Gomorrah in the Gaeltacht

The racy storylines of Ros Na Rún, TG4's Irish language soap, will soon berequired viewing for Transition Year students. Shane Hegarty looks back on six years of small-town shenanigans.

Eleven  miles from Galway city, just to the far side of Spiddal, there is a turn in the road that leads up to a little village of shops and pubs and houses. They all have a strangely artificial look to them. This is a not-so-quiet corner of the Gaeltacht that has been touched by many tragedies. Murder, rape, wife-beating, abortion, AIDS and adultery are all pervasive. There have been stalkers in the bushes, blackmailers in the boreens. Three years ago, an explosion at the local petrol station killed four people. Some say it was one of the quieter days.

Ros Na Rún translates as either 'headland of the sweethearts' or 'headland of the secrets', but it is a place where hearts aren't sweet for long and secrets last even less time. Of course, it is also a fictional village, the scene of a soap broadcast two nights a week - with a weekend omnibus - and watched by 200,000 viewers who lap up the continuous diet of disaster and intrigue.

The drama revolves around the local pub, Tí Thaidhg, the bed and breakfast, the cybercafé and the village radio station. The programme's makers have been offering the soap to foreign television stations, describing Ros na Rún as a "typical West of Ireland village", and the storylines as ones which will be "fully accessible and appreciated by international audiences." One can only imagine how foreign viewers would react to this vision of Ireland. It could prove a great boost to tourism.

The foundations of Ros na Rún were built, not with the start of what was then called TnaG in 1996, but with a successful pilot series broadcast on RTÉ in 1992. It was chosen to be the backbone of the fledgling station's drama output, and when the soap was subsequently put out to tender it represented the biggest drama commission ever given to the independent sector in Ireland.

For a television station that has made its name through the innovative use of independent producers, TG4's decision to give the project to two production companies was a brave and, at first, unpopular one. Eo Teilifís was an established company that specialised in programmes in Irish and other minority languages. Tyrone Productions had made a name for itself as one of the country's most progressive production companies. By putting the two together, it was believed that the show would have the best of both worlds.

"We didn't think it was a good idea. They didn't think it was a good idea," said Joan Egan of Tyrone Productions on last weekend's RTÉ Radio 1 Sunday Show. "We thought, 'how could two companies come together to run something like this'? In the end it was an inspired idea, it was absolutely vital that we needed to have these two influences." The decision was ultimately that of Cathal Goan, then chief executive of TnaG, and currently RTÉ's Director of Television. On his departure from TNaG, he said he felt justified in the bold move: "We have changed a lot of people's approach to how TV can be made in the independent sector." There was such a lack of professional actors working in the Irish language at the time, that the producers had to hire amateurs in order to fill all the roles. So the first episode was broadcast with a mix of first time actors and stalwarts such as Macdara Ó Fátharta and Bríd Ní Neachtain of the Abbey Theatre.

The soap is currently auditioning for new cast members. All you need to apply is fluent Irish, and an acceptance that some day you may open the script to find that you've met a grisly end.

The set was custom-built for the soap, which now employs 100 people. As with its actors, it encountered predictable limits when it came to employing Irish speaking crew. In 1999, the makers were forced to defend themselves against accusations that they were helping anglicise the Gaeltacht by using technical staff on set who couldn't even speak Irish. It is a sensitive subject in a Gaeltacht area that has recently had parts of it lose their Gaeltacht status.

TG4 countered by pointing to how they have tried to train local young people to work on the show, but that it was inevitable that some non-Irish speakers would need to be used.

It costs approximately €3.5 million per series (running from September to May) to make, or as much as it does to make five episodes of Coronation Street.

The soap was first broadcast on November 4th, 1996, and the storylines started as they meant to go on. They included the relocation from Dublin to the village of Rita O'Connor and her family, who soon found themselves involved in rows over a will, and secrets over a rape which had occurred 18 years earlier. Ros Na Rún also introduced to Irish television the first openly gay couple in an Irish soap, a storyline that caused more controversy within the fictional town than it did for viewers.

"We had no problems from the public whatsoever until we split up the relationship and put someone else in, and all hell broke loose," said Joan Egan. "Men and women were clamouring for our blood." That it will be used by over 100 schools as a Transition Year study aid is another sign that, while these sorts of storylines may excite viewers, they are no longer a threat to any moral standards. It is not the first time it has been used in the classroom, however; a few years ago a booklet and video were produced as an educational tool. This time it is being run in conjunction with the show's sponsors, Foras na Gaeilge, who hope that this pilot project will develop into something more permanent.

It should make for interesting classroom discussions. During Christmas, TG4 gave viewers a chance to catch up with the soap when they ran a special episode that condensed six years of the plot, confirming the small village as the murder capital of Ireland. Even this week, things are not too quiet, what with Tadgh and Daniel trying to trap whoever it is who is blackmailing them over their part in the murder of Eileen over Christmas.

Peig was never anything like this.