{"id":413097,"date":"2026-04-23T07:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T07:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/413097\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T07:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T07:51:09","slug":"euphoria-is-back-and-i-feel-like-i-need-to-give-my-tv-a-bath-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/413097\/","title":{"rendered":"Euphoria is back, and I feel like I need to give my TV a bath \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hey kids, it\u2019s YassPat \u201cSigma\u201d Freynemaxxer here, The Irish Times<\/a>\u2019 young people\u2019s correspondent. Turn off your tikitytoks and your vaporcore music: I\u2019m here to hip you to another hot new groove, the third series of sexy-young-people melodrama Euphoria<\/a> (Sky Atlantic and Now).<\/p>\n

Yes, the iconoclastic show has been away for so long that many of you based goats weren\u2019t even born when it started. Indeed, the youngs who starred in it are beginning to resemble Easter Island heads.<\/p>\n

But who cares? I just hope there\u2019s no boring ol\u2019 adults reading this, because Euphoria is all about juves like me and you doing edgy things like huffing up powdery yum-yums (young-person slang for drugs), riding the funky freak train (young-person slang for doing sex) and getting the boo-hoos (feeling sad).<\/p>\n

Euphoria creator Sam Levinson knows all about such things. He is but the son of a humble film director, Barry Levinson, and he fought his way up from the mean streets of Los Angeles<\/a> to become a television showrunner against all the odds. Now he can\u2019t be stopped. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Euphoria season 3 review: Zendaya, Jacob Elordi and Sydney Sweeney have outgrown this seriesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

He has, since the last series of Euphoria, created The Idol<\/a>, a show so queasily and blandly voyeuristic (I\u2019m not sure that its charisma-challenged star The Weeknd<\/a> even knew he was in it) that it made me want to wash my television. It should have ruined everyone\u2019s careers and tanked the global economy. <\/p>\n

It did not. Levinson is not only back for another season of Euphoria but has also brought some of the biggest stars in the United States<\/a> back with him.<\/p>\n

Zendaya<\/a> is again playing hapless addict Rue. Zendaya is, in real life, very, very famous now. She is basically married to Spider-Man, but she has not taken his name to become Mrs Spider-Man. She is so famous she needs no surname, much like Cher or Pob or Mattress Mick. <\/p>\n

In Euphoria, Rue hasn\u2019t rid herself of her addictions and is now caught between a vicious drug dealer to whom she owes money and a vicious pimp who has given her a job cleaning toilets and managing strippers in his small-to-medium-sized clothes-removal business. Zendaya is the best actor on this show and is ridiculously, charismatically watchable even when nothing much is happening.<\/p>\n

Maud Apatow plays Rue\u2019s writerly best friend, Lexi, who now works in the entertainment business, as does Maddy (Alexa Demie), who is attempting to be an agent to the stars. Dead-eyed Nate (Jacob Elordi), meanwhile, is trying to build a business as a property developer. <\/p>\n

\"ZendayaZendaya as Rue in Euphoria season three. Photograph: Home Box Office Inc <\/p>\n

All of them are essentially starring in three completely different types of show, because tonal consistency is for cowards. Euphoria now features a crime caper, a show-business satire and a surprisingly in-depth analysis of California\u2019s tedious planning laws. (This particular material is a natural fit for Elordi, who is, I feel, pedantically handsome and boringly tall.)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Sydney Sweeney is starring in a sex farce, much like fellow Sidney and presumably acting inspiration Sid James. Sadly, Euphoria is a joyless sex farce rather than the joyous variety preferred by her Carry On namesake. <\/p>\n

Sydney Sweeney now rivals Zendaya in her fame but still has two names, like a schmuck. She has found herself at the centre of the culture war<\/a> since she last starred in Euphoria. <\/p>\n

Why so? <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Sydney Sweeney\u2019s rise: Hollywood finally has an old-school movie star on its hands, and it has no idea what to doOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Well, according to online right-wing weirdos, she has reclaimed blondeness and being sexy (\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with being sexy?\u201d to quote David St Hubbins) and being very vague about her politics, three things that were apparently made illegal in Biden\u2019s pre-Trump wokestopia. If you know about this already, you need to close your laptop and go for a walk.<\/p>\n

Her Euphoria character, Cassie, is attempting to become an OnlyFans star while living the life of a wealthy suburban housewife. In pursuit of this goal we get footage of her dressed as both a sexy dog and a sexy baby in the first few episodes. <\/p>\n

It is not tastefully done. Yet again, I feel a need to give my television a bath. Sam Levinson, you will be shocked to hear, has not pulled back on the sleaze. If anything, he\u2019s doubling down on it. His dream is, I think, to make a television programme that\u2019s just a montage of glistening bums powdered with a dusting of cocaine. All Bums All the Time with Sam Levinson, it shall be called.<\/p>\n

True to form, a chunk of the new season is set in the strip club where Rue works. So trigger warning for those of you who are terrified of arses: you will be gibbering in the foetal position on the floor. \u201cThe bums! The bums!\u201d you\u2019ll cry as they take you away. <\/p>\n

\"SydneySydney Sweeney in season three of Euphoria. Photograph: 2026 Home Box Office Inc Al\/Sky <\/p>\n

Thankfully, there has been a time jump in this season, so the actors have all definitely started pension plans and are no longer playing teenagers. This is a good thing, because watching fake teenagers having voyeuristically filmed sex was really putting the \u201cew\u201d into Ewphoria for me.<\/p>\n

Yes, says you, but doesn\u2019t this time jump also create a problem, given that the point of the earlier seasons was to conjure up the sort of fantasy netherworld that exists betwixt childhood and adulthood? I mean, without that, what is Euphoria season three even about? <\/p>\n

Well, check out nerdlinger over here. You want your shows to be about something now, is it? Well excuse me, professor. Aren\u2019t all the beautiful shots of the desert and the sad-looking famous people and the arses and the drug-taking and the sun-drenched ennui not enough for you? <\/p>\n

You old people are never happy. If you want to talk to me, I\u2019ll be at da club with le kidz.<\/p>\n

Hacks (Sky Atlantic and Now) is a show that\u2019s actually about something, and when I return from da club having remembered that I\u2019m actually 51, and really want to sit down, I enjoy watching it. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s about ageing comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and hipster Gen Z writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), who helps her restart her career, and it has evolved into a very funny, surprisingly thoughtful programme about ambition and fame and intergenerational friendship and ageing and how to write jokes.<\/p>\n

\"Hacks:Hacks: Jean Smart as Deborah Vance in season 5, episode 1. Photograph: Sky\/Universal <\/p>\n

In the fifth and final series, Deborah and Ava return from Singapore, where Deborah escaped at the end of the previous season having torched her chatshow and maligned her bosses on air. The duo are taking on her former employers, who are refusing to allow Deborah to work with a stifling noncompete clause.<\/p>\n

Yes, Hacks is yet another show about the entertainment industry created by people in the entertainment industry. (You could argue that rich Americans are now so divorced from material reality that what else could they possibly write about?) On the other hand, it\u2019s very good. If I had one note, it would simply be: Are there enough gratuitous bums? Just a thought.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Patrick Freyne: Here\u2019s why AI is making us dumber and more lonelyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hey kids, it\u2019s YassPat \u201cSigma\u201d Freynemaxxer here, The Irish Times\u2019 young people\u2019s correspondent. Turn off your tikitytoks and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,9404,13393,15640,2124,115,42415,15117],"class_list":{"0":"post-413097","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-jacob-elordi","12":"tag-patrick-freyne","13":"tag-sky","14":"tag-sydney-sweeney","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-your-stories","17":"tag-zendaya"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}