Its setting is remote, desolate, and windy. Its protagonist is a mercurial policeman struggling with his own personal demons. Its subject: a long-lost body found in a mountain bog.
So far, so standard for a television crime drama. But there is something about Crá, a new BBC series that debuted last month, that makes it stand out from the crowd.
It is written as Gaeilge, the first Irish language programme to get a prime-time slot on BBC Northern Ireland, and the latest in a small but growing genre of Gaelic noir, dramas that build on Ireland’s storytelling heritage and literary canon.
“Everyone was interested in Scandi noir, but we have created a genre of our own right here: Gaelic noir with different elements,” said Ciarán Charles, the programme’s Connemara-born producer of Fíbín Films.
“There is the storytelling, a Celtic composer and haunting soundtrack which people really seem to be responding to. It’s original and fresh.”
Likened to an Irish take on the Coen brothers’ blackly comic crime series Fargo, Crá, which means “torment”, is set in the wilderness around Gweedore in Donegal, north-western Ireland.
The six-part series combines a murder mystery with black humour with strong contemporary themes, including predatory behaviour and terrorism linked to the IRA across the border.
Starring Dónáll Ó Héalai as the moody policeman who has to recuse himself from the investigation and Alex Murphy, who played the lead in TV comedy Young Offenders, the series was shot in January and started to air on BBC iPlayer on Sunday night and on BBC Northern Ireland in mid-November.
Since then, it has become “the second most requested programme on iPlayer on BBC NI”, a spokesperson said, mimicking the success of two other homemade Irish language thrillers, Doineann (Stormy Weather) and An Bronntanas (The Gift).
Giving the show a prime-time slot was still a gamble given that Irish is a minority language north and south of the border and most viewers need the subtitles. But Karen Kirby, BBC Gaeilge commissioning executive in Belfast, said it had paid off. There are hopes the drama will get a national network slot on BBC next year.
“You might think that Irish language subtitles might put some people off, but with subtitles on social media posts, subtitles are second nature in some respects,” she said.
“And people are getting hooked in. Scandi noir now has a rival in Gaelic noir. It’s a great term. It encapsulates that culture of storytelling but it’s got that depth of a thriller and a drama going on,” she said.
The production received funding from the Northern Ireland Screen Irish language broadcast fund along with Screen Ireland, Dublin’s Coimisiún na Meán and the Galway media training body Gréasán na Meán Skillnet.
But TG4 director general Alan Esslemont decried the lack of funding from Dublin.
He blamed the Irish government’s “apathy” towards the Irish language, which, he said, persists even though Kneecap, the biopic of the Belfast hip-hop trio, and Oscar-nominated An Cailín Ciúin have proved there is a mainstream audience for the Irish language.
“TG4 receives only half the public funding of S4C, our Welsh language sister channel, a reflection of the profoundly ingrained apathy of the Irish state towards its minority language media, media in the Irish language, constitutionally Ireland’s first language and recognised by the EU as a full European language,” Esslemont said.
Northern Ireland Screen “easily outshines” its southern counterpart Screen Ireland for its commitment to Irish language content both for adult and child audiences, he added.
“NI Screen’s appetite for Irish language drama matches TG4’s own ambition in this area and led us towards ‘Nordi noir’ [a reference to southern Irish slang for people from Northern Ireland] or ‘Donegal noir’, as I prefer to call it,” he said.
“This TV series, ‘Crá’, where the austere and rugged scenery of the Donegal Gaeltacht is itself a character, deepens and widens our ambition to let the whole world enter into the secret and unique world of Ireland’s hidden language,” he said.
Charles agreed that the desolate landscape plays a role in the narrative. “It is a unique part of the world. The landscape is really a character in this piece, which is why people are first drawn to it. There is something raw, inspiring and also kind of scary about the place, the weather, the ruggedness,” he said. “We really lean into that.”
