Gerry Stembridge's Black Day at Blackrock will be broadcast on RTE 1 on Monday at 9.30 p.m. and chronicles an "extraordinary day in the life of a very ordinary Irish village". Written and directed by Stembridge, the drama provides a timely focus on attitudes to asylum seekers. It centres on the reaction of a small Irish town to the news that 30 asylum seekers are to be housed there. The three-week shoot took place last September in Dunboyne, Kilmessan and Summerhill, Co Meath. Like Stembridge's About Adam, which is currently showing in cinemas around the country, the feature was produced by Venus films. And the title? Nothing to do with the salubrious south Dublin village - it was chosen "because every county in Ireland has a Blackrock".
This week saw ex-TV3 presenter Amanda Byram make her debut on Channel 4's Big Breakfast. She joined Donna Air, Melanie Sykes, Richard Bacon and Paul Tonkinson in a relaunch of the morning show, which was once notable for original and often controversial material under presenters such as Paula Yates, Chris Evans, Denise Van Outen and Johnny Vaughan.
The show's viewing figures have plummeted since the heyday of the Van Outen and Vaughan "dream team". The two were re-united for the final few months of Vaughan's tenure, which ended a week ago. Byram co-presented Ireland AM with Mark Cagney on TV3 for a year, so the early starts shouldn't give her too much difficulty.
Joining Byram in London soon will be her former Ireland AM colleague, Claire Byrne. Twenty-five-year-old Byrne, who has worked as one of Ireland AM's news anchors and a reporter for TV3 news for the past 18 months, is going to Channel 5 in London, for what's rumoured to be a six-figure sum. She'll be presenting news bulletins for the station from Thursday. Channel 5 News is best known for its first presenter, Kirsty Young, who was credited with changing the face of television news in Britain. When Channel 5 was launched in 1997, Young's casual perch on the news-desk and relentless pacing around the studio is said to have inspired even Channel 4's Jon Snow to come out from behind his desk.
Maire Kearney can be contacted at mkearney@ireland.com