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Brendan O'Connor

The Watchlist

31 May 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 15.576 Brendan O'Connor

OK, time now for The Watchlist, our guide to the best film and TV for the week ahead. And I'm joined today by arts journalist Zara Hederman and business post film critic John McGuire. Welcome, guys. Hello. Zara, Love Island is back for the summer. We've a bit of local interest as well.

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15.556 - 27.947 Zara Hederman

We do. Kirsty, you have one of the most cringe audition tapes I think I've ever seen in my life. I don't know if you saw it, but Sean Fitzgerald, Galway GAA player, his audition tape went viral a couple of weeks ago.

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27.987 - 30.429 Brendan O'Connor

Yeah. He got the result?

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Chapter 2: What highlights are discussed about Love Island's return?

30.59 - 49.11 Zara Hederman

He got the result. It's about two minutes long, and I struggled so much watching the two minutes, so I can't wait for eight weeks of this lad. Okay. So yeah, coming back 13th season of it, and I think people are a bit more interested in it this year. It had been kind of dropping off a bit, But last season was actually very good. There was a lot of drama in it.

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49.531 - 53.719 Zara Hederman

And producers are promising to shake things up even further from the first episode.

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53.739 - 67.787 Brendan O'Connor

Given the whole married at first sight drama that's happened recently and allegations of all kinds of welfare issues and everything on it, how come Love Island still keeps going and respectable people are happy to watch it? Because...

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67.835 - 82.992 Zara Hederman

and especially with Love Island because you know we've had a few you know deaths from that show as well throughout the years and they have somehow it skates along without being cancelled yeah because I guess the audience it keeps getting younger and younger as well like

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82.972 - 100.272 Zara Hederman

you know I have a niece who's in her early teens she watches it um and I think people just kind of as glib as it sounds we just like to switch off and watch other people for for eight weeks but yeah no that is definitely a big concern with it okay so it starts on Virgin Media 1 at 9pm tomorrow night uh

100.252 - 108.641 Brendan O'Connor

John, Spider Noir, all episodes now on Amazon Prime. I'm not really a Marvel person, but this sounds so crazy.

108.661 - 131.349 John Maguire

It could be good. After 20 years of Marvel and absolute domination and hegemony at the cinema, you'd think there's nothing more that can be done with superheroes. But what about Nicolas Cage as a middle-aged gumshoe, a kind of a Sam Spade figure, working in 1930s New York at the height of the Great Depression? who goes up against Brendan Gleeson's ruthless Irish bootlegger.

131.55 - 138.022 John Maguire

He's a gangster, a crime lord, to restore peace to the metropolis. Nobody would have thought of that.

138.243 - 140.467 Brendan O'Connor

No, and I'm totally there for both those men.

Chapter 3: How is the new Spider Noir series received?

409.802 - 426.585 John Maguire

You've got the KGB and the White Witch played by Anna Maxwell Martin. She's the KGB leader. intelligence officer who's trying to keep this secret, trying to stop anything from leaking. And she rules with an iron fist over the chief designers, played by Riz Sifans. He's in control of everything.

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426.866 - 439.204 John Maguire

And then you have a low-level intelligence operative called Agnes O'Casey, who has to listen in and transcribe all of the cosmonauts' conversations at home. So it's a place of paranoia and suspicion. There's traitors around every corner.

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439.645 - 447.396 John Maguire

And at the same time, they're undertaking this enormous adventure, trying to get to the moon for the first to land the hammer and sickle on the moon before the Americans.

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447.416 - 449.74 Brendan O'Connor

OK, do we need to watch all the seasons?

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449.76 - 463.32 John Maguire

I don't think so, no. I think what you need to watch here is Chernobyl, actually, because it is that kind of washed out grey sepia kind of thing. But it's gripping, never mind the sci-fi, the actual political thriller element of this show. Great.

463.3 - 485.562 Brendan O'Connor

is thrilling it's exceptional and I think the first episode is up now on Apple TV Star City by the end of the year we'll be talking about this as one of the best shows of the year it's really really good alright cinema Zara the movie Backroom is in cinemas now and there's huge buzz about this this originated on 4chan I think as so called creepy pasta and the guy who directed this is 20

485.643 - 487.825 Zara Hederman

Yeah, he turns 21 next month.

487.845 - 490.668 Brendan O'Connor

If you want to feel the sting of your own achievement.

491.509 - 511.29 Zara Hederman

He started a web series when he was 16 years old where he was making short films that then kind of turned into Backrooms, the film we get today. So basically the premise is the Backroom is an image that started, as you said, on 4chan of these liminal spaces that are like old abandoned office buildings or like even a road can be like a Backroom.

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