1. Leo Varadkar’s Drag Race
The Taoiseach stars in this competition where he is addressed only by his drag name: Aunty Austerity.
Young LGBTQ adults compete to see who can serve up the best Young Fine Gael realness. Must be at least as convincing as Oisín McKenna in his poem Gay, Male, Votes Fine Gael.
Have you got what it takes to impress Aunty Austerity?
2. Survivor: Lurgan
A group of teenagers believe they’re being sent to the Gaeltacht to make covers of pop songs in Irish. They arrive to Indreabhán, Galway, only to find that they are left alone in a remote and abandoned Gaeltacht village.
Here, they have to produce food, shelter, water and fire for themselves while cooperating with strangers under intense pressure. If they fail to do so, they are eliminated by the Bean an Tí and will be sent home to their parents where they will get in big trouble and possibly grounded for the rest of the summer.
A true psychological, physical and emotional test for young teenagers, who must only speak Irish while undertaking all of the tasks expected of them.
The winner gets to choose the song that they cover in Irish at the end and are allowed to bask in all of the glory of being the champion of Lurgan.
3. The Bachelor Starring Ryan Tubridy
Twenty-five ladies compete for the opportunity to be Ryan Tubridy’s future girlfriend. The main gimmick of this show is that they get to know Ryan Tubridy through dates where they take turns getting into a hot tub with the Hot Tub (Ryan). Sorry.
4. The Apprentice: Jobbridge
Sixteen young adults battle it out working completely unpaid in an unidentified supermarket for a chance to bag some work experience!
There is the possibility that the winner could be in with a chance of receiving €50 in addition to their social welfare, if the judges think they worked hard enough.
They’ll have to face challenges such as doing the same and possibly more work as the people around them while simultaneously being blamed for the hours of permanent staff members being slashed while the employer prioritises rostering the staff that they don’t have to pay.
In the end, the public gets to decide which contestant walks away with €50 a week, a paragraph of supermarket experience on their CV and a good reference to go with it.
5. Ireland’s Next Top Donal Skehan
Like a combination of a TV modelling competition and Masterchef. A number of inoffensively handsome young men that your mam would love compete to be the next Irish celebrity chef.
6. Deadliest Catch
Because the word ‘deadly’ has a very different meaning in Ireland, this show isn’t about catching dangerous fish, but rather who can catch a ball in the coolest manner.
7. (The) Fear Factor
Rather than getting buried alive in glass coffins full of snakes and spiders or walking on a tight rope 200ft in the air, the Irish edition of Fear Factor would look at people coping with The Fear.
From the moment they wake up from a big night out, the show follows individuals as they receive various texts from their friends either lightly jeering them or ensuring them that they’ll never be invited out again.
They attempt to piece the night back together as the day goes on, either coming to terms with their behaviour or being consumed by mortification.
8. The Real Housewives of Howth Peninsula
A look at the every day lives of the mothers (known strictly as ‘Mum’) and housewives of one of Ireland’s most affluent neighbourhoods.
Get a glimpse at their every day lives as their sons Oisín and Fuinneog through tantrums, which go completely ignored, while the mothers sip away on their cappuccinos and shoot empty smiles to other parents in the Avoca restaurant.
Follow them as they shop in Dublin City Centre department stores and ask sales assistants if there’s any way that they could get a discount, despite being very comfortably able to afford anything they want from the shop.
Watch them as they become red in the face and insist that it’s disgraceful that no discount is available to them.
Count down the seconds until they inevitably drop their favourite line “Have you any idea how much money I spend in here?!” to the person who will still receive just €9 an hour regardless of how many hundreds or thousands of euros that Olive has just spent in the store on scarves and linen trousers.
For added drama, every series will culminate with how the community reacts to a gorse fire (which is a fairly regular occurrence).
9. Ireland’s Got Talent
Rosanna Davison hosts the show which does not seek out talented Irish individuals, but rather talent in the sense of good looking people. It’s Ireland’s next top model basically.
10. Ex On The Beach
This show allows you to hunt down your ex, invite them to a beach where they believe they will be filming for MTV’s show Ex On The Beach, but instead you just sit in a car at Dollymount watching them while their teeth chatter on a freezing cold Irish beach for as long as it takes for them to get fed up and leave.
11. I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! (Vehicle edition)
Celebrities are driven to central locations and left in a car until a passerby notices them and naturally attempts to take a photograph or video.
The celebrity that can wait in their car the longest has money donated to a charity on their behalf. They are disqualified if they claim that they are falsely imprisoned or use any bad language.
12. Love Ireland
Like Love Island, but set in Ireland. The same premise as the famous UK dating show, but with some extra challenges that arise from dating in Ireland, like horrible weather, less glamorous surroundings, spending the summer in mobile homes rather than in a luxury villa.
