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What to watch on RTÉ Player this week!

The RTÉ Player team share their top picks to watch on RTÉ Player this week.

 

What’s Trending?

The Late Late Show – When Ryan Met Hillary

Did you find out what happened when Ryan met Hillary?  In an Irish television exclusive, Hillary Clinton was interviewed on The Late Late Show on Friday night.  Leaving the country, for only the second time in 30 years, The Late Late Show travelled to Chappaqua, upstate New York to interview the former US Secretary of State near her home.  In the wide-ranging interview, Secretary Clinton talks about the extraordinary sequence of events that led to her losing the US presidency to businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump.  She tells Ryan: “I would have been really unhappy if I had lost to a normal Republican. But to lose to someone who I believed profoundly was not ready for the job, was temperamentally unqualified for the job, was such a burden. I just thought ‘I’ve just let everybody down, I’ve let my country down, I’ve let the world down. How did this happen?’”.  She gives her take on facing off against the unstoppable force that was Donald Trump. She talks candidly about the forces interfering in the election; how “painful” election night was for her; her shock at losing; the “bizarre” experience of attending Trump’s inauguration and why she agreed with President George W Bush that Trump’s speech was “some weird shit”. She also speaks about the danger that Trump presents to the world as well as the Clinton’s strong ties with Ireland and the double standard applied to women in politics.  The full interview is available to watch for free, worldwide on RTÉ Player

 

What’s New?

Acceptable Risk

RTÉ One’s brand new drama, Acceptable Risk arrived on our screens last week and it did not disappoint.  Lee Manning was a top executive for global company Gumbiner-Fischer, well-loved husband to Sarah Manning and a wonderful step-dad to her children. So why was he shot in the head and dumped in the middle of Montreal while on a business trip?  Devastated by the death of her husband, Sarah struggles in the aftermath of her loss. But investigating garda, Detective Sergeant Emer Byrne, is convinced this is not a straightforward case, and Sarah is not as innocent as she seems.  The first episode of this contemporary six-part thriller played out in Dublin and Montreal is available to watch now on RTÉ Player.  Catch up before episode two on RTÉ One, Sunday at 9.30pm and watch a host of ‘Behind the Scenes’ interviews with the writer, director and cast of Acceptable Risk on RTÉ Player.

 

What Not to Miss?

Painting the Nation

Painting the Nation – l-r Keith Anderson, Elaine Gavin, host Pauline McLynn, Warren Faye, Paul Grout, Hazel Higgins, Teresa Butler, Joanne McAndrew

The search for Ireland’s best amateur painter is back with host Pauline McLynn and judges Una Sealy and Gabhann Dunne putting seven new artists to the test.  Painting the Nation, series two, begins with a one hour special introducing the seven amateur painters who will compete to have their painting hang in the State Art Collection.  Over the next five weeks, inspired by the works of great Irish artists including Mary Swanzy and Jack B Yeats, the series follows a group of seven talented painters travelling around Ireland finding inspiration at some of our most beautiful and iconic locations.  In episode one, now available to watch on RTÉ Player, we meet the seven artists hailing from Dublin to Galway, Cork to Clare as they take on three challenges against the clock in a bid to impress the judges at this early stage of the competition at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin.  In the first challenge of the series, the seven have been asked to bring objects that tell the story of who they are and where they come from. The judges want them to paint a still-life of the objects, on a canvas size of their choice with their own familiar materials, in just ninety minutes. From Leitrim potatoes and shades of green to Burren rock from County Clare and tributes to Sligo’s Jack B Yeats , the painters are not only challenged to showcase their area and their personality, but most importantly impress the judges in this series’ first challenge.  In challenge two, the judges want our painters to get technical. Inspired by the archive of beautiful botanical illustrations the gardens hold, they task the painters with accurately representing a plant on canvas. To test their handling of paint the judges up the ante by giving the painters a limited palette which does not include the colour green. Can our painters accurately represent the plant and mix the correct shades of green with a limited palette?  And finally, in this week’s Exhibition Challenge, with just three hours to paint to keep their place in the competition, our painters are challenged with capturing a sense of the gardens, rich with foliage and summer colour, on canvas.  What will the gallery visitors make of the seven different interpretations of the gardens? And what will our judges make of their final work?  Who will our judges choose as this week’s Painter of the Week?  And which of our amateur painters will be the first to leave the competition?  Watch episode one of Painting the Nation now on RTÉ Player along with a ‘sneak peek’ of the second episode and the full box set of Series One.

 

Pick of the Week

Irish In Wonderland

Irish in Wonderland – Yasmine Akram

Across the two episodes of Irish In Wonderland Drogheda born, Sherlock star Yasmine Akram meets the Irish people making their own fortune serving the super-rich.  Visiting two very different playgrounds of the super-rich – New York and the Hamptons; and the Cote d’Azur in the south of France, she meets Irish ex-pats who have carved successful careers and made fortunes working in these glittering wonderlands.  In the first episode of Irish in Wonderland Yasmine meets a wolf of Wall Street, the Dubliner whose predatory antics inspired a bestselling book Flashboys by Michael Lewis. She hangs out with a Dun Laoghaire party organiser who throws some of the flashiest events in the Hamptons. Yasmine tries her hand at polo at one of the world’s most exclusive clubs under the tutelage of an advertising executive from Longford. And an estate agent from Sligo shows off a $7.5 million high tech Hamptons mansion with its very own singing toilet.  Watch the first episode of Irish In Wonderland now on RTÉ Player.