{"id":154900,"date":"2025-10-31T08:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T08:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/154900\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T08:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T08:09:08","slug":"not-original-but-comfort-telly-that-hits-the-spot-more-than-it-misses-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/154900\/","title":{"rendered":"Not original but comfort telly that hits the spot more than it misses \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

There comes that moment in the life of every travel television presenter when they must pack their bags and head to the southern hemisphere, where they will soak up the sun, cower from the wildlife and visit sheep farms more vast than the average EU member state. Mike Murphy did so several thousand years ago for Murphy\u2019s Australia<\/a>, and the 2 Johnnies will no doubt one day fulfil their destiny by hosting a live podcast on Bondi Beach. <\/p>\n

Hector \u00d3 hEochag\u00e1in, TG4<\/a>\u2019s resident passport-packing gadabout, has likewise trekked to the Antipodes, where he made a programme in 2006. Now he\u2019s back for Hector OZ\/NZ<\/b> (TG4, 9.30pm), in which \u2013 as the title makes plain \u2013 he embarks upon an exhaustive trek across Australia and New Zealand. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s an amiable companion and a natural people person. He is not a fan of venomous reptiles, however, as we see when a snake-removal expert dangles a deadly eastern brown snake in his very general direction. Hector politely pretends to freak out. Unless he is actually freaking out, which might well be the case. <\/p>\n

This is during an excursion to Melbourne and across the surrounding state of Victoria that begins with a blessing from a member of the indigenous Wurundjeri people, Joy Murphy Wandin. She sees parallels between the native Australian and Irish experiences of colonialism and distinguishes between Irish people and the British who colonised Australia. \u201cThe way in which your people came to this country was not to take [but] to be able to come to a country where they were accepted,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Hector also visits Melbourne\u2019s Hawthorn Football Club \u2013 an AFL team that counts players from Galway and Mayo as star forwards in its women\u2019s team. There is time, too, to swing by a hipster butcher who plays Fontaines DC and to report from a food bank for asylum seekers. <\/p>\n

The tone is easy-going and rambling although there is a weird moment when Hector plunges into an impassioned address\/rant about refugees and migration in both Ireland and Australia that feels badly out of place in an upbeat travel show. \u201cI don\u2019t know what your opinion is on the refugee problem in our country and throughout the world. But I for one am fed up with the nonsense. I\u2019m sick and tired of hearing about it,\u201d says Hector. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that really hits home … is that these people and the people landing in our country are not to blame. They\u2019re not the problem and neither are we. The fault lies with the government and the policymakers, whether it\u2019s here in Australia or back home in Ireland. The politicians are the ones responsible. The entire fault lies with the politicians.\u201d He is entitled to his opinion \u2013 though it is worth pointing out that politicians and policymakers weren\u2019t the ones rioting in Saggart recently. <\/p>\n

Australia is huge, hot and full of deadly reptiles. \u00d3 hEochag\u00e1in captures that vastness and otherness as he leaves Victoria behind and flies to the parched, endless expanse of central Australia. The rest of the season will see him go everywhere from Perth to Auckland \u2013 separated by a mere 5,500 kilometres. At no point is Hector in danger of doing anything original or surprising (the odd fusillade about politicians aside). But, then, not everything on TV has to be astonishingly original. As comfort telly, Hector OZ\/NZ hits the spot more than it misses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There comes that moment in the life of every travel television presenter when they must pack their bags…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1128,9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5790,5,8336,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-154900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-new-zealand","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-tg4","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115467764582682655","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}