THE ENDURINGLY POPULAR RTÉ show Reeling in the Years will be returning to recap the 2010s, RTÉ has confirmed.

The much-loved show showcases the noteworthy events at home and abroad with each episode encompassing one year, alongside some of the finest music from that time. 

Reeling in the Years was first made in 1999 and featured the events of the 1980s. It has since spawned a further four series, with episodes now covering each year from 1962 to 2009.

They are regularly repeated on RTÉ One, and a spokesperson has confirmed to TheJournal.ie that there are plans for a future series to cover this decade.

An RTÉ spokesperson said: “There are plans for a future series but no broadcast dates or details are confirmed at this time.”

Last year, show producer John O’Regan explained the process of how they put each episode together. 

He said: “We’d start on paper, with newspaper reviews, TV and online reviews of a year, looking at different areas – news and sport, TV shows, commercials, maybe pop promos, music performances, other bits and pieces.

As we prepare the programme, there are two researchers and me in pre-production. We’d isolate about 60 to 70 items or stories, of which about 30 to 35 will probably make the cut. We search up the footage, and work out how much international footage we can afford within the budget.

Separately, the team go through the Irish, UK and US music charts for that year and start with 80-100 potential songs before whittling them down to 10-12. 

When it gets to the editing stage, it’s all about working out what songs can tie stories together, balancing Irish and international material, and how the text-captions can provide enough information without being too distracting. 

“We’ve made 48 programmes in the series, and every time we come to the end of an edit, there are stories, footage, songs that I look at and think ‘that should be in’ – but they can’t all fit,” he said.

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Previous series have taken roughly eight to nine months to complete and, while a new series is in the works, no details are forthcoming as yet.

The broadcaster is faced with unprecedented financial woes, which were outlined by director general Dee Forbes in November including a reduction in costs of €60 million over the next three years. 

While she said that everything was on the table when it came to where RTÉ will make cuts, Reeling in the Years appears safe ahead of its next series.