Present Tense:A company is offering Killinaskully-themed holidays. You can tour the Tipperary villages of Ballinahinch and Killoscully in which Pat Shortt's sitcom is made. There's a complimentary jumbo breakfast roll upon arrival, followed by a power walk down the street.
You can have a pint and a pink Snack in the pub which doubles as Jacksie's. And then you can go home and a) tell your friends all about it or b) never ever mention it again.
With almost 800,000 viewers, Killinaskully was, for the second year running, Ireland's most-watched programme on Christmas Day. People were prisoners of a bare schedule, for sure, but Killinaskully is a hit at any time of the year. During its fourth series, it averaged almost 500,000 viewers a week.
I don't know how those figures break down, but I'd guess that most of these viewers already live in their own version of Killinaskully. They're less likely to be Dubliners and more likely to represent, to borrow a phrase, the people who have their dinner in the middle of the day. The urban/rural divide is still very much in evidence in the success of Killinaskully - a programme that is said to quieten some rural pubs quicker than the sound of an approaching Garda car at 2am.
There is a common perception that its success is a snub to pompous critics whose understanding of the Irish people doesn't stretch beyond those in their own office. That's not strictly true. This paper's TV reviewer, Hilary Fannin, has praised the series, as did the Sunday Independent when it observed that the Irish "understand this fundamental rule of comedy, that a funny man with a dodgy script is always funnier than an unfunny man with a great script".
However, it has attracted heavy criticism. During a spell as The Irish Times television reviewer, I first gave it a slap on the back but later closed my fist when describing its first series as full of "hollow cliche and tiresome double entendre". The Irish Independent critic noted that it "hasn't got any better and if it hasn't got any worse either, that's simply because the level of relentless mugging had already reached rock-bottom". The Sunday Times critic said that it "has achieved remarkable popularity, primarily among people who evidently love cartoons but believe the animated variety are far too gritty and complex".
Then again, critics don't really matter. If they did, the ratings would be dominated by BBC2 sitcoms. There are plenty of critic-proof TV programmes. The Late Late Show receives massive ratings, despite showing up each week with fresh boot marks on its backside. And you would be as well off asking critics to decipher the Enigma machine as to appreciate the popularity of Winning Streak.
Killinaskully has not suffered from the critics; but nor has it flourished because it is particularly good. It's often predictable, ham-fisted, outdated, needlessly scatological and padded with jokes that you might have heard over pub counters 20 years ago. In identifying Irish quirks and characters - inter-parish GAA rivalries, local radio, etc - it hardly stands up against Father Ted, the accuracy of which makes Killinaskully look like an ageing centre-forward with his toupee falling over his eyes.
But it hits the target enough times with enough people across middle Ireland. Through D'Unbelievables, Pat Shortt had already established a reputation as someone who both lampooned and cherished gombeenism, and Killinaskully has allowed him to hone that marketable brand. More importantly, regardless of the jokes, he has created characters recognisable to many viewers. It means that he has succeeded in hitting an audience that is not always valued by critics, but which is the saviour of the television producer: the mass market.
Shortt has been magnanimous about the critics. "It's a big body of work to put together in a short time, so you've got to compromise along the way," he told the Sunday Times, "and sometimes stuff looks funnier on paper than it does on screen. But I'm proud of it. I think it's a slow-
burner and you've got to throw yourself into it. It's easy to be cynical about it, to say it's culchie muckery or whatever."
There, he briefly sounds like Andy Millman, the character created by Ricky Gervais for Extras, who had created a ratings-winning sitcom but threw it away in a bid for credibility. The difference, though, is that last year Shortt won credibility through his role in the movie Garage. So now he has both critical acclaim and people shouting his catchphrases back at him on the street. Which means he can take a holiday from the critics any time he wants.
