RTÉ delivers autumn home grown schedule

GLENROE and The Riordans are history but a new RTÉ television series will be screened this autumn which may placate viewers hoping for the return of a series reflecting country life on the small screen.

Entitled Pure Mule, it is set in contemporary rural Ireland - a midlands market town - and is expected to include scenes featuring alcohol and drugs.

It’s an Ireland that scarcely remembers hard times and where no one goes to Mass. Young people leave the town but return to settle down. They sleep around and a 24-year-old virgin is a figure of fun and embarrassment to his mother. It’s enough to make poor Tom Riordan turn in his grave.

The one-hour, six-part series begins on September 6. It was shot on location in Banagher, Co Offaly, and is just one of the many programmes revealed in RTÉ’s autumn line-up yesterday.

Another new production includes the ground-breaking documentary, The Asylum, described as an observational series set for the first time on Irish television inside a mental institution.

St Ita’s in Portrane is the location for this frank, sensitive and sometimes profound look at the lives and changing modes of care of Irish people suffering from mental illness.

The series starts on September 10 and will be in four parts.

Pat Shortt’s Killinaskully makes a welcome return having proved so popular last year and can be seen in a new six-part series while the Late Late Show and Tubridy Tonight will also be returning.

RTÉ managing director Noel Curran said yesterday that they were providing Irish programmes for Irish people. “That’s our distinctive offering, above all other broadcasters into this country and it’s what viewers choose to watch,” he said.

Last year he said eight out of the top 10 programmes on Irish television were home-produced and nine out of the top 10 were broadcast by RTÉ.

“We invested much more heavily in our summer schedules this year which gave us a summer filled with an unprecedented level of home production (over 300 hours). We will continue this commitment into the autumn and plan to deliver over 1,400 hours of home production in the coming season.”

Mr Curran highly praised another new series called The Last Furlong - a comedy drama series in which Hidalgo Furlong (Simon Delaney) a Portuguese singer/songwriter comes to Ireland to learn the truth about his dead father.