Over four weeks in May 1994, the country was transfixed by Family, Roddy Doyle’s series starring Sean McGinley as violent abuser Charlo Spencer and Ger Ryan as his wife, Paula. You can see some of this discussed in The Late Late Show debate at the time which RTÉ’s excellent archive site posted recently. In the UK, where Family was broadcast by the BBC, the series was seen a little differently. On the contrary, on The Late Late Show, he talked about the choice of Ballymun as being “because it’s an internationally recognisable landscape” for a story that could happen in any city. We hear a lot these days about the current Golden Age of TV drama, with the implication that there was nothing much of value in the past.

Source: The Irish Times May 18, 2019 06:56 UTC