What do you get when you mix a Polish soap, a dose of irreverent overdubbing, and the cream of Irish comedy? A sure-fire hilarious hit for RTÉ television, writes Brian Boyd

Go to www.youtube.com, type "Polish soap" into the search box and the first return you'll get is " Time Trumpet: Polish Soap Opera", which is a two-and-a-half minute video clip from comedian Armando Iannucci's BBC comedy series of last year, Time Trumpet.

The Polish Soap Opera segment was the best thing on an already very good show. Now that it's up on YouTube it has already been viewed more than 43,000 times and has attracted a large number of favourable comments - one of which says "this is the funniest thing I've ever seen on YouTube", while another asks "where I can get this on DVD?".

The video part of the clip is taken from a well-known Polish soap opera but the audio has been newly created by Irish comedians Barry Murphy and Mark Doherty. Due to the popularity of the clip on Time Trumpetand then on YouTube the two decided to make a whole series for RTÉ2, which begins on Thursday and runs for eight weeks.

The show is called Soupy Normanand uses the popular soap opera First Love(which is Poland's Fair City, apparently). In First Love, which goes out daily in Poland, the main character is Maria, an 18-year-old who lives in the quiet village of Wadlewo. After finishing school, she decides to study medicine in a big city medical academy, where she lives with her aunt, Teresa. However, Maria has problems adjusting to life in the Big Smoke . . .

Murphy and Doherty somehow got their hands on First Loveand decided it would be the ideal vehicle with which to create a new comedy show. All they've done is removed the audio from the Polish soap and replaced it with Irish actors dubbing it into English. The idea is that now the show is about an 18-year-old girl who leaves Cork to live in Dublin.

The original idea was to let the show slip out on RTÉ2 without anyone having to be aware that it was in fact a real Polish soap opera dubbed into English. However, due to the activity and comments on YouTube, the two had their hand forced.

One of the more recent comments under the YouTube clip was by SoupyNorman who wrote: "There is no DVD. A new eight-part series starts on May 17 after The Sopranoson RTÉ2. It's called Soupy Norman. I changed my name in a flurry of anticipation". The show was rescheduled by RTÉ because of the election.

It's certainly a novel way to publicise a new TV show - stick a similar clip up on YouTube and wait for the interest to begin and gather. Either way, the show has guaranteed itself an audience (at least among those YouTube viewers with access to RTÉ2) and it wouldn't be worth betting against the fact that Soupy Normanmight well go on to become a YouTube cult hit. Certainly for RTÉ, it would be the first time that a site such as YouTube has drawn such attention to one of their programmes (and for all the right reasons).

Apart from Murphy and Doherty, Soupy Normanalso features the voices of Mario Rosenstock, Tara Flynn and Sue Collins. It is brilliantly executed in that all the actors seem to have spent considerable time in getting their English remarks to fit as seamlessly as possible over the original Polish dialogue. It also helps that it is one of the funniest shows RTÉ has produced in years.

But could it have passed for a new Irish soap opera if no one knew any different? If the viewer simply let him/herself go with the storyline and forgot about the fact that both Cork and Dublin had suddenly become very central-European looking, then maybe.

The programme is already been talked about among Ireland's sizeable Polish community. The www.vaveeva.com site - which is for foreign people living in Ireland - has given Soupy Normana healthy plug and stated: "You can not miss it."

Both Murphy and Doherty are anxious that it is taken up by the Polish community here who can enjoy it both as a nostalgic look at one of their country's most popular soaps and also as a new Irish comedy.

One fan of the original YouTube Time Trumpetclip, Adam Buxton from Channel 4's Adam and Joeshow, was interested enough to get his hands on the preview tapes and declared it: "The funniest thing I've seen in a very long time."

With none of the Irish contingent on the show doing any press to promote Soupy Norman, Murphy and Doherty are hoping at some stage (and depending on how the show is received) to get the real Polish actors from First Loveover to Ireland at some stage to talk about the show and give their opinions on the changes that have been made to the original programme.

This could be the beginning of a beautiful Polish-Irish soap opera exchange relationship

• Soupy Norman is on RTÉ2 on Thursday at 11.05pm