Raw teenage life

Tara wants to leave home. Glenn fancies Tara. So when she does leave and get an unfurnished flat, he and her friends cook up a scheme to buy her a couch. Tara's "free gaff' becomes the reason they organise a karaoke night - to raise funds for its first piece of furniture.

Wrapped, a rite-of-passage television drama about a group of young adults taking their first tentative steps towards independence, takes a refreshingly raw approach to the subject. Set in Dublin's Dolphin's Barn/Rialto area, its 26 minutes are peopled by locals. Not only do they act the parts but they also came up with the story, helped to write the script and provided some of the direction, in as far as they provided much of the set.

Fairview Productions, the company behind the programme, is relatively young, formed in 1997. Its brief, according to cofounder and Wrapped producer, Ken Lynham, is to produce creative documentaries and dramas with a social content as well as artistic merit. Among its previous productions is the six-part documentary on local authority housing, Home Sweet Home, broadcast on RTE in January.

Wrapped is similar to previous projects of Lynham's in that none of its 15 actors has had any professional training. He has taken the same approach to programmes he made in Coventry, England, as well as in Hull, where he worked with remand prisoners. He feels there is a gritty truth to any drama born of the real-life experiences of those involved. "The strength of the portrayal of their parts and the story lies in the fact that they are, in part, playing themselves. They genuinely feel what they are expressing," he says.

This, in Wrapped, shines through, particularly with regard to the degree of social exclusion the young people experience every day. Each of the young actors is from Dolphin House, a complex of local authority flats more usually associated with heroin problems than drama groups.

In one scene, Glenn, who works in a supermarket, is verbally set upon by the manager for not having contributed his £5 to the staff party. By the manager's side is Glenn's supervisor, who pointedly asks him: "Have you got a suit or something to dress up in?"

"We usually wear grass skirts where I come from," retorts Glenn.

In another scene, the friends are looking at couches they might buy. When Glenn says he'd like to order one, the owner suggests they might find something they'd prefer in another shop.

"The story reflects where they are in terms of their age and how the community they come from impacts on them, at that age," says Lynham. "A theme that came up again and again when the story was being worked out was that hostility they experience as soon as they move out of their home environment."

Commissioned by RTE - with a view to making up to four more using similar methods - Fairview Productions started work on what was to become Wrapped in April last year.

"We looked at a number of ideas, all from the young people involved," explains Lynham. "They were very clear that they didn't want to do anything on drugs and they weren't too keen on doing anything on joy-riding."

There were thoughts of making a programme around the theme of racism, in which one of the characters would be going out with an African man, focusing on the resulting tensions between the girl's friends, and between her and her parents. "But that idea sort of fizzled out," says Lynham. They also looked at centring a drama around tensions between a brother and sister.

"But one day Ester [Mulligan, who plays Tara] came in with quite a strong sense that we should do one on becoming independent, about young people sticking together and about doing things for themselves."

Lynham feels this is the first generation of late teenagers for about 20 years which has not been desperately affected by drugs and which can have a real expectation of being able to pursue third-level education and get good jobs.

Two of the actors are currently in apprenticeships in the building trade. Three of the women are doing their Leaving Certificate and Ester Mulligan is planning a career in acting.

It's a low-budget production, costing under £50,000, which was filmed on two hand-held cameras. There was an attempt to use as much as possible of what just happened to be going on around the set. The result is a kind of Roddy-Doyle-meets-This-Life.

As to what the average middle-class viewer in, say, Cork will take from Wrapped, Lynham hopes they might see "that not everyone in working-class urban areas is involved in crime and drugs. These young people have the same concerns and cares as anyone - even in middle-class Cork - might have".

Wrapped is on Network 2 tonight at 8.30 p.m.