Saturday Night with Miriam


Saturday Night with Miriam was a televised talk show first broadcast on RTÉ One in the summer of 2005. The show runs for six weeks as a summer filler, and is overseen by Miriam O'Callaghan, a co-presenter of Prime Time.

Format

Saturday Night with Miriam, airs during summer months on RTÉ One when programmes such as The Late Late Show and the former Saturday night talk show Tubridy Tonight are off air. The show has a wide variety of guests, often including musicians, who usually perform on the show. The Duckworth Lewis Method made their television debut on Saturday Night with Miriam in 2009's season opener.

History

The first two series were pre-recorded show was broadcast on Saturday nights after the, lasting approximately 60 minutes. In the 2007 series, the programme began to broadcast live.
The show's first guests included Charlie McCreevy, Paul Brady, D. J. Carey and Ray D'Arcy. The programme received thirty-six percent of the adult audience.
The series was also run in summer 2006 and a third series ran in 2007.
The fourth series in 2008 was very popular and achieved a forty percent audience. People such as Mary Coughlan, Enda Kenny, Cherie Blair and Jade Goody appeared on the series.
In 2009, the series returned for a fifth series, with RTÉ making the announcement on 4 June 2009. This happened after it was announced that she would not be the new host of The Late Late Show. O'Callaghan also got her first radio programme, filling in for Eamon Dunphy on Miriam Meets.... Newly elected politician George Lee was one of the first guests of the fifth series. The final episode of the fifth series received 422,000 viewers, a 35% audience share.
O'Callaghan confirmed that the series would return in 2013.
The show returned in the summer of 2014 for another series, running from Saturday 5 July until Saturday 23 August 2014 on RTÉ One. The 2014 season was pre-recorded on Fridays.
The show returned in the summer of 2015 for another series commencing Saturday 20 June 2015 and will run until Saturday 8 August 2015 on RTÉ One.
In 2018 Miriam announced that the show would take a break and would not return for a new series in 2018. This was down to the busy schedule Miriam had for the summer of 2018, with the then upcoming coverage on RTE of the referendum on abortion, coverage of Pope Francis visit to Ireland and Miriam's involvement in a documentary. However she did say in an interview with the RTE Guide that the show would return in the summer of 2019.
In June 2019, RTE confirmed that Saturday Night with Miriam would not be returning to the RTÉ One schedules that autumn, as Miriam would be filling in for Seán O'Rourke on his RTÉ Radio 1 mid-morning show during the summer.

Guests

Series 3

Series 4

The 2008 series got an average viewing audience of 425,000.
DateGuestsLink
7 June 2008Mary Coughlan, Kevin Hiller, Alan Gray, Brian McDermott & Ben Cunningham, Jessie Buckley, Louis Walsh & Brendan O'Connor, Red Hurley
14 June 2008Jack Charlton & John Aldridge, Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh, Victoria Smurfit, George Lee, Eddie Hobbs & David McWilliams
21 June 2008Boyzone, Jade Goody, Terry O'Quinn, Gerald Kean, Bazil Ashmawy & Ivan Yates
28 June 2008Peter Kelly, Phil Coulter & Geraldine Brannigan, Bill O'Herlihy, Liam Brady, Johnny Giles & Eamonn Dunphy, Robert O'Neill
5 July 2008Enda Kenny, Sonia O'Sullivan, Darren Sutherland & Eileen O'Keeffe, Cherie Blair
12 July 2008Bibi Baskin, Jennifer Maguire & Evelyn Cusack, Johnny Murtagh & Orla Murtagh, Larry Gogan, Lawrence McKeown, Mary Doyle & Raymond McCartney
19 July 2008Anne Doyle, Curtis Stigers, Walter Swift, John Waters, Moya Brennan

Series 5