Delighted that the series I directed for Crossing the Line productions with legendary Tommy Tiernan is about to broadcast over the next two weeks.
We had a wonderful preview screening in the Palás Theatre in Galway on December 29th where we got to catch up with many of the cast and crew.
We filmed the series over the course of nearly two years - and it is our love letter to the people, landscapes and artists of the West of Ireland.
Produced with Zlata Filipovic, Exec produced for Crossing the Line by John Murray and Cepa Giblin, edited by Andrew Hearne, presented by Tommy Tiernan and series directed by Maurice O’Brien.
From the Irish Independent’s ‘Pick of the Week’ description:
Pick of the Week
Tommy Tiernan’s Epic West, Wednesday, RTÉ One, 9.35pm
Though cunningly rebranded into a major tourist attraction by Tourism Ireland a decade or so back, our western coastline has deeper associations for most of us. Childhood holidays spent shivering on Atlantic beaches, or the hard graft of a Connemara Gaeltacht perhaps, but none of that could quite destroy the strange beauty of places like Galway, Kerry, Mayo and Donegal. The west of Ireland has always been a place apart, steeped in history and lore.
In this two-part show, Tommy Tiernan tells the story of Ireland’s west through the rich body of culture it has inspired. Artists’ fascination with the west stretches back to Synge, Yeats and Paul Henry, but as Tiernan travels along the rugged coast, he finds more contemporary responses to this unique place.
While scaling Skellig Michael, crossing the eerily silent Burren and testing his eardrums in a Galway nightclub, art is his constant guide.
In this first episode, Tommy travels through Sligo and Connemara, and talks to Garry Hynes, Kevin Barry and The Saw Doctors about the west of Ireland’s unique cultural identity. He also takes a boat out to Skellig Michael, an evocative, mysterious place which George Bernard Shaw once called “the most fantastic and impossible rock in the world”.
https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/television/what-to-watch-this-week-tommy-tiernan-explore-west-irelands-heritage-robert-pattinson-as-batman-and-julia-haart-in-my-unorthodox-life-42185924.html
