It’s been 10 years now since HBO took a chance on a little drama called “The Sopranos” and changed the face of television. When “The Sopranos” hit the airwaves in 1999, no one could have predicted that this offbeat drama about the mob and psychoanalysis would have been the first of many great cable dramas to win prestigious awards and earn huge ratings. But here’s another … [Read more...] about How the Irish Took Over Cable TV
Tom Deignan
Review of Books
Recommended Over the last decade or so, Brooklyn has gone from a byword for gritty urban life – the place where Pete Hamill and Spike Lee told their stories – to a punch line referring to the chic hipsters who have flocked to the borough. Colm Toibin might seem an unlikely candidate to add a fascinating new chapter to Brooklyn’s literary life. After all, his novels, such as … [Read more...] about Review of Books
Irish Eye on Hollywood
Now that Liam Neeson has done the Hollywood blockbuster thing with his very big, very violent hit Taken, he can return to the kinds of movies which have made him such a respected actor. Neeson is currently out shopping Five Minutes of Heaven, a drama about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. This, of course, is a very personal issue for Neeson who was born in Ballymena, Antrim, … [Read more...] about Irish Eye on Hollywood
The History of the Clancy Brothers
As Liam Clancy remembers it, being asked to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show did not seem like a big deal. “We just did not understand the significance,” he told Irish America in a recent interview, during a publicity tour to promote a brilliant rerelease of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performing live at New York City’s Carnegie Hall in 1963. Two years before that … [Read more...] about The History of the Clancy Brothers
Review of Books
Recommended Back in the mid-1990s, it seemed like everything Irish was cool. Bono was a global rock star, Riverdance was an international sensation, and Frank McCourt sold millions of books. Then, there was Seamus Heaney. The notion of a popular poet seemed almost quaint in the digital age. Yet when Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, he became yet another Irish … [Read more...] about Review of Books