Their plight as series two opens couldn’t be more high stakes. Having gunned down Ciarán Hinds’s Eamon Cunningham at the end of the last season, the Kinsellas have now been given an ultimatum by a Turkish cartel that the dead man’s €70m debt has become theirs to repay.

Worse than that, the newcomers also want the head of Michael Kinsella for having shot dead the son of the Turkish gangland boss in the same attack in the mistaken belief he was a mere bodyguard and therefore didn’t matter.

The dead man’s sister, Nuray – a fabulously ruthless new character played with cold-eyed relish by Turkish actress Öykü Karayel – is in Dublin, looking for revenge.

But it’s hard to be on anybody’s side in the battle. Irish or Turkish. They are all just drug-dealing dirtbags at the end of the day. Whichever lot wins, everyone else loses. It could be that the setting of Kin is simply too close to home.

Viewers cannot fail to be reminded constantly of Dublin’s bloody history of gangland violence, which has claimed so many innocent lives. Glamorising that world doesn’t sit easy. Even the Kinsellas’s name, while obviously a pun on the word ‘kin’, has uncomfortable echoes of the Kinahan gang.

To be fair, Kin is slickly shot, fast moving, and admirably plot-driven. It plunges straight into the action. There’s no messing about.

It also has some genuine edge-of-the-seat moments, not least a scene in which two disposable hired goons track down Michael to an isolated cottage in the countryside, only to see the tables turned. That was thrillingly tense.

RTÉ should definitely have dropped all the episodes at once to capitalise on that strong beginning, rather than risking a fall-off in audiences by drip-feeding instalments week by week.

Again, though, I just don’t care which of the protagonists ends up on top. In fact, if I was forced to choose anyone to champion, it would have to be Nuray.

She didn’t ask for this war, after all. The Kinsellas brought it to her. The campaign starts here to set the next series in Istanbul.

Rise and Fall (Channel 4, Sunday, 9pm) is for anyone suffering withdrawal symptoms after the end of BBC One’s The Traitors. For that alone, I’m in.

The Traitors was one of the most gripping reality/game shows in years, and Rise and Fall is made by the same company.

In many ways it’s the same show. The only difference is that, instead of being packed off to a Scottish castle, the 16 contestants are locked up in a plush London skyscraper, with the select few living in luxury in the penthouse at the top and the rest forced to work and sleep in the basement.

The so-called ‘Grafters’ make all the money, but only one of the ‘Rulers’ can win it. The job of the latter is to stay on top. The job of the former is to take their place.

It’s an obvious metaphor for capitalism, with all the attendant backstabbing and power plays.

Typically, the show is full of people who seem to think they are auditioning for The Apprentice as they declare “I’m not here to make friends” and “you’ve got to have the killer instinct” and other loathsome things no one ever says in real life – and if they did, you’d run a mile in horror.

Rise and Fall, like The Traitors, does offer ample sociological opportunities to see people at their worst as they succumb to greed and groupthink, but sadly it’s nowhere near as much fun. There’s even something nasty about it.

On Tuesday, the Grafters were actually made to eat plates of dog food to bump up the prize fund. It was disgusting, but in a gratuitous rather than an entertaining way.

I’ll keep watching for now, but I doubt I’ll be there at the end.

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There were a few familiar shots in Monday’s profile of playwright and author Sebastian Barry.

Behold the author writing in longhand in his study! See him as he walks his dogs in the Wicklow hills! It seems to be in the contract that every arts documentary on TV must include such stereotypical sequences.

The 67-year-old Barry deserves huge credit, though, for also allowing the cameras to film him while out on his morning run.

As a fellow runner myself, there’s no way I’d ever expose my technique to the judgment of strangers in this way.

I was even more struck by The Secret Scripture author’s assertion that running left him “feeling wonderful”. People say this all the time, but it’s not something I’ve ever experienced. For me, it’s more of a penance. Oh well.

Sebastian Barry: Family Stories (RTÉ One, Monday, 9.35pm) was a lovely piece of work, albeit that the emphasis was – as the title unambiguously promised – on the subject as a son, husband and father rather than a writer.

TV still struggles to talk about the craft of writing. It tends to focus on writers’ lives instead.

Barry spoke about his own experience so eloquently and movingly, and with such trusting vulnerability, that it’s only afterwards you noticed how his books had struggled to get a look-in.

My favourite bit was when he showed off a poster for his 1988 debut Abbey production, Boss Grady’s Boys. His genuine delight at recalling these “two lads in the Cork-Kerry border talking my nonsense” made the years fall away. More of this, please.

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