KIERAN PRENDIVILLE - THE END OF THE 'ASSUMPTA YEARS'

In the third part of our chat with Ballykissangel's creator, he talks about the end of the third series - Assumpta's death, Peter's departure and how he would have done things differently.

Q: If you could write series 3 again, would you have given Peter and Assumpta more time together before she died.

A: Yes, I would. It's a big regret of mine that their coming together and then that explosion and that cruel hand of God or fate that plucked Assumpta from him... It was very dramatic, and I like drama, that's what I write. But I think it would have been better to have explored that relationship a little bit because it would have had enormous repercussions in town, people would have taken sides.

There are lots of rich dramatic possibilities there. And for the characters sake it would have been nice to let them enjoy their love for a little longer, so I'm sorry about that. But in a sense it was forced upon me a little bit. I came back late to do those last two episodes. They were going - their choice - so I had two episodes in which to do something and there was some resistance to Assumpta dying at all a lot of people wanted her and Peter to walk out of town hand in hand into the sunset and I can tell you, I got a lot of letters saying that's exactly what they should have done. I don't scoff at that, I think it was a real possibility and I can see why people might want that, but you have to write what you feel otherwise it won't be authentic.


Q: You've mentioned in other interviews that one of your regrets was that you'd like to have given Peter a better speech at Assumpta's wake, so what should he have said?

A: Urghhh! I cringe every time I think of that. There are a couple of seriously, seriously terrible mistakes I made there. It was not a mistake to quote Yeats 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' - it's a lovely poem, but it's a terrible mistake to give anybody any words to follow it. It's like following a really good comedian - it's hopeless.

I seem to remember what I had following Brendan's speech 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven', was a song, I think Siobhan sang 'A Stor Mo Chroi' - a lovely Irish lament. Then I thought 'well, I don't think Peter can compete with that unless he quotes from Shakespeare or something, so give him something simple...' and in the end I gave him something simplistic, which sounded sentimental and it just didn't feel right.

What I would have written? Well that's hard to say - I'd want to sit down and think about it.
I wouldn't try so hard. I'd try and let him speak from the heart. Just write what flows.


Q: Is there any chance that Peter would ever visit Ballykissangel or write to anybody there?

A: Well I think Peter's now the drummer in Spinal Tap, so he might write from his tour of Japan.

I hope he would at some stage, but there are lots of problems here. There's Stephen's schedule apart from anything else, you could write a whole episode and then discover that he couldn't do it.

The other thing is that what we're trying to do is bed the new priest in a bit at the moment, we're trying to establish the new priest as an important figure in it. I wouldn't want to distract too much from that at the moment.

But it's a fair question and I'm a big fan of Steve Tompkinson's and I would love to have him back to do something - quite what I don't know, but I would like to explore what he did after he left Ballykissangel. What would Peter really have been doing? Would he have left the priesthood? Would he not? I'd need to think about that and I've always avoided it because it's too tempting and if you start to develop this scenario and then discover that it won't happen, it's terribly frustrating.


Q: So why did you leave the writing team after series 3?

A: It just seemed like a good time. I thought I'd run out of ideas. I hope I haven't - I just needed a break.

I was a little sad when Peter and Assumpta left - when Assumpta died and Peter left. Of course the actors themselves wanted to leave so we had no choice about that, but I was sad to see the characters go and it seemed when Peter walked out of town I just felt 'I think I'd like to go with him now... I'd like to come back, but I'd like to go with him'. That's what I did. I thought it was important. But I did miss it, terribly.


In part four, we discuss Kieran's return to writing for Ballykissangel in series six.


  
     
 

   

 



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