co. Longford, an armed siege ended in tragedy as Gardaí shot dead John Carthy. The year 2000 also saw the Concorde air crash and the ‘Kursk’ submarine disaster. In Dublin, angry shareholders confronted Eircom management at the company’s AGM, while lobbyist Frank Dunlop made a series of startling revelations at the Flood Tribunal and a nationwide taxi strike brought chaos to Ireland’s cities and airports.
As reports indicated that Ireland’s booming economy was now creating over 100,000 new jobs a year, Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy introduced a series of record tax cuts. Westlife equalled the Beatles’ record of successive UK Number One hits with their first seven singles, Gay Byrne presented the RTÉ version of ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’, and Dubliner Anna Nolan was among the residents of the first-ever ‘Big Brother’ house on Channel Four.
Reeling In The Years – 2000 includes music from Ronan Keating, Chicane, U2, Toploader, The Corrs, Blink 182, Blue, and Westlife.