It's a dank, dark, damp autumn afternoon n north Wicklow, somewhere near Kilpedder. Swaddled in raingear, assistant directors splash around a picturesque farmyard, doing their best to keep the noisily clucking hens out of earshot while the cameras are rolling in one of the sheds. Behold the glamorous reality of life behind the scenes of Ballykissangel, the BBC's most successful Irish-set drama series, and now into its sixth season.
This is my fourth visit to the Ballykissangel set since the series first began in 1995. I've been here on glorious summer mornings when the village of Avoca was stuffed with gawpers and avid fans, and on days when the average duck wouldn't venture out to see the programme's stars at work. This is definitely the latter sort of day, and the fact that Ballykissangel VI, as it's known, is coming to the end of its five-month shoot means that cast and crew are running on empty, looking forward to the weeks in the sun which most have booked for straight after the wrap. Several of the crew members huddled in the farmyard have worked on the show every year since 1995. Over the years, some have dipped in and out of the most reliable and long-running job in the Irish film and television industry. "It's a bit like a family," says series producer, David Shanks. "People have come and gone, but lots come back again."
Two cast members who have been mainstays of the programme since the first episode are on set today. Joe Savino and Frankie McCafferty, the incorrigible henchmen, are in the shed with the newest arrival to the series, Susannah Doyle, who plays horsey newcomer, Avril Burke. When I last visited Ballykay, about 15 months ago, it was to interview Susannah's father, Tony Doyle, the paterfamilias of the show both on and off-camera. We sat and talked about his long stage and screen career in the UK, his remarkable success and increased recognition in his own country in recent years with Ballykissangel, Amongst Women and other roles, and the physical demands which filming for most of the year entailed.
Tony Doyle's sudden and unexpected death at the beginning of this year came as a terrible shock to everyone who knew him. For the makers of Ballykissangel, the question of whether the show should continue immediately arose. The character he played - unscrupulous businessman and doting grandfather Quigley - had increased in importance over the years, to the point where the show seemed inconceivable without him.
Enter Kieran Prendiville, writer and creator of the original idea for the series, who had since moved on to pastures new (his powerful single drama, Care, about the consequences of child abuse, was broadcast recently). `I'd had some discussions with the producers in December about coming back," he says. "Then Tony died in January. It was partly due to meeting a lot of the cast at his funeral in Dublin - the question arose of whether the series should go on. It was a question which had to be addressed, and quite quickly. I found I loved being back, and suddenly found myself in very deep."
Like any family, Ballykay has had its fair share of off-screen tragedies - Joy Lale, the producer with whom Prendiville first developed the show, was killed in a car crash during the production of the first series. Last year, Birdy Sweeney died during the shoot.
There have also been a few fictional tragedies, as some cast members decided to hang up their boots and move on. "I came back at the end of series three to fry Assumpta," Prendiville laughs. "That was great fun. I'm very fond of Dervla Kirwan, but I've never killed an iconic figure before."
Clutching a hot-water bottle to ward off the damp and cold, Susannah Doyle reflects on the experience of being a newcomer on a set where her late father had been the leading presence. "I didn't have much notice of this happening," she says. "But it took me about a week to go through various stages of shock, trying to be objective about it. All kinds of reasons, professional and personal, to do it or not. But it became clear to me that it was the right thing to do."
She agrees it felt a little strange at first. "Thankfully, I had never worked on Ballykissangel before, so I was coming into it without any mental associations. That aspect may have been more difficult for others than for me, but in a way it may actually have helped. I'm very proud to be associated with Ballykissangel and the fact that it is already associated with my father makes me all the more so."
Born and raised in the UK, Susannah will be familiar to viewers from her role in the satirical comedy series, Drop the Dead Donkey. This is her first time working in Ireland since her appearance in an episode of The Indiana Jones Chronicles, filmed here in the early 1990s. "I used to come when I was little every year, of course, for Christmas and summer. Then as I got older, I came over less and it turned into visits for weddings and funerals."
Acting, she says, "was inculcated in me from an early age, although I was the only one in my family to do it".
A few miles away, in the production offices at Ardmore Studios, David Shanks shows me a promo reel for the new series. I'm sworn to secrecy on some of the plot's new twists and turns but, along with Susannah Doyle, another addition is the arrival of a new priest, played by Australian actor (and Crocodile Dundee look-alike), Robert Taylor. And a familiar face joins the cast, in the craggy shape of Mick Lally - who achieves the unprecedented feat of appearing simultaneously in two north Wicklow drama series. Lally plays Louis Dwyer, a mountainy man with an incomprehensible accent.
It's a long way to Ballykissangel from Taylor's last job, a supporting role in sci-fi blockbuster The Matrix. "It all happened pretty quickly," he says. "I'd heard of it and seen it once, and suddenly here I was."
David Shanks explains the introduction of Taylor as an attempt to get back to the original Ballykissangel plot structure, with its fish-out-of-water priest coming to terms with the local culture. "The show had moved a long way away from its roots, as characters like Tony Doyle's developed and became more important. We thought it was important to get back to those original principles."
"David is definitely right about the fish out of water thing," says Prendiville. "It's the most important part of the show. I felt the show was treading water. It was not quite the Ballykay that I knew. That collision between the expectations of what goes on in rural Ireland and the reality is a crucial part of its appeal. We didn't want another Englishman, and Welsh or Scottish would have been too Celtic. Also, I'm told that Ballykay is very popular in Australia."
Taylor describes his character, Father Vincent Sheahan, as "a straight shooter. I guess he has fairly strong ideas about things, but he has his teething problems in a different culture, with a different way of working.
"I've had a blast since I've been here," he says. "But having said that I've been working very hard, so I can't go out too much. I have to be up at an ungodly hour, and then all day I have to be godly!"
The new series of Ballykissangel will be broadcast on BBC1 in early 2001
