An average of 558,000* people watched the entire ‘Bertie’ series which was broadcast over the last four weeks on Monday nights on RTÉ One and produced by Mint Productions.
The series looks at the political career of Bertie Ahern and featured contributions from family, political colleagues, former constituency activists and contributors to the ’good will’ loans, as well as political commentators and an interview with Bertie Ahern himself.
Kevin Dawson, Commissioning Editor, RTÉ Factual said, “The ratings success of this series confirms that the Irish public has a huge appetite for politics and the business of politics. The Bertie series told us a lot about the man; but it also offered a rich narrative in terms of the flavour and dynamics of Irish politics from council ward through Dail corridors to the Cabinet room itself. It was about how political power is sought, secured, lost, transferred, won back again. The willingness of senior politicians and advisers to speak fully and frankly about all of this added enormously to the viewers’ pleasure, in my view. And that material was very skilfully blended by the producers with the core narrative of Bertie Ahern’s life and times. As a modern political history it was a tour de force by Steve Carson and his colleagues and the Irish public has lapped that up”.
* Series average- source AGB Nielsen
