There are musicians who play music, and then there are musicians who become music. Donal Lunny falls firmly into the second category, and a new RTÉ documentary is making a strong case that not enough people truly understand why.
In Time, which aired on RTÉ One, takes a deep and honest look at one of the most influential figures in Irish traditional and folk music. Lunny, best known as a founding member of Planxty and Moving Hearts, shaped the sound of Irish music across several decades in ways that most listeners probably never fully registered. That is often the fate of the people working closest to the heart of things.
What makes the documentary work is that it does not treat Lunny as a museum piece. This is not a dusty celebration of a career well lived. Instead, it gets into the complicated reality of a man whose devotion to music was so total that everything else in his life had to find whatever space was left over. That includes his personal relationships, which the film handles with a refreshing lack of sensationalism.
Lunny himself comes across as thoughtful and self-aware, someone who has clearly spent a lot of time sitting with the choices he made and what they cost him and the people around him. There is no attempt to paint him as either a saint or a villain. He loved music with a kind of intensity that most people reserve for other human beings, and that created a particular kind of loneliness even while he was surrounded by collaborators and audiences.
The documentary traces his journey from his early days absorbing the traditional music scene in Ireland to his pivotal role in transforming that scene into something that could speak to younger generations without losing its roots. Planxty in the 1970s was genuinely revolutionary, bringing together Lunny, Christy Moore, Andy Irvine and Liam O’Flynn in a combination that crackled with energy and invention. Moving Hearts pushed things even further in the 1980s, blending traditional sounds with rock and jazz in ways that felt dangerous and exciting at the time.
But the film is smart enough to know that a list of achievements does not make compelling television. What gives In Time its real weight is the willingness to explore the emotional cost of that level of artistic commitment. Relationships came and went. Stability was never really on the agenda. The music always came first, and while that produced something genuinely beautiful for Irish culture, it was not without consequences for those closest to him.
There are interviews with people who knew him well, and the picture that emerges is of someone who could be enormously generous and present in musical collaboration while being harder to hold onto in everyday life. That tension is not unique to Lunny, but the documentary captures it with enough specificity that it feels personal rather than generic.
The archival footage is excellent. Watching Lunny perform across different eras is a reminder of how naturally gifted he is, whether on bouzouki, guitar or keyboards. There is a looseness and confidence to his playing that makes it look effortless, which of course means the enormous amount of work underneath is invisible. That is usually the sign of someone who has truly mastered their craft.
RTÉ documentaries about Irish music figures can sometimes fall into the trap of being too reverential, too careful, too eager to protect the legacy rather than examine it. In Time largely avoids that. It asks real questions and sits with the answers even when they are uncomfortable. Lunny himself seems grateful for that approach rather than threatened by it.
For anyone who grew up with the music of Planxty or Moving Hearts, or who has simply absorbed Lunny’s influence through the broader landscape of Irish music without always knowing the source, this documentary offers something genuinely valuable. It connects the sounds to the person, and the person to the choices, and the choices to the music that came out the other side.
Irish traditional music has always had a complicated relationship with the idea of individual genius. The tradition is supposed to be collective, passed down and shared rather than owned. Lunny spent his career navigating that tension, pulling the tradition forward while respecting where it came from. In Time captures that balancing act better than most music documentaries manage, and it does so without ever losing sight of the human being at the centre of it all.