From Oasis to CMAT: Top ten entertainment stories 2025

From Oasis at Croke Park to that Coldplay kiss cam moment and from Netflix hit Adolescence to The Traitors Ireland, it's been an eventful year in entertainment. Here are some of our top stories of 2025. CMAT: 2025 was a huge year for the doyenne of Dunboyne Owen Cooper became the youngest male actor to win an Emmy Patrick Kielty and Cat Deeley Brothers work it out at Croker. Photo credit: Big Brother Recordings January Edna O'Brien gets her big-screen due A celebration of the independent spirit, a fascinating study of hard-learned (and hard-earned) artistry, and a reminder that we are all mired in the utter messiness of life, Blue Road... gave the late Edna O'Brien her big-screen due and then some. It is one of the best documentaries of 2025 and hits the genre's bullseye: leaves you wanting to know more about its subject. There'll be another rake of books to add to that list, too. Indeed, this is as good an examination of a complicated hero resisting the mindset and manacles of 20th-century Ireland as any work of fiction. Co Clare-born O'Brien was a trailblazer who became a household name with her 1960 debut The Country Girls when, as she puts it, "literary success was a male preserve". Sure enough, all her books were banned here. Why stop there? There were burnings too... Narrated by Jessie Buckley from O'Brien's diaries and memoir, this film shows that you can be as tough as nails and vulnerable at the same time. As the song says, for each a road. Make sure you travel this one in the near future. Harry Guerin March Adolescence The most talked about TV show of the year infuriated all the right people when it arrived on Netflix last March. Adolescence is the four-part drama that examines so-called incel (involuntary celibate) culture, which has led to misogyny online and bullying using social media. Adolescence features This Is England star Stephen Graham as Eddie Miller, the father of 13-year-old Jamie, played by Owen Cooper, who is arrested in connection with the death of a girl at his school. We then follow father and son as they go through the investigation, which reveals some terrible things about the young boy. It's a riveting drama about the toxicity of social media that engaged with the culture wars full-on and features some astonishing performances, especially from 15-year-old Cooper as Jamie, who goes through the best switchblade character change since Edward Norton in Primal Fear . But what made Adolescence truly special was the creative and technical risks it took. There were impressive plot twists and each episode was shot in one take and presented in real time, an extraordinarily hard thing to pull off. It earned praise from three-time Oscar-winner Daniel Day Lewis and prompted a global conversation around online safety, leading to praise from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. It also won all the awards - Cooper became the youngest male actor to win an Emmy, there were also...

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