Quarehawk

Series 4 Episode 1 (Guest appearance by Grainne Seoige)

[NOTE: Artistic license used. Drawing may not be representative of the actual content of the program]

Sweet Jesus, calling Killinaskully over-acted would be like calling the Pacific ocean damp. It’s all gurning, winking, and capering around in fields. And the stage-Irish accents are worse than Michael Flatley speaking to Radio Na Gaeltacht on Paddy’s weekend.

Make no mistake though, Pat Shortt is a bit of a genius. And Killinaskully will wrestle a laugh or two out of you, even if you think you’re too sophisticated for it. Although it’s safe to say no-one involved with this program is going to pick up an award for a nuanced understated portrayal.

Pat Shortt is all about lampooning rural Irish stereotypes. So here we have a mad village with priests and Gardai and bar owners and farmers etc, all hamming it up to beat the band. Shortt himself plays a few different characters, often in lunatic wigs.

So we kick off this episode with (naturally) the opening theme tune, which is fairly funny. It’s a trad style diddly dah effort. After that we get straight into the general plot for this week which is about two guys trying to steal semen from a prize horse to impregnate their own old mare. Yes, semen. But any plot is irrelevant. This episode of Killinaskully could be about anything, because it’s mainly a sequence of set-up/punchline sketches…

- Garda (to man with dog in his car) : Have you a license for that fella?
- Rural Stereotype : No, but I do most of the driving myself.

“Har” says you. But listen - eventually you have to laugh! Because it goes on like this for a whole half an hour - 100 year old gags getting dug up and revived. That’s the trick to enjoying Killinaskully - adopt the frame of mind you would if you were going to a pantomime. And for episodes in this format, Killinaskully would actually transfer easily to panto, that is if you took out the scat humour (There’s an old man crapping a field, with sound effects).

Hmm. Now. There’s a guy on playing the role of a traveler. And it’s fairly obvious, not to put too fine a point on it if you get my drift, that he’s been cast as a traveler mainly because he LOOKS awfully like a traveler. Or at least how you would stereotypically imagine a traveler. You’d wonder how Pat Kenny would handle an interview with him…

- When were you first aware that you could make your living out of looking like a knacker ?

Oh hang on - maybe he IS really a traveler. In which case sorry sham.

Ah, here’s a face I recognise! Stand-up comedian Joe Rooney is in this. A minor part as a barfly. I hope that’s not his normal hairstyle.

Some telegraphed jokes follow. Groan. Including a “L’Oreal/because I’m worth it” gag where they may as well have sent us a letter telling us the punchline was coming.

At one point there was a surreal appearance of a guy driving with a pigeon on his car roof. HAR! I don’t know why that was so funny. The whole pigeon thing must be explained in a previous series.

If the BBC made this, we Irish would be offended.

A side-plot in this episode is that following some goading from the barflys, the pub owner has started conducting his business only in Irish, and here comes Grainne Seoige now into the pub. In a pair of jeans no less. Talking Irish don’t you know …

(1) Grainne Seoige’s brief bit of acting is actually alright. But maybe that’s not saying much. It could be a case of unconsciously comparing it to the scenery-chewing going on all around her. To assess it fairly you’d have to observe it in isolation.

(2) Grainne Seoige’s bum as she departs the shot looks fairly sexy. But see previous italicized point.

Is this a regular feature of Killinaskully? Celebrity cameos?

And so in the final analysis the question we always have to ask ourselves about any Irish Comedy is “How does this compare to the great comedies of yesteryear? How would it stand up against a Leave it to Mrs O’Brien or an Upwardly Mobile ?”.

So yeah. Judged against that standard this is the greatest Irish comedy I’ve ever seen.

And it finishes on a horse-fart! No, really. This week’s finale is in the stable where our heros hold up a lighter just as the horse guffs, and a blast of blue-burning methane scorches their faces, sending them running.

Now. Inter Cert Science nerds back me up here - if there’s one thing we all had drilled into us time and again around the bunsens in the 1980’s it’s that if a horse’s fart burns blue then it can’t blacken a tinker’s face, since only orange flame causes blackening. Because orange flame means carbon is being burned. No carbon = no soot. HA! I CAUGHT YOU PAT SHORTT! “COME UP NOW” AS THEY SAY!

Wouldn’t you love to meet me on a night out though? I’m full of these kind of insights. Maybe that’s why I never married.