There are a great many accounts of St Brigid. She was born in Faughart, Co Louth; she lived in the time of St Patrick; her mother was a slave and her father a chieftain; she was an abbess who founded a convent in Kildare; she could still the wind and rain with prayer; and she once threw a Protestant chicken into a river, changing it into a fish suitable for Friday consumption.
None of the stories attached to the national pietist mentions bopping about like a demented leprechaun or granting wishes to Lindsay Lohan. But here we are.
Fans and hate-watchers of such recent blarney as Wild Mountain Thyme and Hallmark’s Christmas at Castle Hart will be crushed to learn that, twinkly, desire-granting Imbolc patroness aside, there is a scandalous lack of begorrah in this glossy Netflix product. There is, more disconcertingly, criminally little Irish involvement. A Welsh man plays the Hibernian love interest. One has to go as far down the cast as local priest, publican and – phew: national scandal averted – St Brigid to find indigenous actors. God be with the days when we could earn a living wage from screen shenanigans.
Lindsay, in her second A Christmas Prince-style outing for the streaming giant, plays the put-upon publishing assistant to a vain Irish writer. She’s inexplicably in love with him until he inconveniently falls for her vacuous best friend. On the eve of his wedding she meets St Brigid, who grants a chaos-making wish. Who will our heroine choose: the preening user who talks about Botox or the dashing nature photographer who bickers with her on the bus from Knock airport?
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Cartoonishly colourful cinematography brings emerald-tinted sparkle to Killruddery House, Lough Tay, the Cliffs of Moher and other tourist traps. What else? It’s professionally assembled? Everyone has nice hair?
Irish Wish is on Netflix from today
