TV review: Callanan weaves a beautiful and intriguing portrait of Joyce

The recently deceased historian’s documentary 100 Years of Ulysses was mesmeric and absorbing

The creative legacy of James Joyce’s greatest work was explored in 100 Years of Ulysses (RTÉ One). Picture: Getty

100 Years of Ulysses (RTÉ One)

In From the Cold (Netflix)

James Joyce is said to have boasted that if the Dublin of his time were destroyed, it could be reconstructed from the pages of Ulysses, his magisterial modernist novel published 100 years ago last Wednesday, on what was the writer’s 40th birthday.

The city’s stinking Georgian tenements, mouldering cottages, piggeries and cow-yards had been swept away. The heaving red-light district of Monto was obliterated ...