The Curious Case of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly

“I remember one particular kid… one of the players… he left the pitch and he said to his dad; ’I don’t give a fock how you think I played, just crack open the wallet dude’ … and that’s the moment in my mind that Ross O’Carroll-Kelly was born.” Paul Howard, Episode 86: An Irishman Abroad...

Rewind: Looking back at David Gleeson’s Cowboys and Angels

A profile of David Gleeson's 2003 comedy-drama. Contains some spoilers. Set in Limerick city during the boom years, Cowboys and Angels depicts the growing friendship between two very different men and looks at the anxieties and challenges faced by young people trying to establish their identity in a modern city.  When shy civil servant Shane...

What Richard Did: A film about failure

In his 2012 film What Richard Did, director Lenny Abrahamson depicts the downfall of the titular rugby playing 'golden boy' following an act of violence. The film's serious subject matter and the fact that its plot was inspired by the real-life events surrounding the death of a Dublin teenager, meant that its production was a heavy...

Beyond ‘Hip Hedonism’: The darker side of urban Celtic Tiger Ireland

In his 2007 essay "Cinema, city, and imaginative space: 'Hip hedonism' and recent Irish cinema", McLoone outlines how the relative prosperity and optimism of the Celtic Tiger years led a cultural rebirth of Dublin, and a re-imagining of Ireland's capital in film as a space of "sexual freedom and exploration" (213). Films like Goldfish Memory...

‘Living, in our own terrible way.’* The disorientation of Ireland’s youth culture in contemporary film and television

Through a series of blog posts, I will explore how contemporary Irish film and television portray the difficulties faced by young Irish men and women. The last few years have seen a string of Irish films and TV series that portray a darker side of Irish life with issues like depression, alcohol and drug abuse, alienation,...