RADIO: Driftwood, RTÉ's first new radio soap in six years, is a landmark show in more ways than one, writes Bernice Harrison.
Every lunchtime during my secondary school years, I gauged how long I had to bolt down my sandwiches by the signature tune of Harbour Hotel. The RTÉ soap came on 10 minutes after I arrived home for lunch and as soon as it was over, it was time to pull up my socks and make tracks down the road again. The odd thing is that although I hardly ever missed an episode, the only thing I can remember about it is that the central, and quite racy character, Kathryn, was always sparring with a cranky old duffer called Gabriel. There must have been more to it than that, but that's what stuck.
Soaps are the big ratings winners on television, and on BBC radio The Archers has a devoted following and national treasure status. But despite RTÉ's obvious commitment to radio drama, it has been six years since there was a daily soap on RTÉ Radio 1. That gap was filled earlier this week when Driftwood appeared on the schedule, not in the traditional lunchtime slot, but every day in an eight-minute slot after Tom McGurk's Summer Days programme.
Devised, written and produced by Catherine Maher with comedian Dermot Carmody as a contributing writer, Driftwood is set in the fictional seaside town of Heron's Bay, somewhere on the west coast. The main action takes place in the café run by a mouthy Dublin woman and her hippy-dippy daughter, and in the guesthouse where a former Rose of Tralee holds the fort while her cheating husband commutes for his marketing job. There's a dodgy developer, a deluded mistress, a loser musician and his demented girlfriend who plays the harp at Bunratty banquets.
"It's not a comedy per se," says Maher, who is an advertising copywriter, and whose TV and radio track record includes script writing for Bull Island. "But I want to make sure that the dialogue ups the humour ante; it's not the sort of soap where characters spend five minutes saying 'ah, hello Nuala come in and have a cuppa and a Marietta'." The strong and experienced cast includes Simon Delaney from Bachelors' Walk and Intermission, as well as naturally funny actors Amelia Crowley and Helen Norton, whose credits include appearances in Fergus's Wedding, Paths to Freedom and Ballykissangel.
Driftwood is a landmark for RTÉ radio in that it's the first time that a major drama series is being produced for the station by an independent production company. It had an open tendering process and Maher saw the advertisement for the commission in the paper. She not only wrote some pilot episodes as requested, but pulled in a few favours to get a broadcast-quality demo made.
Noel Storey, one of the most talented and experienced sound engineers in the country, agreed to help her put together the pilot in his studio, and actors' agent Lorraine Brennan supplied the cast on a no-foal-no-fee basis.
A few months after the pitch, the show was commissioned, and the same team was back in Beacon Studios in Dublin to record the first five episodes. RTÉ has commissioned several programmes from independent producers, but that typically involves the producer using at least some of the facilities at Montrose. This project is entirely outsourced, with Maher delivering the programme on disc to the station.
To get another eye and ear on the project, Maher took on Dermot Carmody, whom she worked with on Bull Island, and in the studio the production team was joined by sound engineer Gerry Gogan (who, in case it ever comes up in a 30-second quiz, is Larry's son).
In all, 30 episodes have been commissioned, enough to see it through to September when the winter schedule kicks in. By soap standards it's not a long time in which to establish characters and develop storylines, but then Maher, who is used to telling a story in a 30-second radio advertisement, has a punchy approach to character development. There's not much hanging around in studio either. Driftwood cracks along at a smart pace and it shouldn't be long before listeners are wishing for Simon Delaney's cheating husband character's comeuppance, or for that feisty café owner Helen Norton to get a bit of romance in her life.
It's a major commission by RTÉ standards, valued by Driftwood's commissioning editor Ann Marie O'Callaghan at around €100,000 - "a large chunk of our drama department's budget". Aside from the independent nature of the production, the other big departure is the timing of the programme - a coffee-break soap instead of a lunchtime one. O'Callaghan is conscious that she is breaking with a tradition that goes back to 1955 and The Kennedys of Castleross.
"The way people listen to radio has changed, and we have positioned it at that time of the morning because we feel it's a good way to see how drama will go down in 2004 on daytime radio," says O'Callaghan, who has final script approval. Maher and Carmody are two weeks ahead of broadcast in terms of script writing, and the programmes are recorded five episodes at a time.
Radio anoraks will know that in its long history, RTÉ has had four daily soaps: two spectacularly successful long runners and two relatively short-lived duds. The much-loved and long-remembered Kennedys was first broadcast in 1955 and ended in 1973, and Harbour Hotel ran from 1975 to 1990. They were followed by River Run in September 1993 which staggered on until December 1995 and the painfully alliterative Konvenience Korner, which began in January 1996 and continued until December 1998.
There are no immediate plans to extend Driftwood beyond its first series. O'Callaghan says that the station will review the reaction and feedback to the soap and go from there. Maher, however, is hopeful that the response will be so positive that it will be recommissioned. "It's meant to be fun," she says, "a bit of escapism in the middle of the day."
• Driftwood is on RTÉ Radio 1 weekdays at 10.50 a.m.