It was the week we all gathered around the television to watch as a privileged and wealthy family imploded in dramatic fashion in front of our eyes. No, not the Windsors in London I’m talking about the Aherns in Clare.
RTÉ’s new drama series
Smother (RTÉ) told the story of this well-to-do family who chose the moment of mother Val’s (Dervla Kirwan) 50th birthday party to publicly fall apart. It couldn’t have been more dramatic if there was a billionaire media mogul sitting in a manicured garden interviewing two millionaires trying to free themselves from a medieval system of government.
The Spanish Princess,
The Bay) and directed by Dathaí Keane (
An Klondike), who keeps a tight grip on the flashback-heavy narrative, it’s mercifully free of the begorrah and bejapers trappings you fear from any Irish drama co-produced by BBC Studios and aimed at as much an international audiences as domestic viewers.
It’s a mash-up of noirish murder mystery and entertainingly overwrought familial nastiness, popul- ated by a large – a little confusingly so at first – cast of characters, some of them despicable types.
Most despicable of all is Denis Ahern (Stuart Graham), a well-heeled shitheel and serial philanderer who’s married to Val (Kirwan).