Underplayed Gems

Ballykissangel (1996)

Ballykissangel poster
Genre
drama television series
Country
United Kingdom
Length
6 seasons, 57 episodes
Rated
TV-14
Rating
7.2 of 10 from 10 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More series like thisWatch the trailer

or watch the trailer on YouTube

How it feels

A young English priest moves to a small Irish village and becomes part of the local community. The show follows the villagers as they navigate changes in their traditional way of life during a period of social liberalization in Ireland.

gentlewarmheartfeltslow-pacedlightheartedsometimes dramaticnostalgicgrounded

What happens

Ballykissangel is a BBC television drama created by Kieran Prendiville and set in Ireland, produced in-house by BBC Northern Ireland. The original story revolved around a young English Roman Catholic priest as he became part of a rural community. It ran for six series, which were first broadcast on BBC One in the United Kingdom from 11 February 1996 to 15 April 2001. It aired in Ireland on RTÉ One and in Australia on ABC TV from 1996 to 2001. Repeats have been shown on Drama in the United Kingdom and the series also has been shown in the United States on some PBS affiliates. The series was made and set during the Celtic Tiger economic period in Ireland and this features mainly through Tony Doyle's character, Brian Quigley. The show is also set amid the backdrop of the Catholic Church scandal and explores controversial themes of the time such as divorce (which had been legalised only a year before the series began), and pre-marital sex. Dervla Kirwan's and Niall Tóibín's characters are often at odds, symbolising the social conflict between traditional Ireland and social liberalisation. Significant changes in the cast occurred at the end of series 3, following the departure of central characters Peter Clifford and Assumpta Fitzgerald. Several new characters were brought in and characters that previously had little story were expanded, such as Kathleen, Niamh, Frank and Brian. The show faced a decline in ratings from a peak level of ten million viewers to 4.8 million and was eventually cancelled in 2001. The name of the fictional village in which the show was set is derived from Ballykissane, a townland near Killorglin in County Kerry, where the show's creator, Kieran Prendiville, holidayed with his family as a child. The village's name in Irish is shown as "Baile Coisc Aingeal", which means "The town of the fallen angel", on the sign outside the post office. The show was filmed in Avoca and Enniskerry in County Wicklow. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.