When it comes to RTÉ and comedy, the joke has always been on licence-fee payers. While Channel 4 has wisecracked its way into the Irish comedy hall of fame with Father Ted and Derry Girls, the domestic broadcaster’s attempts at engaging with the national funny bone have been patchy at best, tragic at worst. Lots on RTÉ has been laughable down the decades – but seldom by design.
With the Cork-set chuckle-fest The Young Offenders, that might have changed. The series – a spin-off of Peter Foott’s charming 2016 indie movie about two juvenile miscreants from the city’s northside – is co-produced with the BBC, but Montrose is still involved, which is a lot better than its shutout from Father Ted and Derry Girls. And, as the BBC is putting up the bulk of the cash, it is only fair it should claim first broadcast rights – which it did by airing series four last May.
Six months later, the season – which reunites lovable scamps Jock and Conor – finally comes to Ireland, but only sort of and in a fashion that honks of classic RTÉ. It is debuting on the RTÉ Player – that digital hellscape which, even more than the social media feed of Elon Musk or the entire Irish podcasting industry, makes you wish the internet had never been invented. Or, as RTÉ says in a statement, “as a special Christmas treat, the brand new series of The Young Offenders will be streamed on RTÉ Player from tomorrow before its broadcast on RTÉ One television in 2025″.
A Christmas “treat”? More a nasty surprise at the bottom of your stocking. The true treat would be to put it on the airwaves now rather than slight the show by chucking it on the player.
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That isn’t to claim The Young Offenders is some sort of lost classic. As a Cork person, I should find the series – located largely around the Gurranabraher suburbs – slam-dunk viewing. Having grown up across the road from Mayfield Community School – the alma mater of Young Offenders guest-actor Roy Keane – and just down from the Tank Field, the northside is a literal part of my childhood. But it makes for bittersweet watching in that, while it celebrates Cork, the humour is juvenile and the slapstick – more childish than thrilling. Like the third Sultans of Ping album or Cork City’s notorious 1994-95 “Eason’s bag” jersey, I want to like it but can’t quite bring myself to.
Still, its ding-dong humour being an acquired taste is beside the point. What matters is that The Young Offenders brings us a slice of urban grit that has nothing whatsoever to do with Dublin – an arguable first for RTÉ. From Fair City to Love/Hate, the national broadcaster has clung, with a desperation that can feel hysterical, to the trope of urban life ending with Dublin and that all that lies beyond is a rustic mash-up of Glenroe and D’Unbelievables.
Such attitudes haven’t tumbled from the empty blue sky. They reflect the belief among some (certainly not all) Dubliners that the rest of the country is some sort of rural-gothic hellscape. When you push back even slightly and explain that, say, the northside of Cork is every bit as built-up as any part of the capital (itself hardly a metropolis), a particular sort of Dubliner will have an out-of-body experience – it’s akin to telling a specific category of British person why it isn’t okay to say “Southern Ireland” or include Ireland in the “British Isles”. This isn’t just a misconception on their part – it’s a worldview in which they are hugely invested. Is it a defence mechanism flowing from Dublin’s many (many) failings or its centuries as an outpost of British provincialism in Ireland? Who knows – but it’s definitely a thing.
The Young Offenders matters, then, because it is urban TV that has nothing at all to do with Dublin. I often struggled to find it funny while admiring it for spotlighting the English Market, the undulating landscape of the northside, and the twin outlines of the North Cathedral and St Anne’s Church rising up from Shandon. Six months after BBC viewers were able to soak up those sights with the series’ fourth season, they have yet to come to Irish screens. Yes, we can watch it on RTÉ Player, but for many, it is too little too late (a Young Offenders Christmas special meanwhile lands on the BBC on December 20th). Handed a hit comedy by the BBC, RTÉ has once again fumbled its big punchline.
