DUBLIN MURDERS - mon and tue 9pm BBC’s

[Blondeshavemorefun]

Starts tomorrow

When a young, talented ballerina is found dead on an ancient stone altar, her death drags up another tragedy that befell this community years before - when three children disappeared into the local woods and only one returned

It was a shame. I had wanted it to be better. The whole thing was really disappointing.

However, my take on the "supernatural" elements:

The "he has risen" was Shane's manifestation of guilt in part of Sandra Scully's rape. The father said at the end that "we raised a demon" i.e Rosalind. Their evil (the rape) created the other evil (children missing/Rosalind's conception).

There were numerous references to the "fetch/changling". These could be seen as Adam/Rob, Cassie/Lexi, Rosalind's dark side/Rosalind, the abused daughter. It could also be said that the men involved in the rape had a public persona and a private one.

I haven't read the books but there were numerous issues about the alter (the archaeologist wasting the wine and prancing naked/ also the affair between the two archaeologists). The female archaeologist said "the woods do something to you".

I think the wolf was a metaphor for evil and inner darkness, hence Rob and the other detective saw the wolf.

Just my take.

But Rosalind wasn't an "abused daughter". I have to say, I couldn't really see why she wanted her sister dead. Would have made more sense if the sister had been hateful to her, but she seemed to love her.

BIWI thanks for that article. I mostly enjoyed it, had suspected from the start that lots woukd be unanswered so that helped!

For me the saddest part was Rob saying to Cassie's empty chair "you were the one person I loved". i felt the storyline around how that childhood trauma had shaped his life was powerful. Tragic and uncomfortable with still no answer, but real.

Overall I really enjoyed it, though there were a couple of bits (beyond the obvious) that had me raising my eyebrows.

One was only a little thing, but the mention of "social media" profiles in one episode really jarred with me. In 2006 social media really wasn't a thing in the UK. Facebook had only just started becoming really big although Myspace had been about for a bit. But I don't remember the actual term "social media" being bandied about. Unless things were different in Ireland? The reason it jarred is because otherwise they'd tried quite well to imply it was 2006, not 2019, with the tech they showed. Outwardly, not all that much has changed between then and now.

It wasn't until the end of the series, despite the hints all the way through, that I realised I hadn't been watching the genre I thought I'd been watching, and I'm now planning on watching bits of it again to look at the symbolism and the folklore aspects, especially the Erlking and his daughter...who or what IS Rob really? It was the first time I'd come across the concept of the "fetch" as such though. I thought the performances were very good, especially Rob and Cassie, though the character I felt most sorry for, minor as he was, was Shane.

I do think it didn't entirely work smacking the two books together into one series though, parts of the plot felt a bit more disjointed than they needed to.

@Charley50 I've got Hinterland on my Netflix "To watch" list but have only found time to watch the first 20 minutes so far. It seems to have a similar kind of vibe. And someone else has recommended Mindhunter but suggested it's best watched with all the lights on.

cannycat20

Hinterland is not really like Dublin murders at all but seems to follow a tv tradition going back decades that all Welsh dramas are about absolute depression and despair. (There was one with Philip Madoc that was relentless downbeat - A Mind to Kill). Almost as though the price of the beautiful scenery was a to endure a life of deadening failure.

By the way I liked Hinterland!

I found Dublin Murders more like the other side of the coin of Ireland being promoted as a tourist destination where friendly locals would feed you slightly fey tales and you would leave feeling it is all a bit magical.

Though come to think of it there was an Irish dective series also full of tales of disfunctional families and darkness. I think it was called Jack Taylor.

@stumbledin Interesting take on it - we live quite close to Wales and have visited many times, and always been made to feel pretty welcome (mind you, my natural accent is very soft Geordie with a bit of West Country and Irish in there now, so sometimes I have been mistaken for Welsh, or Scottish) but I lived in Ireland for a couple of years (Belfast) and travelled around it quite a lot (not Dublin though) and there is very definitely a dark side to the magic there. And my first visit to Ireland, during Foot and Mouth, most definitely did not involve friendly locals singing songs of welcome, quite the opposite. We walked into one cafe and as soon as they heard our accents a couple of the local yokels started singing "Old McDonald Had a Farm" and the day after we'd finally found the holiday cottage in the a*se-end of nowhere we woke up to find someone had marked a very slight black cross on the back window of our hire car with the Dublin plates...it was quite an unnerving week, all in all.

There are certain places I visited in Ireland where the land still screams because of Cromwell and the Plantation and the Famine and the Troubles. And that's quite apart from all the arguments between the clans back in the day... Then there are other places where the land is alive with music and the rivers sing and I swear you can hear the fae dancing (though the Fae are not always sweet and kind, by any means....it requires great skill and presence of mind to bargain with them, just ask Tiffany Aching!)

Your comment about having to pay for the beauty of the landscape with absolute misery is an interesting one though, years ago I knew a military nurse who said just that, though it wasn't in either Ireland or Wales, but the South of England....

Well I'm still confused but I might have to read the book(s) because I enjoyed it.

One thing I did get slightly annoyed at was the number of surnames names that were the same as characters from Ballykissangel. I know they are common Irish names but are they so common?

That's interesting what you said about Welsh TV drama Stumbledin. I was watching The Accident last night set in a Welsh village, and was wondering at the relentless misery of it.

Which surnames do you mean @sahh? Didn't watch Ballykissangle

I didn't say that Rosalind had been abused but she had implied to others around her that she had.

Squigean

Quigley and Devlin for a start.

O'Kelly Phelan and O'Neill.

OK maybe not lots but the characters in the first episode.

I just watched the last episode last night. I didn't mind the ending, and that link you posted BIWI is brilliant and articulates exactly why. Loved the Cassie/Rosalind interview: both actors did a good job, especially the woman playing Rosalind. Ruined a bit by the constant cutting to the gormless, unsubtle gaggle of men behind the mirror.

I remain massively annoyed by the merging of the two storylines, and the Lexie story was as a result really poorly developed and lacked impact as a result.

Someone mentioned Hinterland - I loved that show. But I do have a penchant for vaguely menacing landscapes, tortured characters, and dysfunctional families with deep-rooted secrets threatening to irrupt. This mishandled the supernatural elements a bit, I think - it did veer a bit too close to touristic Celtic 'mysticism' at times.

But overall, I enjoyed it. I'm interested to see if the other books in the series get made now. I would love to see Broken Harbour on screen.

My comments about Ireland were more the tourist type presentations and I do think mainstream media usually use Scotland, Wales or Ireland for series that always have local "folk" as quaint characatures (spelling?!).

And I have a friend who visited Wales and definitely got the cold shoulder for assuming she could talk English and in Ireland that she was going to be easy to take for a ride. But loved visiting both countries.

As to the Accident, I think it is such a chronically bad show that it wouldn't matter where it was set, it just doesn't work. Cant imagine why Sarah Lancaster ever agreed to be in it.

Phelan, Quigley and Devlin not massively common

Kelly is very commonplace, far more than O'Kelly.
O'Neill would be similar to Kelly in occurrences (but less commonplace).

Tana French is American isn't she? Chances are she panders to sterotypes by default and went for surnames she thinks of a Irish.

I grew up in Catholic Glasgow and have loads of kids of Irish descent in classes I teach : loads of Phelans and Devlins! (and Kellys). Is it region specific?

One of the characters in Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is called Quigley...

I said 'not massively common', which doesn't mean there isn't a lot of them!!! I wouldn't think they are in the top 20 though.

I think Hinterland is beautiful; the way it's shot, paced, edited. I find all the stories gripping too, and I like the cop characters' backstories and relationships between them. I'd love if they did another series.

Maybe the author was a BallyK fan?

Thought it was really good, the best series of this kind of crime drama I've seen in a long while. Don't think endings need to be completely tied up.

I read an interview with one of the producers (or maybe the of of the screenwriters?) saying that her plan for the next season - if it were commissioned, which apparently it hasn't been yet - is to merge the next two books in French's series, Faithful Place and Broken Harbour. Grrr. Why, why, why? Just do one at a time. There's more than enough in one book.

I can't find the link now, but if it turns up again in my FB feed I will post it.

her plan for the next season - if it were commissioned, which apparently it hasn't been yet - is to merge the next two books in French's series, Faithful Place and Broken Harbour.

Oh blimey, I'm not sure how that would work at all. Surely one of them will end up being relegated to the 'b' plot (as The Likeness did) and suffer for it.

I think one of Tana French's particular strengths as a writer is her ability to evoke a sense of place, and the two locales in Faithful Place and Broken Harbour are very different from each other. I'd be disappointed if, for example, they transplanted the crime in one to the scene of the other to make it easier to merge the two stories.

Good point, OnlyTheTit. And actually, the person being interviewed mentioned Knocknaree and the mystery of the missing children remaining as a background story in future adaptations...so I suspect that Knocknaree would end up being the location for one or both of the other books.

Where is that bloody link gone from my FB feed

I googled and came up with this about the books and a possible s3 with another or her books

possible book 3&4

Thanks Blondes! Yes, the one I read was with Sarah Phelps, so based on the same interview I think. She’s a bit blasé about the novels!