Garda life imitates art in ‘Love/Hate’

Gardaí have launched an internal investigation after a serving member of the Garda National Drug Unit played an undercover drugs detective in crime drama Love/Hate.

In the latest episode of the hit show, one of the new enemies of crime boss ‘Nidge’ Delaney is an undercover detective, Garda Ciarán Madden.

In a bizarre example of truth being stranger than fiction, the role is played by Kieran O’Reilly — a serving member of the Garda National Drug Unit in Dublin Castle.

In the show, he plays a role not dis-similar to his day job of investigating real-life drug gangs.

Acting is not a banned extra-curricular activity under the Garda Code. However, the Garda Síochána are now believed to be investigating the circumstances of how Mr O’Reilly got the part.

Meanwhile, it seems there’s a lot more love than hate for RTÉ’s award-winning drama, given the viewing figures for Monday’s episode.

An impressive 880,000 viewers tuned in to the latest installment of Love/Hate, representing a 50% share of the Irish television audience.

This is a huge increase on figures from last year’s series, when the second episode attracted a 36% share with an average of 671,000 viewers — and is only slightly down on the 971,000 viewers that saw this season’s premiere.

Among other things, this week saw Fran lose a tooth in a brawl.

Losing teeth, however, is nothing new to actor Peter Coonan who plays Fran — in fact, it’s how he landed the role.

“I had an accident when I was young and smashed my teeth, so I’ve had a denture,” said Coonan.

“The first film I worked on — called Between The Canals — [is] the reason I got a part on [Love/Hate], I had my teeth out and Stuart [Carolan], director David Caffrey, and casting director Maureen Hughes saw a clip of it and that’s how I got the audition.”