PJ Gallagher: I don't think The Young Offenders will return for fourth series
Chris Walley and Alex Murphy in The Young Offenders
Actor and comedian PJ Gallagher has shared his doubts about the future of popular Cork-based comedy, The Young Offenders.
Gallagher, 46, who plays Principal Barry in the series, says he thinks the actors playing the teenage characters are too old to carry on with their parts.
Alex Murphy, 23, and Chris Walley, 25, play Conor and Jock, two boys from Cork’s northside who, in the show, are due to sit the Leaving Certificate. When the original film the TV show was based on aired in 2016, the characters were aged around 15.
“I think it is gone,” Gallagher told the RTÉ Guide.
“The lads are going to be something like 26 now. It’d be kinda hard to play the part of young lads doing their Leaving Cert at this stage.”
Both Murphy and Walley shot to fame thanks to The Young Offenders, which was created by Peter Foott, and Gallagher thinks the young stars will want to expand their careers.
In recent years, Walley starred in a revival of Martin McDonagh's play The Lieutenant of Inishmore in London and as a result, was named one of Bafta’s Breakthrough actors and given a one-year acting mentorship.
“They’re young and they’re ambitious and they don’t want to keep doing the same thing all the time, I imagine,” Gallagher said.
“At the same time, if it’s offered, maybe they will want to do it, so we’ll see, but I imagine they’ll want to move on.
“They’re all really good actors and they’ll want to do different things. They’re not like me. I’m happy to do The Young Offenders every year until it’s over, until I’m over.”
The most recent season of The Young Offenders aired on RTÉ and BBC Three last summer. Last month, it was named Best Scripted Comedy by the Royal Television Society in Britain, with judges describing it as “authentic, absurd, and hilarious”.
