Last year, my search for something Irish to watch on St. Patrick’s Day led me to Ballykissangel,
a BBC series from the 1990s about a tiny Irish town and its residents.
In the first three seasons, the central characters are Father Peter
Clifford (Stephen Thompkinson), a priest from Manchester who comes to
town at the beginning of the series, and Assumpta Fitzgerald (Dervla
Kirwan), the feisty owner of the pub that is Ballykissangel’s most
popular gathering spot. However, both Thompkinson and Kirwan were ready
to move on to other ventures by the end of the third season, so show
creator Kieran Prendiville dramatically wrote out the characters,
leading me to wonder how much I would enjoy the series in their absence.
I gave the show a good break and came back to it recently,
watching the fourth season through Netflix Instant Viewing. The primary
difference is a shift in focus. While the show has featured a number of
quirky characters from the beginning, it’s in the fourth season that it
becomes a true ensemble drama. Because Fitzgerald’s is so integral to
the series, one might argue that new proprietor Niamh Egan (Tina
Kellegher), already fairly prominent as Assumpta’s best friend, becomes
the main character, but the focus really is all over the place. This
results in a season that is generally less intense, but there’s always
something interesting happening in Ballykissangel, and the new
characters add richness to the interconnecting storylines.
No
sooner had hip Father Peter arrived than he became completely immersed
in all of the town’s activity. Initially, I suspected that his
replacement would occupy just as central a role, but that really isn’t
the case. Father Aidan O’Connell (Don Wycherley) is shy and soft-spoken.
Lacking his predecessor’s social finesse and tendency to rock the boat,
he finds it much more difficult to integrate himself into the life of
the village, especially since he has lived in seclusion for much of his
adult life. His time in a monastery has left him ill equipped to deal
with many everyday concerns, but this adds to his charm. He is a sweet
man of deep faith, and I wish that he had a larger presence in most of
the episodes.
Along with the new priest comes Orla (Victoria
Smurfit), his spirited sister. She comes to town mostly to help ease his
transition into modern life, and she is his go-to person whenever he
has a problem, whether it’s feeling intimidated by the task of grocery
shopping or fearing himself insufficient when it comes to counseling
townspeople. I love the tenderness of their rapport, devoid of all the
messy trappings of Peter’s relationship with Assumpta. But Orla does
much more than simply give her brother a few helpful nudges. A lovely
and vivacious woman, she soon befriends most of the major characters and
involves herself in many of the town’s activities. Truth be told, I
prefer her to Assumpta, who always had a mean-spirited streak that was a
bit of a turn-off. Orla can toss out zingers with the best of them, but
she’s also relentlessly cheerful, and she’s probably my favorite female
character on the show.
I also like Emma Dillon (Kate
McEnery), the spunky teenage daughter of Sean Dillon (Lorcan Cranitch),
who grew up in Ballykissangel and has returned to an icy reception. Bad
blood abounds between the townspeople and this man whose circumstances
make him remind me a bit of Lex Luthor in Smallville’s first
couple of seasons. It’s hard enough for Sean to accept the suspicious
spirit in which he is greeted, but for Emma, who doesn’t understand the
history behind it, the move proves especially frustrating. Nonetheless,
things start looking up for her when she befriends Danny Byrne, yet
another addition to the cast, played by a very young Colin Farrell.
Danny arrives as a rebellious vagabond, but he manages to cool down and
become quite lovable after spending some time helping his eccentric
uncle Eamon (Birdy Sweeney) run his farm. It’s good for the elderly
farmer to have someone on hand to make his workload lighter, and through
Danny, Eamon has a more prominent role this season than in any other.
The only downside is that Eamon’s feud with Sean runs deeper than almost
anyone’s, complicating things for Emma and Danny.
The
remaining characters are the ones who have been in place since the first
season, and they continue to develop. Wealthy Brian Quigley (Tony
Doyle) takes over ownership of the pub, letting his daughter Niamh take
care of the daily duties. In the meantime, he continues to concoct a
variety of business schemes, particularly involving his new golf course.
On the whole, however, he seems to have mellowed out somewhat, as has
Father MacAnally (Niall Toibin), the senior priest who is relieved that
Aidan gives him far fewer headaches than Peter did. Sharing in that
relief is ultra-conservative shopkeeper Kathleen Hendley (Aine Ni
Mhuiri), who never held much with Peter’s unorthodox ways.
Niamh and Ambrose (Peter Hanly), the town’s only police officer, face
new challenges to their marriage in this season as Niamh begins to feel
dissatisfied with the monotony of her life. Their son Kieran, born just
last season, is suddenly a chatty toddler, which threw me for a bit of a
loop; I’m not sure just when three or four years are supposed to have
passed, especially since veterinarian Siobahn Mehigan (Deirdre Donnelly)
learns that she is pregnant in the third season and gives birth in the
fourth, and the baby is still an infant as the fourth season draws to a
close. My guess is that it was just more interesting to have a
rambunctious young child to write about, so Prendiville aged him up and
hoped we would forget how recently Kieran was born. Meanwhile,
schoolteacher Brendan Kearney (Gary Whelan) isn’t too quick to embrace
the idea of being a father to Siobahn’s baby, but he gradually warms to
the idea, and one of the big questions of the season is how this birth
will affect his relationship with Siobahn.
One thing that can
be counted upon consistently is some sort of idiocy on the part of Liam
Coghlan (Joe Savino) and Donal Docherty (Frankie McCafferty). Somehow,
these two are always called upon whenever anyone needs a handyman
despite the fact that they mess up every project in which they become
involved. Most of their misadventures involve their work for Brian, but
some of them are completely independent of him. Perhaps my favorite this
season is Donal’s decision to take in a bear abandoned by a traveling
circus, while trying to hide his new friend from everyone, including
Liam. I also love the episode in which Donal’s attempt to fix the
television reception at Fitzgerald’s leads to the pub only getting the
Spanish channel, whose soap operas keep the regulars riveted even though
they can’t understand what anyone is saying. In several episodes, they
find themselves in life-threatening situations, but they always manage
to escape unscathed.
Ballykissangel is a thoroughly endearing drama with a lot of comedy mixed in. There’s a wonderful coziness about the series that recalls The Andy Griffith Show
and Jan Karon’s Mitford books. Along with all of the colorful locals,
there’s the benefit of the gorgeous landscape. Filmed in Avoca, a town a
couple of hours away from Dublin, Ballykissangel is beautiful to
look it, and the stories are every bit as enriching as the scenery. I
was afraid that the show might not hang together very well after losing
its central characters, but what the fourth season demonstrates is that
the town itself is a character vital enough to withstand any changes to
the cast that may come along.
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