Press

TG4 launches 2015 Autumn Schedule

01.09.15

An entertaining and distinctive Autumn 2015 offering from TG4, announced today includes a new powerful Irish language drama series set in the Klondike Gold Rush. It also brings a fresh approach for televising traditional music and shows how our lives are still governed by folklore. We decode the secrets locked in Irish place-names and offer exciting young peoples’ programmes with a difference. There is also a mouth-watering line-up of free to view movies and a great selection of exclusive live Gaelic games, rugby and racing from the Listowel Festival.

Highlights include

• An Klondike: A major new original 4 part drama series set in the harsh world of the gold mines of Alaska over a century ago. Three Connemara-born brothers venture from the silver mines of Montana to the Alaskan Gold Rush of 1895. They seek their fortune in Dominion Creek, a town built on greed. All that glisters…
• Cogar: Documentaries that concentrate on people more than on issues: Remembering a German U Boat commander’s humanitarian landing in West Kerry young film actors Judi Dench and Jeremy Irons’ bringing scandal to south Kilkenny in the 1970s, growing tomatoes to save the Gaeltacht in the 1950s, the amazing secret life of a 19th century Louth woman who spent much of her life disguised as a man in the US Army and the forgotten story of the Major-League US baseball stars whose secret code during play was simplicity itself – they were native speakers and talked Irish to one another.
• Ros na Rún: Irish television’s most authentic soap reaches its 20th season. It opens with an answer to a burning question: does the scheming publican Tadhg escape from a fiery end? (We last we saw him locked alive in a coffin being doused with petrol by a villain). With or without him, the village promises more wrangling, gossip, love-stories that blossom and some that fade as well as all the wit and banter that is the daily stuff of life in the homes, shops, clubs and pub in this fictional seaside Galway village.
• Hup: A brand new series of high-energy live-performance traditional music, televised in an energetic and highly visual style, showcasing some of the biggest names in performance and musical collaboration with unexpected partners. This is hip-hup music to set your feet hopping.
• Hour-long, soul-revealing documentary programmes, including a revealing insight into the concluding stages of the Irish Civil War in Limerick and a look back to Garda Lugs Brannigan’s old-school policing methods in Dublin, a half-century ago.
• Pioc do Ride: A novel Irish format for a fast-moving dating show in which we take 3 Guys, 3 Cars and 1 Girl. She does not meet the guys but must choose her date based on their cars and the driver’s ability. The “prizewinner” is offered the choice of spending his voucher on a romantic date with the girl – or in an auto-shop.
• Junior Eurovision: Can our young composers take up the Eurovision baton that their older counterparts seemed to have dropped in recent years? TG4 and Ireland take part in this song contest for the first time ever and former senior winner Niamh Kavanagh will be judging the Irish hopefuls and we’ll have the main event live from Sofia in Bulgaria.
• An Jig Gig: Another batch of hopefuls begin their quest to be crowned TG4’s Best Traditional Irish Dance Act.
• Béaloideas Beo and Logainm: Two series that illustrate and explain how folklore is a key element of life in contemporary rural and urban Ireland and reveal the history and hidden knowledge enshrined in the place names of Ireland.
• Laochra Gael: A new season of the series that celebrates and chronicles the careers of the top Gaelic games legends including Ken McGrath (Waterford), JJ Delaney (Kilkenny), Richie Bennis (Limerick), Eoin Kelly (Tipperary), Declan O’Sullivan (Kerry), Annette Clarke (Galway), Trevor Giles (Meath), Stephen McDonnell (Armagh) and the Meehans of Caltra in Galway.
• GAA Beo: Exclusive live free to view coverage of the All-Ireland Minor and Under-21 Finals, the TG4 All-Ireland Ladies Gaelic Football Finals from Croke Park, county finals, the AIB Club Provincial Championships and the Allianz National Leagues.
• Imeall: The wonder-full weekly window on the world of arts and culture, presented by Tristan Rosenstock, offering an insider’s look at happenings, publications, exhibitions as well as practitioner profiles.
• Rugbaí Beo: Live free to view weekly coverage of the Guinness Pro 12 league competition as well as same-day highlights from Irish provinces’ matches in the European Champions Cup and the Challenge Cup.
• Young people: A customised daily service in Irish for kids and young people, the breakfast time segment for pre-school kids Cúla4 na nÓg that includes brand-new Irish versions of famous animated series as well as new live-action programmes for all ages, including newly reversioned WAC, the World Animal Championship.  Cúla4 programmes can be viewed anytime online at tg4.ie
• Nuacht TG4: Anchor Eimear Ní Chonaola and the country-wide team continue to offer a different light on news stories, local, national and global. People make news. See and hear from the people at the heart of things.
• Fíorscéal: A new season of top-class international documentaries that continue to throw light on issues which affect us environmentally, socially, politically and globally. In one edition we learn that the USA owns every satellite used in GPS systems globally. The programme wonders what would happen if the USA switched them off?
• Róisín: Róisín O’Hara and her studio guests tease out today’s issues and challenges with a mixture of conversation, reports and debate, often from a woman’s perspective, mixing the light hearted with the serious.
• Comhrá: A deceptively simple format – two chairs and a conversation between the award-winning Máirtín Tom Sheáinín, and his weekly guest. The relaxed guest does most of the talking as the host gently guides. Fisherwoman, farmer politician, priest or pothole inspector – rank does not matter to Máirtín but good conversation does.
• Opry an Iúir: music performance series recorded in front of a live audience, presented by Daniel O’Donnell and co-host Lynette Fay. In an exciting cross-over element, new for this season, Ireland’s top country stars duet with some well-known traditional singers.

We’ll also offer a sneak preview of our forthcoming 2016 commemorative programmes – many of them serious but some of them quirky and light-hearted too. These including a time-travel caper drama that sees a trio of contemporary 1916 “anoraks” being time-shifted back a hundred years to find themselves at the very centre of the GPO action, with unexpected twists and conundrums to resolve. Another drama series involves disaffected young musicians taking over their local (closed) Post Office with some echoes of past events.

TG4 content is now available to view anywhere any time with Apps on many of the Smart TVs on the sets of all major manufacturers, a browser-based Player on tg4.ie, a TG4 Player App for iPad and the launch of an updated Website www.tg4.ie and a TG4 Player App for iPad.