IT'S becoming a trend - Irish writers subverting the traditional portrayal of smalltown-Irish life for surreal comic effect. The latest saga of quirky characters in a slightly off-kilter set-up is The Mahaffys, written by Irish comedy writer/performer Karl MacDermott, and starring MacDermott and Pauline McLynn, a star of that other comedy series set in an oddball world.
This time the six-part comedy series, starting on Wednesday, is on radio - BBC Radio 4 (note, not RTE), which has a deserved reputation for fostering and producing comic talent. It would be neither fair nor accurate to describe The Mahaffys as Father Ted on the wireless, but you can see the influence, at least on the commissioning editors, of that show. "They wanted an English guy coming to a small town in Ireland, because that's their only idea of everything Irish," says MacDermott. And yes, that original storyline does seem to have a bit of the Ballykissangels, as well as the Father Teds, about it.
"I couldn't say `no, I'm going to stand on my principles'. I said OK I'll do this. But my heart wasn't really in it, so it didn't really work, because the English guy left in the end! I didn't want to be stuck with him for the whole of the series. He was a sort of dodgy, Terry-Thomas character, a bit of a rake. So then they said `forget about the English character, zone in on the smalltown characters. We like that, in your shows we like that, we like your relatives coming...'
"That's their preconception of us, and every time they've done a big series about us, it's `look at the quirky small town characters'. I can write that stuff. I mean, I'm from a well, not small town [he's originally from Galway city, actually], but my uncles and aunts are small town people. But also I think I maintained some of the wackiness and surreal humour. So it's not Glenroe with one or two laughs." MacDermott grins. "It isn't quirky people with tufts coming out of their ears."
"It's surreal as well, but it has quirky Irish characters - they love that over there, whereas here I think we resent the stereotypical thing. I mean, if you tried to sell them an idea about sophisticated mature people in Dublin ... they wouldn't buy that. Not that I'm complaining, because I think I've done a good job. I think, I hope, it works. They're very happy with the scripts.
It is very prestigious to write a Radio 4 series, and MacDermott is very positive about how the BBC fosters creative comedy talent. "There's a structure there to nurture writers." And they know what they're about. "They said `fix this, change this, do that'. I agreed with what they suggested. It was a greats help." He comments that it would be great to have a comedy unit like that in RTE, rather than comedy production having to go through the light entertainment or drama department.
He describes The Mahaffys as the Simpsons meets Ballykissangel, and that is close to the mark in some ways. Having got rid of the English rake, Karl MacDermott has created the world of Tubberbiggle and the "slightly maladjusted" Mahaffy family. Cora (McLynn), the Mammy, runs the B&B and shortens trousers (a bit of an unconscious British comedic obsession there, Karl, I'd say!). Her husband Jack (MacDermott assuming a `Daddy' voice) is a driver for the local bus company, Gus's Buses (later Roches Coaches). Son Kieran is a student; son Malachy (both played by Mario Rosenstock) doesn't do much with his time, other than say "what do you mean?" in a deep-voiced, teenage angsty kind of way. Aunt Ena is a wonderful creation - her only communication is a high-pitched manic giggle - not a whole lot of lines for Farrell Fleming, who thankfully plays other characters, too - but oddly enough it works on radio.
Other regulars are Father Des Hennessy (Conor Lambert) who appears to host every single programme on Tubberbiggle FM, and twin brothers Lar and Finbar Lamarr (Jonathan White) who run Lamarr's Bar (ho ho ho) and are never in the same place at the same time.
It's cleverly and tightly scripted, with a standard sitcom structure, - managing to set up characters and situations - main plot and secondary plot - in a 15-minute slot and still be offbeat and funny: Cora plans to organise a Tubberbiggle Arts Festival (complete with the Spanish troupe Ils Incompetentes and the Russian-Irish poet Mikhail McHale), Jack tries to get jobs for his sons ... It's an odd world but it grows on you - a good sign for a" sitcom.
Sitcoms take time to become established: "They need a second and third chance. I hope people will get into it and get a feel for it and come back."
ORIGINALLY the episodes were to be 30 minutes long, but "the powers-that-be thought it was a bit too wacky and off-the-wall" so they went for an experimental 15-minute comedy slot on Wednesday nights. It was commissioned by BBC Scotland - through Radio 4, but recorded in Dublin. "The rem it was to get a series from the Celtic fringes, a Welsh or Irish or Scottish sitcom. Most of the BBC output is commissioned by London - it tends to dominate.
MacDermott was blessed to find himself working with producer/director Alan De Pelette in BBC Scotland. "It's very important to meet someone you empathise with. I was very lucky - he's a youngish guy, we've the same ideas about comedy. I mean, I could have been stuck with somebody who was 55, an Oxbridge product, who was patronising, maybe, towards Irish culture. It's a lottery. This guy's great, he's from Glasgow, he's a Celtic fan - so (in a Scottish accent) frem the reght sede oof the fence, ye know. I was very lucky to get him."
Actually getting to the stage of having a radio sitcom about to go out on air was an incredibly long process. Various commissioning editors had seen Karl's one-man shows at the Edinburgh festival in the early 1990s - An Afternoon With Klaus Barbie's Pen-Pal; Monrovia, Monrovia; Stand-Up Stories. They were self-contained, script-based comic pieces, written and performed by Karl, and a different kettle of laughs entirely to stand-up, which tends to dominate Edinburgh. So, "they said `yeah we really like you, we just don't know what to do with you'," as his wasn't the usual routine.
Eventually they asked him to send material in. "So I sent in stuff for about a year. It wasn't really anything - sort of comedy drama. It was all over the shop in retrospect, because I hadn't been thinking about the medium. So eventually I had sent in so much stuff the guy got kind of guilty, and he said, can we give you a commission, and just write a sitcom. So that was the start."
Eventually, in June 1995 he was commissioned to write a pilot, and last December he got the go-ahead to write the other five episodes. It had taken a long time and a lot of bureaucracy to get to this stage, but "`you write it and then you write it again, and you get into the characters". So after the pilot was accepted, "I had the five to write after Christmas, and I wrote them very fast. Because the hard work is sitting down for the first two months and going - `who are these characters?' But once you get into the swing of things you're alright."
These days Karl MacDermott's is preparing for another script being aired - on the big screen this time: The Big Match, a short film directed by Martin Mahon, Dublin Film Festival programme director, will be shown at the Cork Film Festival. It's a comedy about a man who is obsessed with football, and who also has a heart condition. And he's also working on another sitcom, which he would like to sell in Ireland.
