Representations of Ireland and the Irish in British TV(Frames and Fictions)
The Grotesque and the Ideal
Margaret Llewellyn-Jones

Introduction
This chapter considers the representation of Ireland and the Irish as seen on British TV, through comparative analysis of the successful comedy series Ballykissangel and Father Ted. Discussion is rooted in the post-colonial cultural context, exploring the extent to which genre and ideology are inevitably linked to an absence of history through the use of stereotypes of Irish identity, especially in the context of gender and religion. The romanticising effect of landscape and tourism on TV representation is contrasted with the function of the grotesque Ñ a key element in Irish literature Ñ as a potential agent of critical realism. Brief reference to other genres is related to the notion that hybridity and fluidity are apposite for both reading and creating new TV texts and post-colonial identities.

This essay will explore issues associated with the representation of Ireland and the Irish in popular programmes shown on British TV, through detailed reference to the light comedy series Ballykissangel (shown on BBC 1), and the situation comedy Father Ted (originally shown on Channel 4), with more general reference to other fictional programmes set in Ireland. These two popular programmes have been chosen because they may resonate differently with certain long-standing prejudices in the British viewer, whilst conveniently ignoring key aspects of the history and complexities of the political situation on both sides of the border, before and during the ebb and flow of the faltering Peace Process. ÔA comparison of these representations will be framed by the significance of the post-colonial cultural context, and related to concerns about the relationship of form and genre to ideology which may affect readings of such texts. Theoretical references will allude to the differences between realism and the post-modern in terms of the function of time and space as well as BakhtinÕs notion of carnival and the grotesque.

Both programmes are rooted positively in Ireland through aspects of the production processes, location and performers. Ballykissan gel was initially directed by Richard Standeven, made by the company Ballykea Productions, commissioned by BBC Northern Ireland and World Productions, produced originally by the late Joy Lale, written by Kieran Prendiville with Graham Frake as Director of Photography. Four series have been shown on BBC1 from 11 February 1996Ñ17 March 1996; 05 January 1997Ñ23 February 1997; 01 March 1998Ñ01 May 1998; 20 September 1998Ñ06 December 1998. Some episodes are now available on video. Significantly the series was shown on Sunday evenings, in prime family viewing time, after Songs of Praise and the Antiques Roadshow.

The main roles included Father Clifford, played by the British actor Stephen Tompkinson from the Channel 4 series Drop the Dead Donkey (from 09 August 1990) Assumpta Fitzgerald played by Dervla Kirwin known in England for her role in the early runs of the BBC1 series Goodnight Sweetheart (from 18 November 1990), and the village entrepreneur Brain Quigley played by the late Tony Doyle, an internationally known Irish theatre and screen actor who died early in 2000. Although the series was produced in Belfast, Northern Ireland, it is set in the rural South, and heralded by Mark Lawson (The Guardian 21 March 1996) as, like Father Ted Ôa child of the ceasefire... product of a new orderÕ. The first series of Ballykissangel, despite initial lack of interest from Radio Telefeis Eireann, was shown in the republic from May 1998. Father Ted was created by Irish writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews, beginning as a one hour spoof documentary, which they then sent to the independent company HatTrick Productions in England, and thence to Channel 4.

According to an interview (Film West Summer 1997 pp38-40), the writers were able to join in the the casting process, and suggested Dermot Morgan, Ardal OÕHanlon, and Frank Kelly for the main roles Father Ted Crilly, Father Dougal Maguire and Father Jack Hackett. In its first showing, Channel 4 placed Father Ted on Friday evenings betwen the American hits Cybill and Roseanne. The three series were originally shown 21 April 1995Ñ26 May 1995, 8 March 1996Ñ10 May 1996, 13 March 1998Ñ01 May 1998, the second and third series on Friday evenings. Some have been repeated and are now available on video. Gaining a cult following, the series won a raft of awards including a BAFTA as best British Comedy, an Indie for Best Light Entertainment Programme, a WriterÕs Guild Best Situation Comedy, an Ernmy Nomination for the 1996 Christmas Special, as well as viewersÕ votes for the best homegrown sit corn.

BAFTA also gave individual Awards as best Newcomer 1995, best TV comedy actor 1996, and best TV comedy actress to Ardal OÕHanlon, Dermot Morgan and Pauline McLynn, as Mrs Doyle the housekeeper, respectively. The 1999 BAFTAs awarded both Dermot Morgan posthumously for his performance, and the programme as best situation comedy. Oddly, the source of the greatest number of catch phrases, Frank Kelly as the outrageous Father Jack Hackett, did not get an individual award. Prompted by these successes, RTE eventually bought rights for showing this programme, too.

However, whatever the conditions of production and the input of both Irish and British elements, potential readings of both selected programmes, perhaps linked to television genre expectations, still have traces of old stereotyping. In view of Professor Mary HickmanÕs extensive recent research on anti-Irish racism in Britain,² seemingly such attitudes die hard. It is debateable whether the ethnicity of a joker ameliorates the dubious quality of a representation or a joke in this context. Nevertheless, as LawsonÕs article ÔThe Grins of the FatherÕ (The Guardian 21 March 1996) pointed out, both programmes have been unexpectedly popular, with BallykissangelÕs viewing figures for the first series attracting up to 15 million viewers, ranking it as one of the BBCÕs most popular dramas ever, and confirming the results of focus group test viewings as the most positive market research response. The programme was financed due to John BirtÕs regional quota system. Father TedÕs popularity is revealed not only in articles written in Ireland, but in the wide coverage of Dermot MorganÕs untimely death, which postponed the showing of the third series in January 1998 for a week.

Roy FosterÕs From Paddy to Mr. Punch (1995) and Terry FagletonÕs Heathcliff and the Great Hunger (1997) explore the historic roots of the British conception of the Irish as ÔOtherÕ. The former cites examples of the evolution of literary and often grotesque cartoon examples of the stereotype, which embody the kind of ÔStage IrishmanÕ that, during the Literary Revival, the National Theatre Manifesto dedicated itself to defeating.³ Eagleton also acknowledges the complexity of the colonial and postcolonial relationship between Britain and:
an island ... unsettlingly close to hand ... it is not with Ireland simply a question of some unscrutable Other, as an increasingly stereotyped discourse of stereotyping would have it; it is rather a conundrum of difference and identity in which the British can never decide whether the Irish are their antithesis or mirror image, partner or parasite abortive offspring or sympathetic sibling (1997 p127).

Geographical closeness thus intensifies the ambiguity of a relationship which, despite the passing of the notorious 1950s letting notices ÔNo blacks No animals No IrishÕ and the current prevalence in Britain of themed pseudo-Irish pubs, is still uncertain, partly due to a general lack of historical understanding as well as previous inflammatory reporting of the Troubles.

A more recent example of crude representation, which caused uproar even in the British tabloid press, was the visit of the popular soap opera EastEnders (BBC 1) to Ireland, when the plot line showed Pauline Fowler tracing an illegitimate half sister whose existence had only been revealed after her mother Lou BealeÕs death. The characterisation of the rural Irish relatives fulfilled the basic stereotypes, including large families, brow-beaten yet stoical mothers, peasant stupidity and trickery, and drunken men. This Ôcurse of Paddywhackery in soapsÕ produced 100 calls to RTF by lunchtime, and the chairman of the Irish Tourist Board condemned the soap for Ôits negative image of Irish hospitalityÕ (The Guardian 26 September 1997). The shallow approach was not entirely redeemed when two of the characters joined the more permanent cast in Albert Square, a niece predictably named Mary, and Conor, her feckless, usually absentee, father. At the present time of continued negotiations about the Northern Ireland situation including the Good Friday Agrement, and the expansion of the ÔCeltic TigerÕ economy of the Republic partly fuelled by EEC support, Irish identity is at an especially fluid moment, when such retrograde representations are especially inept, because they are fixed in the past.

Cultural identity ... is a matter of ÔbecomingÕ not being. It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history, culture. Cultural identities have histories ... but ... they undergo constant transformationÉthey are subject to the continuous ÔplayÕ of history, culture and power (Stuart Hall, quoted in (ed) Wayne 1998 p106).

As identity, in terms of gender or culture, can also be seen as performative, it is significant that Gilbert and Tompkins (1998 p12) in their analysis of post-colonial theatre performance prioritise acts which respond to imperialist experience especially in terms of gender and racial identity acts which continue or regenerate colonised communities through deploying theatricalised cultural practices such as ritual or carnival, and acts which use the stage space and the performing body as sites of resistance.

Clearly the use of camera and editing techniques in creating a TV text, and the nature of television spectatorship Ñ which differs from theatre or film both in its domestic context and its glance rather than the gaze at the screen Ñ does not provide a exact overlap with the theatre medium. Nevertheless, the relationship of Ballykissangel and Father Ted to dramatic form and strategies have ideological undertones significant for the post-colonial context and its link with gender representation. This essay suggests that in different ways both these TV dramas persist up to a point in constructing the Irish as ÔOtherÕ, because post-colonial power relations are exnominated through dramatic forms which push history as it were outside the four walls of the domestic setting, or beyond the tourist-beckoning landscape. As EagletonÕs (1995) discussion of Raymond Williams account of the space of naturalism implies:
history ... is always offstage. The forces which shape these man and women are thus condemned by the dramatic form itself to remain invisible and opaque (p313).

Exnomination is particularly facilitated through television discourse, it is the process through which Ôdiscursive power is hiddenÕ, and which:
masks the political origins of discourse, and thus masks class, gender racial and other differences in society. It establishes its sense of the real as the common sense ... and thus invites the subordinate subcultures to make sense of the world ... through the dominant, exnominated discourse (Fiske 1987 p43).

Paradoxically, therefore, the absence of historical awareness allows the British viewer to enjoy bland representations of Ireland, whilst also facilitating the longevity of stereotypes which are rooted in colonial relationships.

Eagleton (1995 p9) has suggested that for the British, Ireland operates as if it were an unconscious site Ñ Ôraw, turbulent, destructiveÕ but also Ôa locus of play, pleasure, fantasy, a blessed release from the tyranny of the English reality principleÕ. The rural setting of Ballykissangel particular embodies this escapist approach, which is heightened by the opening and finishing credits in which a childlike, idealised cartoon-style picture of the eponymous village within the Irish landscape fades into and out of shots of genuine landscape.

Throughout the episodes, scenery is often foregrounded for its pleasureable self. However, ever since the on-stage language of the Celtic Revival playwrights evoked off-stage landscape, from John Millington SyngeÕs The Shadow of the Glen (1902), to Sebastian BarryÕs The Steward of Christendom (1995); the Irish landscape has also been a crucial signifier of Irish nationalism, through for example Padraic PearseÕs role in the Ôprocess of the recreation of nature as cultureÕ (OÕToole 1994 p45). Further, and paradoxically, as Luke Gibbons indicates, scenery has also been used to evade crucial issues:

Landscape has tended to play a leading role in Irish cinema, often upstaging both the main characters and narrative themes in the construction of Ireland on the screen (ed) Rockett et al 1988 p283)

In addition to the voyeuristic pleasures the rural scene has for metropolitan viewers, it also enhances the notion of Ireland as tourist venue Ñ through location visits to Avoca, a village in County Wicklow where the shooting of the series takes place. The village had suffered chronic unemployment since the closing of local copper mines in the early 1980s, and now has a minor economic boom in craft shops and tourist accommodation. This curious slippage between fact and soap fiction was compounded by a BBC Songs of Praise programme, publicised as from Ballykissangel and broadcast from the village church of St PatrickÕs and St MaryÕs, which is shown as St JosephÕs in the series. (The Guardian 20 may 1996).

TV location tourism Ñ seen also in Britain as in trips to The Last of the Summer Wine Country or Heartbeat Country ad nauseam Ñ blurs fact and fiction more insidiously when it overlooks history or re-interprets it for tourism. Father Dan Breen, the real parish priest, is reported in the above article as saying that his anxieties about the persistent presence of the TV team were alleviated when he was Ô.. .assured that it was all going to be whimsical and harmless, and that has proved to be trueÕ. However, as Fintan OÕToole rightly complains about the Disneyfication of Ireland:
The grand narrative of Irish Nationalist history has been destroyed, leaving a gap for the pop images to fill, not merely for the tourist but for the native as well. In the process, the real relationship of history and geography, the real narrative of the landscape is occluded (1994 p44).

The front credits of Father Ted show Craggy Island, pan across a desolate shore, stone-walled fields, and then from above look down on the isolation of the large square Georgian-style presbytery, which links to the theme of narrowness and entrapment fore-grounded throughout the series. Sometimes mid-episode shots show the darkness surrounding the presbytery at night. The end credits usually show the same presbytery scene but often include comic elements from the episode, such as the gush of water up from a remote drain into a visiting bishopÕs skirts. The fictional site of Craggy Island itself is deliberately kept flexible by the writers, Linehan has said Ôthe island grows or shrinks according to what we are doingÕ (Time Out 26 February 1996 Ñ 6 March 1996).

Even where episodes show the magnificence of the rural landscape, it is often undercut through the comedy, for example in the ÔHell Ñ of a Caravan HolidayÕ (08 March 1996), where wet weather and irrepressible youth club hikers with another priest merely intensify the impossibility of escape. Location shots, which were fed on screen into the usually live recording of the episodes before an audience in a London Studio, generally came from Ennistymon in County Clare where locals participated as extras.

Although Ballykissangel and Father Ted have some similarities, such as the rural location, formal and strategic differences make the former more conservative ideologically than the latter. Both are examples of the increased blurring of generic boundaries which has marked the evolution of television drama. Generically, Ballykissangel is a light comedy series with elements of soap opera; several lines of through narrative operate across episodes within each of the series, whilst within each episode a particular situation or incident is also explored, rather more as it might be in a situation comedy.

In the first three series, the major hermeneutic link was the on/off potential sexual relationship between the English priest Father Clifford, and Assumpta Fitzgerald who ran the local bar. Soap opera elements can be related to the melodrama tradition, but in this context are also be underpinned by the strength of the Irish nineteenth century cultural tradition of theatrical melodrama, as for example the works of Boucicault. To a limited extent therefore it may be said that there is a trace of the post-colonial quality of re-working an indigenous art form. However, Gledhill has commented that melodrama may be:
judged as an ideological construction Ñ in which class divisions and struggle are dissolved, displaced by compensatory wants more easily satifiable by the capitalist culture industries (1987 pp36-7).

The glossing over of potential problems in feel-good location-based genres is thus scarcely radical. In contrast, Father Ted has a situation comedy structure, in which each episode is usually resolved, continuity being maintained by the central handful of characters in the Craggy Island presbytery, though extra characters may be introduced according to the needs of each episode. The form, despite this apparantly mimetic setting and generally linear drive, may contain deconstructive aspects which are sometimes similar to BelseyÕs (1980) definition of the interrogative text, or which may seem excessively carnivalesque grotesque eruptions.

These also, in some episodes, have an almost post-modern intertextual quality, and have strong links with the traditional aspect of the Irish grotesque, a point which will be developed further below in terms of post-colonialism. The style of dialogue is also closely related to stand-up comedy, an area of satirical performance in which Dermot Morgan and Ardal OÕHanlon have been very successful, and perhaps echo the oral tradition of the seannachie, the Irish story-teller. Where Songs of Praise blurred the fictive and the real Ballykissangel, the publication of volumes of The Craggy Island Parish Magazine mischievously aims for deconstructive effect, which interestingly also often debunks the colonising adventures of priests in other foreign contexts through grotesque exaggeration.

Although in terms of linear narrative plotting, the form of both TV texts has elements akin to classic realism as defined by Catherine Belsey (1980) and Cohn MacCabe (in (ed) Bennet et al 1981), Robin NelsonÕs (1997) useful refinement of their terms would place Ballykissangel as an example of Ôformulaic realismÕ similar to Heartbeat, whilst the latter has some elements of Ôcritical realismÕ. Quoting a line from StoppardÕs Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead (1966) to show how human beings live in an ehiptical, blurred relationship to ÔtruthÕ, Nelson is concerned with the nature of referentiahity and ways in which the viewer may be nudged into re-focusing his/her perceptions of both world and representation:
Formulaic realism is conducive to the permanent blur; critical realism is the agent of the grotesqueÕ (Nelson 1997 p121).

That the whimsicality of Ballykissangel promotes a gentle smile remote from the rigours of history, though with some allusion to current economics, is borne out by the headline:
ÔNo Bombs or Blarney in Gentle Irish comedyÕ (Time Out, 04 February 1996). In contrast much of the laughter provoked by Father Ted has the kind of dianoetic quality claimed for traditional forms of Irish humour, both macabre and grotesque, by Mercier (1962 pp48-9). In linking the former with terror and the fear of death, he associates the grotesque with a dread of the mysteries of reproduction. In this sense at least the latter programme is more in critically in touch with cultural history, and especially the role of the Roman Catholic church, through its re-working of the grotesque through absurdist satire and farce.

The macabre and grotesque humour which Mercier claims help humans Ôto accept death and belittle lifeÕ fuels the programmeÕs approach to the FathersÕ characters and situation. MercierÕs analysis of the evolution of the Irish comic tradition traces its development from the folk tradition, Gaelic comic literature, through Swift, the Literary Revival to Joyce and Beckett. He considers any Ôarchaizing movement is apt to beget a comic revivalÕ, and thus considers the persistence of grotesque and macabre humour crucial to Irish culture. In this sense Father Ted draws much more strongly upon the indigenous culture from within, whereas Ballykissangel seems to reflect its surface, re-presented as a commodity for those outside.

The grotesque functions as a tool of critical realism through characterisations, formal and plot elements in Father Ted. Father Jack is the most obvious manifestation of the bodily grotesque. His gurning face, wild hair, bizarre postures and catch-phrase cries ÔFeck!Õ ÔArse!Õ ÔDrink!Õ ÔGirls!Õ evoke not only areas taboo for the priesthood, but re-iterate the bodily boundaries celebrated by the carnivalesque grotesque as defined by Bakhtin ((ed) Morris 1994). His make-up, designed by Christine Cant, takes two hours to apply, and emphasises the apparant drooling of saliva, and droppings of ear wax which heighten this excessive yet abject effect.⁴ The other two priests are represented subversively but differently, Ted, generally a well-meaning mediator, sometimes gets into overblown schemes; there may be financial irregularities in the past which he fears may come to light; Dougal is a holy fool, ignorant of even basic religious beliefs.

Their fearful attitudes to sex and reproduction were clearly shown for example in the Christmas show (24 December 1996, rptd 24 December 1998) in which they and a further group of priests were trapped in the ladies lingerie department in town. Jungle sound effects and a series of comically erotic poses assumed by the female store dummies, around which the fearful chain of priests crept low like explorers to escape observation, underlined both priestly naivete and hypocritial double-think, since despite their embarrassment, they had, like naughty schoolchildren, made detailed observation of the underwear size and styling. Mrs Doyle, despite her cups of tea and unpleasantly mixed sandwiches, is a grotesque distortion of

the idealised, stoically suffering, Irish woman celebrated by de Valera in the Constitution. Her frequent brushes with disaster and consequent wailing are suggestive of the banshee, the grotesque old women whose cries are associated with death. The three priests could also be read as a satirical reverse gender echo of other archetypal roles of Irish womanhood, as seen for example in Tom MurphyÕs theatre play Bailegengaire (1985), with Father Jack as a whore, Ted as a mother, and Dougal as a virgin. Terror of death provoking macabre and grotesque humour is strong in an episode ÔGrant Unto Him Eternal RestÕ (26 May 1995) where an apparantly dead Father Jack is laid out in the church, similar to J. M. SyngeÕs Shadow of the Glen (1902). As in the canonical play, the corpse eventually rises Ñ here as the effects of the boot polish he has drunk have now worn off.

Representation of gender in Ireland is inevitably linked to post-colonial factors especially as in the ambivalent iconography of the young Cathleen Ni Houlihan and the suffering old woman the Sean Bhean Bhoct. 6 The emasculation of the previously colonised male and the association of nationalism with beautiful but domesticated women is often a source of laughter in Father Ted, but paradoxically so is the attempt to challenge this stereotype. Feminist critics have pointed out the persistence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Ireland the idea that:

The image of the West stands at the centre of a web of discourses or racial and culturalidentity, femininity, sexuality and landscape which were being used in attempts to securecultural identity and political freedom (Nash quoted in (eds) Stern-Gillet et al 1996 pl8O).

This symbolic and asexual idealisation of woman as Virgin/Mother in contrast to the Magdalen figure, combined with economic and social factors which have in the past either propelled men into working in exile or prolonged bachelorhood at home, has also affected notions of masculinity which reverberate in both programmes under scrutiny. The thwarted masculinity shown through clerical grotesqueries in Father Ted underlies the representation of the secular males in Ballykissangel. Declan Kiberd has written of the origins of this problem:

The Irish father was a defeated and emasculated man. If successful, he lived out his life in a posture of provincial dependency as a policeman or a bureaucrat or a petty official in an oppressive and despised colonial administration. If unsuccessful he retreated into a vicious cycle of alcoholism and unemployment. In the home the mother often usurped his potential function as provider ... just as the priest tended to usurp his potentialrole as a spiritual leader (in (ed) Kenneally 1992 p132).

In Ballykissangel this masculine weakness is seen most strongly in Ambrose, the policeman, whose vacillation about personal matters is in direct opposition to his petty, professional bullying of fellow villagers. In Father Ted it is linked to the effects of priestly celibacy and the roleÕs other restrictions which are intensified by isolation, and against which the body rebels.

The virtual incarceration of the priests within the confines of the Craggy Island presbytery has echoes of canonical existential European texts by Kafka, Sartre, and Beckett, where hell is both other people and the failure to communicate ideas. Across the episodes grotesque and excessive intrusions playfully satirise the power and ritual of the Catholic Church, as for example in the episode about the Holy Stone of Clonricket (Tentacles of Doom 22 March 1996), and the Christmas episode (24 December 1996) about Ted winning the Golden Award for the best priest in Ireland.

In the first instance, a quick intercut scene of the high-ranking clerics in Rome showed them deciding with a ÔwhateverÕ and a careless wave of the hand to dedicate the stone. In the second, several shots of a highly coloured gold, purple and blue scenario showed a group of such clerics feverishly playing rock music were interspersed within the ÔstraighterÕ elements of narrative. Metatheatrical touches include the priests watching TV advertisements for a ÔPriest ChatlineÕ. Priestly excesses not only demonstrate a subversive carnivalesque quality expressed through the body, but also provide a critical dimension to those aspects which seem loosely realistic, but paradoxically are postmodern in their overlaying of different spaces and times. As Foucault suggests:
We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch the near and the far, of the side by side, of the dispersed (1986 p22).

The collage-like juxtaposition of the quasi-real and the ridiculous nudges the viewer into questioning the contradictions.

The episode ÔRock a Hula TedÕ (19 April 1996, second series) features several significant characteristics, including deconstructive attitudes to gender, religious institutions, tourism and the media. It begins with Ted and Dougal watching on TV a feminist rock-star, not unlike Sinead OÕConnor, criticising religion, and singing ÔBig men in frocks tell us what to doÕ, accompanied by a miming woman. This metatheatrical aspect manages to deconstruct both the ridiculously overstated attitudes of the star, and the puzzlement of the priests over radical feminism and sexism. Apparantly she is intending to create in Craggy Island a spiritual haven free of sexual and religious intolerance Ñ a prospect which horrifies the priests.

Their lack of awareness is underlined as Mrs Doyle, staggering under a builderÕs hod, is expected to make tea after a hard dayÕs labour, and does not understand what sexism is. Further, Ted is delighted when asked to judge ÔThe Lovely Girls ContestÕ by a fellow priest whose general frustrations make him break furniture at random, wanting Ted to get the winner to wear a dress made by his mammy for the celebration dinner. The ambivalent Madonna / Whore polarity is variously underlined, as when Dougal, seen in close-up reading a magazine showing the rockstar with the mysterious label ÔClit PowerÕ, is given advice by Ted about dealing with women. At the Lovely Girls contest, the inept non-clerical males gaze giggling at the candidates, perhaps an allusion to the actual persisting problem of rural late marriage and the preponderance of bachelors.

The contest which includes graceful walking, making thin sandwiches of an appropriate size, as well as the usual inaccurate interviews satirises the female ideal. Intercut with the contest narrative, is the rockstarÕs visit to the presbytery Ñ where Dougal invites her to undo her bra so that she is more comfortable Ñ her raptures over the cultural implications of the old furniture, faded decor, and iconic pictures culminate in her claim that this house fits her requirements exactly. Thus TedÕs return, rejoicing in the prospect of a free dinner with the contest winner, is ruined because Dougal, faithful to the letter of his advice, has given the rockstar the presbytery. An unusually groomed Father Jack is seen, still at the contest, as the unlikely centre of a circle of admiring beauties. Eventually, the rockstar returns the presbytery to the priests on the understanding that Mrs Doyle is given one evening off per week.

A celebratory ÔsisterlyÕ dinner unites the three female archetypes within one frame Ñ the Lovely Winner (Madonna) the singer (Magdalen), and the grotesque banshee, Mrs Doyle. Unfortunately, the latter is shown as wrestling incapably with chopsticks, so any potential pro-feminist point is undercut by this mockery of rural ineptitude. Indeed, the superficiality of the rockstarÕs attitudes to landscape, religion and cultural signifiers is deconstructed throughout, thus suggesting implicitly that her apparantly feminist position is only skin-deep, and part of her publicity. The final credits reveal the priests desparately throwing items around in the kitchen in their feeble attempt to get themselves a meal for once. The episodeÕs satirical bite therefore is limited, since although it attacks aspects of dominant institutions associated with representations of Irish identity, including the Catholic Church, and ideas of remote Irish landscape as a spiritual haven; the episodeÕs attitudes to gender are more ambivalent, and verging in the depiction of Mrs Doyle on the misogynistic.

Analysis of one typical Ballykissangel episode (25 February 1996, no 4, first series) indicates how far the series differs from Father Ted in attitudes to gender, whilst sharing some post-colonial elements. Within a linear narrative, the comedy is based on character, and primarily concerned with personal relationships. Combined with lingering visual pleasures associated with the rural setting these qualities suggest that this might be considered as a feminine TV genre. The range of character types, although indicative of rural values as opposed to urban disenchantment, does not draw particularly on folk tales, but provides stock community roles, typical for example of those found in Patrick KavanaghÕs novel Tarry Flynn (1948), which was adapted for the stage by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1998.

These roles include Eamonn, an elderly eccentric farmer; Brendan a school teacher; Siobhan a (female) farmer with veterinary skills; Liam a rather dim employee of Quigley, the local entrepreneur and builder whose daughter Niamh is on the verge of marriage to Ambrose, the over-enthusiastic but ineffectual local policeman, and a senior priest from another parish. These locals all exhibit aspects of Irish ÔOthernessÕ, which are in contrast to the puzzled but good-hearted English priest, Father Clifford, who is something of an innocent in this Eden. The main female character, Assumpta, is feisty, exhibiting more ÔmodernÕ almost feminist qualities in running the pub which is the social focus, and skirmishing with the priest. Significantly, these untraditional qualities were eventually punished Ñ almost in nineteenth-century melodrama tradition Ñ when she was written out via electrocution in the third series. Unusually, in one episode, a visiting character, QuigleyÕs old flame, a professional academic working for the EEC, provides a link with the ÔrealÕ world of economics and regulations.

The episode ÔLive in My Heart and Pay No RentÕ (25 February 1996) has three major interwoven plot strands. Firstly, to the annoyance of his daughter Niamh, Quigley, a widower, has received a message that an old flame whom he rejected to marry his wife, intends to meet him on the local mountain-top where they used to do their courting. Secondly, because Ambrose has escaped being crushed to death by a falling holy statue outside the church, he decides he has a vocation and cannot marry Niamh. She goes ahead with Ôhardly a wedding receptionÕ in the pub. Thirdly, Eamonn is concerned that spy satellites will reveal the scarceity of his sheep to the EEC watchdogs, and thus reduce his EEC farming subsidy. A further minor detail is that Assumpta has laid off the (unnamed) draught Guinness, to the indignation of regulars who consider it is their Ôcultural inheritanceÕ.

All these initial difficulties, indicative of aspects associated with Irish identity, are satisfactorily solved through a triumph of contemporary action over traditional blarney. QuigleyÕs assignation with his old flame is framed by the romance of nostalgia and landscape, but she is happily married and working for the EEC. AmbroseÕs mistaken vocation provides a slightly satirical opportunity which contrasts the senior Irish priestÕs wish to ordain him to offset falling clerical numbers, with the English priestÕs attempt to persuade him back into marriage through adages like ÔA man who fears love fears lifeÕ, and a lie about the saintly status of the falling statue.

EamonÕs anxiety about the sheep is solved by a painted, wooden flock with which he intends to the trick the EEC monitors. On the other hand, the postponed wedding and premature reception provide ample opportunity for evidence of ÔfeelgoodÕ traditional community support Ñ drink and dancing to nostalgic music. Further, the success of the reception encourages the PubÕs suppliers to provide free draught Guinness until the tourist season starts, and prompts the agnostic Assumpta to donate a large sum to the church roof repairs. This unexpected gift underlines the sexual tension between herself and the priest which is manifest in shot-reverse shots as they exchange either witticisms or marked silences, with background music ÔTrue Love WaitsÕ. Throughout, there is evidence of sisterly support for Niamh from the other women, but the emphasis on marriage and the hermeneutic tease of unspoken priestly love offsets the marginally progressive elements within this and other episodes.

Limited space allows only for brief contrast between these two comedy texts and other recent TV drama representations of Ireland. Novel adaptations centred on problematic personal relationships in a rural environment rather than historical events have been popular recently. For example Falling for a Dancer from Dierdre PurcellÕs novel set in the 1930s, commissioned by BBC Northern Ireland, sponsored by Bord Scannan na hEireann, and produced by Parallel Films in association with Mayfair International was assisted by the European Script Initiative Fund for Media programmes.

The serial shown on BBC 1 in 1998 was pre-sold to Australian Network 7, and to Carlton Home Entertainment for UK sales. Amongst Women based on John McGahernÕs novel set in the 1950s was shown on BBC 2 in 1998, and developed by BBC Northern Ireland and by Parallel Films in association with RTE and also the Irish Film Board. Both provide a starker view of the problems of women within a rural context, in the relatively recent past. The latter, reviewed favourably in Film Ireland (no.65 June 1998) and Film West (no 33 July 1998), starred Tony Doyle as a harsh widowed patriarch with four daughters and two sons, showed how, even after his remarriage, religious oppression and limited economic and educational opportunities, tragically restricted both his sons and daughters. The former explored the fate of a woman with an illegitimate daughter, struggling to survive in beautiful but harsh landscape and even harsher moral attitudes, though eventually finding a partner, thus re-instating dominant values in closure.

On the other hand, the series The Hanging Gale, produced by Little Bird and featuring the Liverpool McGann brothers, seen on BBC1 on Sunday evenings in May Ñ June 1995 was also jointly commissioned by BBC Northern Ireland and Radio Telefis Eireann, and sponsored by the Irish Film Board. It was clearly centred on a historical event, the famine of 1848. The way in which it was filmed flirted with the danger of:
turning abject poverty itself, by handling it in a modish technically perfect way into an object of enjoyment (Benjamin 1973 pp94-5).

as it also emphasized the beauty of landscape, whilst cottage interiors sometimes took on the mellow tones of an old master. The depiction of women fell into the Madonna/Magdalen polarisation, whilst fathers were also shown as emasculated by events both within and beyond their control. However, the occasional deconstructive effects such as voiceovers whilst letters were read, and the use of different brothers to epitomise different discourses such as Ribbon Man, Priest or family man, suggested in a somewhat Brechtian fashion, the slipperiness of history. The presence of the suffering, and indeed starving, body as a bearer of the inscription of colonial might was also to some extent used, so that despite a certain reliance on melodrama character functions and events, the series moved beyond formulaic realism. However, the relatively sympathetic representation of the English Agent, played by Michael Kitchen, muted the critical effect, particularly for British viewers.

Produced by BBC Northern Ireland, single authored plays The Precious Blood by Graham Reid and Love Lies Bleeding by Ronan Bennet engage in a direct way with the political dimension of the Troubles in a Northern Ireland setting, though largely through the perspective of personal romantic and family relationships caught up within these events, foregrounding the implication of different religious and class contexts within a setting of urban decay and disadvantage. In the former, shown on BBC2 Screen Two (June 1996), the plot centres on a cross-community love affair. In the latter, shown on BBC2Õs themed Screenplay season (22 September 1992), the use of flashback as the imprisoned Republican protagonist recalls his girl, now dead, she is typically remembered within a rural setting Ñ a sign both of Irish identity but also of an Eden now out of reach.

A recent BBC2 drama, A Rap at the Door by Pearse Elliot (07 March 1999), based upon the true story of a Northern Ireland woman who was abducted and never seen again, took the form of three monologues to camera by her three children, Dermot, Cathal and Tierna. Their different perspectives produced an interrogative effect through fragmentation and oddly angled shots, thus hinting at a more fragmented and potentially post-modern approach to the slipperiness of both language and history. The works of Roddy Doyle, including The Family, The Snapper and the full-length cinema film The Commitments have also all been shown on British TV. Significantly, the urban setting of the former in depressed areas of Dublin, and their gritty yet humourous focus on social problems was not initially well received by all viewers in Ireland. According to Gray and Ryan (1996 p18⁷), there were those who Ôrefuse to believe the conflict and terror portrayed in The Family exists in IrelandÕ.

Whereas most of the general examples above work broadly within realism, where the relationship with history and politics is closest this approach verges on critical realism. Where the influence of melodrama is strongest, realism is less critical, moving towards formulaic realism. Those pieces which are most critical in their relationship to history and politics are those which are partly driven by humour, and in this closest to the Irish theatre tradition where the comic and the tragic are closely interwoven even today.

A realist form combined with a predominantly soap/comedy as in Ballykissangel may perhaps inevitably be conservative rather than subversive. It offers a surface reproduction of a generic model rather than a referent, and thus like other ÔSimulacra prevail(s) over historyÕ (Baudrillard reprint 1995). Although it has been suggested by Lovell (1982) that sitcoms are least subversive where the reference to social reality is greater, she also comments that disruption may Ôdegenerate into tiresome and predictable frolicsÕ. Thus there may be potential limitations to the potential radical effect of the absurdist excess of Father Ted especially as ironic readings cannot be guaranteed. Nelson (1997) underlines CaughieÕs point that television may open:
identity to diversity, and escapes the notion of cultural identity as a fixed volume .... But it does not do it in that utopia of guaranteed resistance which assumes the progressiveness of naturally oppositional readers who will get it in the end (1995, p55).

The most significant differences between Ballykissangel and Father Ted can be encapsulated in the fact that the latter could not possibly have continued after the death of Dermot Morgan. On the other hand, Ballykissangel has survived the loss of the two original main characters, Father Clifford and Assumpta Fitzgerald, the former to another parish, the latter to death, at the end of the third series, when the actors requested write-out.

As Rob Brown indicated in an article, the BBC had anticipated this and gradually increased the ensemble qualities of the series, by running some episodes without the stars Ñ as has been the practice with a similar situation in other location centred, bland TV texts such as Heartbeat. In the latest 1999 series of Ballykissangel, other major characters such as Ambrose have been written out and replaced by fresh characters, further confirming BrownÕs point that:
Viewers like the place and the scenery almost as much as the characters. The shows invariably have a central character with a job ... the situations come out of the job and can be continued... (Independent 23 February 1998).

For British viewers then Ballykissangel / Avoca remains a kind of Tir an Og Ñ a land of heartÕs desire where difficulties are evaded and charming eccentrics live. Despite the job-centred element of Father Ted the specific style depended on the protagonist. Further, the latter programmeÕs form is more complex, being both archaic yet avantgarde, involving post-colonial and some post-modern characteristics. The subversive nature of the dionetic laughter prompted by the grotesque and carnivalesque qualities is anti-establishment in a variety of ways which can be related to the post-colonial condition, yet whilst rooted in Irish culture the comedy celebrates post-modern intertextuality and TV technology. However, both texts run the danger of perpetuating for the British audience, condescending stereotypes of Irish otherness, because to different degrees ÔHistory is suspended in a commodified sense of placeÕ (OÕToole 1995 p40). Reception in Britain is also further complicated, for the Irish diasporic population may originate in the North or the South, and thus read differently.

Currently Irish theatre is experiencing a veritable Renaissance-style flowering, with dramas which explore a range of themes across genres and performance styles. It would be especially appropriate since, according to Fintan OÕToole, Ireland, like the Irish, is both everywhere and nowhere, a cultural hybrid. He claims that:
What contemporary Irish culture is doing in all this is demolishing the colonial opposition of Self and Other and re-inventing the ideal of the Self as Other (1995 p69).

The kind of cross-border and international production collaborations and transmission possibilities indicated above suggest that TV dramatists should seize the present opportunity to create new fluid forms for a new fluid identity. Kiberd has suggested that the British invented Ireland, but perhaps now is the moment for Irish dramatists to create for TV shown in Britain and Ireland, representations that are neither ideal nor grotesque, claiming what Homi Bhabha has called the ÔThird SpaceÕ:
which constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that the meanings and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anewÕ (1994 p37).

Notes

1. During the ongoing Peace Process negotiations between the Republicans and Loyalists in Northern Ireland, in which Mo Mowlem for the British Government, and Bertie Ahern the Taoiseach na hEireann have played leading roles with the indigenous politicians, the Good Friday Agreement signed in 1998 has been a significant factor in the reduction of inter-community tensions.
2. See Mary J.Hickman Religion, Class & Identity: The State, The Catholic Church and the Education of the Irish in Britain Ashgate 1995 (Paperback 1997).
3. ÔWe will show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and easy sentiment, as it has been represented, but the home of ancient idealism.Õ Extract from the National Theatre Manifesto of 1897, later to be based at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, quoted on pp8-9 of Lady GregoryÕs Our Irish Theatre.
4. See Julia Kristeva Powers of Horror: an Essay in Abjection Columbia 1982.
5. De ValeraÕs Constitution of 1937 valorised the family unit, and in Article 41 stated, Ôwoman by her life within the home gives the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.Õ This was challenged by feminists, see Kiberd 1995, p405.

See W.B. Yeats play Cathleen Ni Hon lihan, 1902

ISBN 1-84150-009-7 (Published by Intellect Books)

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