Sunday, RTÉ1, 6.30pm
In a time where going to Tesco has come to seem like an exotic voyage, we’re all desperate for any kind of journey even a vicarious one. Enter John Creedon, whose recent series of TV travelogues around Ireland have been appealingly laid-back, and intimate. This Sunday, he returns with a second season of his Atlas of Ireland, in which he visits iconic towns and areas across the country and uncovers their deep histories, and the meanings of their names. He begins tonight’s show by talking to columnist Fintan O’Toole and historian Diarmaid Ferriter about the controversial circumstances in which the Irish State was named. He’s on the road to his native Co Cork then, where Father Ted actor Ardal O’Hanlon joins him at the site of Ballinspittle’s moving statue, which they both recall coming to see for themselves back in 1985, in a vastly different Ireland.