It is a dark and stormy night that finds us crossing the overflowing Corrib to Pálás - and the premier of the highly anticipated original RTÉ drama The Galway Bay Murders.
The red-carpet screening is invitation-only. Navigating the theatre's labyrinth, my companion and I find our way to the bar, where a star-studded crowd is gathered.
Taking up the wallflower position, we size up the other guests, until I start chatting with an older gentleman in a very neat suitjacket and tie. He is here for his son, he tells us, who has a part in the series. Another man engages us until he wanders off for another Beamish. My friend leans over when he leaves: “We’re gonna look him up and he’s going to be like, super famous.”
Herded downstairs for the screening, Mayor Helen Ogbu makes impromptu opening remarks before a panel discussion, led by RTÉ's Louise Duffy, provides insight into the story behind the series.
At the heart of the production is the friendship between longtime patron of Galway arts Eithne Verling and lead actress Kate Mulgrew. The women met through mutual friends while Mulgrew was staying in Ireland on holiday.
By the end of that first dinner, Mulgrew decided it was “kismet” – “I wanted her in my life forever.” (The attunement between them is illustrated by their matching black jackets, pants, ruffled white shirts and black-framed glasses. )
Verling, who was the director of the Galway Museum until last year, had the “itch to write” for years, but “Kate ignited something in me. I never thought I was very good. I wrote because I had to.”
The Galway Bay Murders, she says, really came from “being championed. I wrote for Kate.”
Verling pushes back against Duffy’s characterisation of the show as a drama about the “vulnerability of women”.
“I wanted to talk about young people, and the heroism of young people, about greed, and the power exercised by some men.” And also about the grief of women through the central character, Nora: “It’s her world, really, that we’re seeing.”
Raising the question she posed to Verling, Mulgrew adds: “Can we explore a woman’s grief and not betray her strength and her character?” She knew Verling “was the man for the job".
Gender and grief aren’t the only elements at play in the series. Verling has worked extensively with the Galway Traveller Movement and the Misleór Festival of Nomadic Peoples. She based the character of Eddie on actor John Connors, himself from a Traveller background.
Duffy addresses this with Connors, saying “your part was very much created for you–”
“No it wasn’t!” he interrupts. Verling says she wrote it about John but for someone else, until Connors went around telling everyone “I am Eddie” at the behest of his wife.
Connors had lost his mother around the time of the project, and “the writer’s room was a distraction from what I was going through.” He says Mulgrew, who also recently lost someone, is his “acting soulmate”.
“She’s like a journalist, she’s the most curious person I’ve ever met in me life,” he says. “A proper, just leader – her work ethic put me to shame, but she can also have the craic.”
Jack Rowan agrees. “We first connected through the work...”
“And then it was through crisps!” Mulgrew finishes.
The rugged Connemara landscape and the facets of Galway are front and centre in the production, making the setting nearly a character itself.
Most Irish shows, Connors says, are about the “Dublin concrete jungle.” He hopes this series will encourage more filmmakers to shoot “the drama and taste of where you’re from.”
“We read a lot of scripts,” says Head of Drama for RTÉ David Crean, “but we don’t read many brilliant ones.”
“You must be very proud,” Duffy tells Verling.
She smiles. “Oh, I’m bursting.”
The screening begins, with whoops heard in the dark theatre for the opening credits.
The episode is alight with tension and ominous energy set against the raw landscapes and recognisable Galway scenes.
At one point, Connors tells Mulgrew: “One day soon, you and me are going for a pint.” Truer Irish words have never been spoken.
Declan Rogers holds a shotgun with utmost poise and James Ó’Quinn limps very realistically as the hour concludes on a cliff-hanger. This reporter will certainly be tuning in for the next instalment.
We make our way back upstairs, where the mingling continues even after the bar is closed.
The Galway Bay Murders will air on Sunday, November 8, at 9.30pm on RTÉ and RTÉ Player.
