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.
Smother: This is what an Agatha Christie-themed Glenroe looks like TV review: Restrained Dervla Kirwan steals the show from melodramatic Seána Kerslake
Mon, Mar 8, 2021, 00:25 Ed Power
Dervla Kirwan plays Val Ahern, who has had enough of her slimy, philandering husband Denis. But did she kill him?
Smother, RTÉ’s new psychological thriller written by former Mr Selfridge show-runner Kate O’Riordan, is a long way from perfect. There are too many characters, several of whom feel blandly interchangeable (have a bow stubbled middle-aged blokes #1 2, 3).
The plot unspools like fresh-from-the-microwave Midsomer Murders. And it doesn’t take advantage of the Co Clare setting by evoking, as shows such has Broadchurch do, a specific sense of place. In Ireland there is no psychosphere.
The cast of RTÉ/BBC drama Smother, from left: Niamh Walsh as Jenny; Dervla Kirwan as Val Ahern; Seána Kerslake as Grace and Gemma-Leah Devereux as Anna
But nothing can compete with her hilarious nickname for ITV s This Morning presenter Holly Willoughby - who has a very public crush on Dervla s actor husband Rupert Penry-Jones - and later, we will get to that.
First, though, Dervla stars in new RTÉ/BBC drama Smother, a family thriller that opens with her matriarch, Val Ahern s, 50th birthday party and the mysterious death of her despicable husband Denis (Stuart Graham). Their three daughters are played by Seána Kerslake (Can t Cope, Won t Cope), Gemma-Leah Devereux (The Tudors) and Niamh Walsh (Holby City).