Ballykissangel (1996)

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

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)

Trailer

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