Laura Slattery

6 days ago | irishtimes.com | Laura Slattery

As pitches go, it sounds familiar. A large, evolving cast of characters is anchored by a group of noble, dedicated heroes equipped with uniforms, custom vehicles and superpowers. In each instalment they unite to defeat common enemies, battle new threats and save humanity. Since 2012, when they made their screen debut, they have been drawn into frequent races against time in which the stakes are all too clear. They don’t always wear capes, but they often have one on standby.

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Laura Slattery

Like the bond between the couple at its heart, Abi Morgan’s Lovesong has endured over the years. “Weirdly, the older I get, the more I see in it,” she says of the play, which opens shortly at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. “It is one of those things that keeps giving with plays: they come back to haunt you in a really lovely way,” says the Emmy and Bafta winner, who wrote Lovesong when she was in her early 40s, almost 15 years ago.

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Laura Slattery

It’s the “bookie in your pocket” or the “casino in your hand” – the opportunity to gamble that follows us everywhere our mobile devices do from bed to desk to toilet, never closing its doors. The unfettered growth in popularity of online gambling over the past decade has brought with it a deepening concern that problem gambling has become a largely invisible health crisis, marked by secrecy and stigma. The State is now at an turning point on gambling.

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Laura Slattery

What follows an Espresso summer? Sabrina Carpenter’s career-boosting song might lack a seasonal theme – unless you count “my honey bee, come and get this pollen” – but it became the sunniest and most unshakeable of pop creations in grey 2024, hanging around last summer like a musical barfly. Carpenter’s “give-a-f**ks” were on vacation, she told us – and, listening to Espresso, it was possible to feel likewise for three minutes.

2 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Laura Slattery

Warning: Contains spoilers for the Last of Us season twoYou know how it goes. One minute you’re sitting at your desk making a list of DIY jobs, the next your entire fortified settlement is being attacked by hordes of cordyceps-infected ex-humans. Before you know it you’re being slowly murdered in a ski lodge by a young woman with a golf club and a vicious swing. Who’s going to caulk the window now?