Hugh Linehan watches the candidates at the coalface

IT'S one of those ideas that is so good it's astonishing nobody ever thought of it before. The behind-the-scenes drama of an Irish general election makes potentially fascinating material for a documentary, but until now the subject has only been covered as part of RTE's current affairs programming.

In May last year independent producer Michael O'Connell approached RTE with the idea of Candid Candidates, a fly-on-the-wall documentary following the course of the campaign in the five-seater constituency of Laois-Offaly.

"We were looking for a constituency where there'd be some kind of a real story," says O'Connell. "There was no point in going to a three-seater where it was pretty clear who was going to be elected.

"At one point we were thinking of going to Mayo, and RTE suggested that we might go to West Galway, at the time when Maire Geoghegan Quinn was still in the running there. But that was too close to current affairs for us. Also, RTE traditionally drives through the Midlands and then makes a programme in Cork or Clare or Galway or wherever, so it seemed a good idea to film here.

In Laois-Offaly O'Connell found a story with several different possible outcomes. "There were two Fianna Failers retiring, which left them vulnerable for the third seat. So you had Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour and the PDs all fighting for the last two seats. The eight main contenders all believed, that they were in with a shout of winning."

With only 11 days to edit 7() hours of footage down to an hour-long programme, O'Connell and editor Daibhi Doran were still cutting the programme late this week. The footage they showed me gives a fascinating insight into the nitty-gritty detail of constituency politics, where local rivalries are just as important as party allegiances.

"You can see that Very clearly," agrees O'Connell, showing a scene in which Fianna Fail workers in North Offaly express their concern about getting a seat for that part of the county. "It's perceived that if you don't have that seat you're not looked after by the government agencies, and the guys in Laois will benefit."

The programme-makers started filming three weeks before the election was called. "We wanted to get their confidence, but I must say that they were all very open," says O'Connell.

"Remember, they all believed they were going to win, so they thought they were showing off their winning team."

Shooting with small, unobtrusive digicams, they became a familiar part of the landscape for the party workers. "We were only ever asked to leave one meeting, towards the very end, when it became quite obvious that a director of elections wasn't delivering the votes for his candidate, and the candidate was going to lose, but that was only four days before polling day."

O'Connell is enthusiastic about the new digital mini-cameras, which can be operated by one person, who also records sound.

For Candid Candidates, three cameras were used to cover the campaign. "They have the advantage of allowing people to be in a room without being obvious," he says. "It's a whole new way of programme-making, which I believe is going to change everything we do."