THE WALSH SISTERS - sat 9.15pm bbc 1 - TV PACE. NO SPOILERS

[Blondeshavemorefun]

New series 6 which is mean to be ace !!

was shown originally in Ireland last year and now bbc have it

Enter The Walsh Sisters, which has been adapted from several of Marian Keyes' beloved novels and introduces us to the dysfunctional but deeply loveable Walsh family.

Featuring five sisters, a devout mother and a bemused father, every family will find something to relate to in the chaos that surrounds them.

Billed as a "comedy about serious things — a pacy, brutally honest and uncompromisingly funny exposé of the realities of being an Irish sister", we meet the five sisters as they’re drifting through adulthood in Dublin and supporting each other as they cope with heartbreak, grief, addiction and parenthood.

And if it's as good as Marian's books, it's going to be a truly outstanding piece of TV.

The six-part series is part based on two of Marian Keyes’ novels, Rachel’s Holiday and Anybody Out There and introduces us to a group of five loveable but chaotic sisters living in Dublin - Anna (Louisa Harland), Rachel (Caroline Menton), Maggie (Stefanie Preissner), Claire (Danielle Galligan) and Helen (Máiréad Tyers) – as they navigate the peaks and troughs of their late 20s and 30s.

It's a sisterhood full of in-jokes, hand-me-down resentments and more than a few old wounds.

But their DNA, history and shared love of power ballads keep the Walsh sisters together in the face of heartbreak, grief, addiction and parenthood.

The cast of The Walsh Sisters includes:
• Louisa Harland (Derry Girls, Renegade Nell) as Anna
• Caroline Menton (Oddity) as Rachel
• Danielle Galligan (Kin, Shadow and Bone)

•	Máiréad Tyers (My Lady Jane, Belfast) as Helen
•	Stefanie Preissner (How to Adult) as Maggie
•	Aidan Quinn (Legends of the Fall) as Jack ‘Daddy’ Walsh
•	Carrie Crowley (Hope Street) as Mammy Walsh
•	Debi Mazar (Younger) as Chaquie
•	Gina Moxley (The Patient Gloria, Here Before) as Josephine 
•	Jay Duffy (Wheel of Time, Northern Lights) as Luke Costello
•	Samuel Anderson (Amandaland (<a class="break-all" href="https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/lifestyle/a69662742/jennifer-saunders-amandaland-christmas-special/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/lifestyle/a69662742/jennifer-saunders-amandaland-christmas-special/))</a> as Aidan

Brenda Fricker played mammy Walsh in the early 00s tv version of Watermelon I think. And I think Anna Friel played Claire. So in my head Mammy Walsh is Brenda Fricker but in reality that was over 20 years ago and I don’t know any women of mammy Walsh’s age who carry on like she does so it just wouldnt have worked in a modern day setting.

It's not quite right but probably not a million miles off treatment when Marion Keyes was in rehab. Detox for me in a 1980s NHS ATU was 10 days then there was a month long residential treatment programme with daily groups that would focus on one or two people each time and could be quite confrontational. We had to get letters from family and friends saying how our drinking affected us and them.

There was a LOT of denial and people telling each other they weren't an addict, and there were jaded old hands who'd been through the cycle many times and pulled no punches.

I have a very poignant memory of an older Irish woman telling me she didn't think I was an alcoholic and she wasn't one when she first came into the unit but the unit had made her one. And I looked at her very sad life story of alcoholism (and at that point addiction to codeine) and could see very clearly where I was heading if I didn't get a grip.

The other thing that is spot on is the constant smoking. It seems pretty accurate to me.

If I was watching this and hadn’t read and loved the books, then I mightn’t mind it as a series. However, having read the excellent source material it is just nowhere near as good as it could/should be.

The characterisation of the Walsh family is way off.

Mammy Walsh should have been the wonderful comic relief character she is in the books. Someone like Alison Steadman, Pauline McLynn or even Eilish O’Carroll would have been brilliant. The characterisation is ruined in this. I have seen Carrie Crowley in other shows and she is a brilliant actress, but she is completely miscast as Mammy Walsh.

Daddy Walsh was far too suave and sophisticated and lacked all the warmth and comedy of the character of the books.

Louisa Harland is also a brilliant actress, but she would have worked so much better as Rachel or even Claire, than as Anna! The Anna in the books had a hippy etheral charm to her. We were constantly told in the books how both Helen and Anna were tiny with dark hair and that Helen got away with so much because she was so stunning and glamorous.

Helen was nothing like the Helen of the books either. She was also very funny in the books and often the comic relief along with Mammy Walsh. In this she comes across as the sensible sister who sorts things out!

Maggie is too old in comparison to the other girls.

Claire is also a completely different character. Her story has been hacked to pieces and apart from the fact she has a child and is divorced she has nothing in common with the Claire of the books.

With the exception of Rachel the
names are the only thing most of the on screen characters have with their counterparts in the books.

In terms of Rachel, what made her story so outstanding in the books was how unreliable a narrator she was in the books. Leaving the reader shocked along with the character, when it is revealed that she really is a raging addict. It just doesn’t hold the same punch when you see it all happen at the time.

Ditto with Anna, the punch in her story was that you didn’t know Aiden was actually dead until more than half way through and that was what was so good about it. The audience felt the shock along with the character. Again, Louisa Harland does some phenomenal acting in this, but she just isn’t Anna!

Part of the problem with the storytelling is that they have tried to cram too many of their stories into one short series and as a result they are substantially watered down.

Contrary to the view of others, one of the only characters I didn’t think was too badly cast was Luke! I thought Jay Duffy was very good in the role. It was always going to be hard to get someone that leapt off the page the way the Luke of the books does, but he did it well enough.

Chaqui was the only other character I thought was well cast!

Most of the actors involved are brilliant at what they do. It is the casting that’s off imo. That and trying to cram all the stories which worked well as a standalone into one relatively short series.

Thank you for that insight

as I have an addict in my life it’s hard and tho he can’t stop it’s good to hear /read the other side

well done on getting sober

My favourite parts of Anybody Out There was Anna's job with the publicity firm and the weird and wonderful campaigns (Candygrrrl). I assume these are missing from the tv series?

I just watched it all. What a disappointment. I have read and loved all the books and the TV series got it completely wrong. The whole point of the books is that they cover very difficult and serious topics with humour. I kept waiting for the humour and it never came! And why on earth did they give Mammy Walsh a complete personality transplant? I’d love to know what Marian Keyes thinks about it all.

Everything is missing.
The only things remaining the same are the names, that Rachael is an addict and Aidan dies.
It is an absolute pile of shite and best avoided if you loved the books.

Strangely enough in the book they have a scene were Rachel comes out of rehab and has her haircut in a salon she considers old fashioned and hates her hair Anna and Helen try to console her as does Mammy walsh and they end up describing it as the mammy in my left foot played by non other than Brenda Fricker!

Would you consider that it’s actually the directing rather than the acting @ShellacB?

This!
What happened to the spiritualist church? What happened to Bridget? She's such an important character!
What happened to Anna getting her life together because she doesn't want to be like rachel? Where's Adam??????

Why make it at all if you’re going to deviate so far from the source material? Why not just make your own vaguely similar show about sisters? They wanted Marian’s name recognition I suppose.

Yes, that's what I have said in my post.

The actors involved are all of a very high calibre. I have seen the vast majority of them in other shows where they were great. They are only working with the material they are given.

It is just very poorly cast in my opinion. Some of them would have worked better in the series playing other characters. Louisa Harland would have made a better Rachel or Claire than Anna. Carrie Crowley is a brilliant actress she just isn't Mammy Walsh. She could have worked as Chaqui, or possibly even as Josephine. Mammy Walsh needs humour, even when we can see she is being difficult. She was difficult in the books but then you had the lovely warm scenes where she assured Rachel how loved she was etc. There was none of that in the show. I thought we were going to get it at the scene in the hall of the hotel at the end, but it was just the same coldness.

The whole memorial was just an odd addition to the books in every way in my opinion.

So I agree it is a directing, casting, writing issue rather than an acting issue.

It might already have been mentioned, but there is a podcast available on BBC Iplayer, with Marion and the acres who is Maggie (who I hadn’t realised was also the screenwriter) and some of the actors. Worth a watch.

That's what I thought!

A vaguely similar drama about a Dublin family with five daughters could have been made, rather than ruining something so good.

Trying to cram the main (highly amended) stories of Rachel's Holiday and Is There Anybody Out There into one series and have the events happen simultaneously really didn't work. If they really had to have two stories shoehorned into one series it would have made more sense to put Rachel's Holiday in with Maggie or Claire's stories and then make the second series into Anna's story along with the other of the above.

Those were the two high drama stories with major twists and turns and there was just too much going on for either to flourish. Large chunks of what made them both so good weren't shown and the ending was so unsatisfactory compared to both books.

Adore the books and I've read them many times.... I'm struggling with the TV show. It's fine as a drama but there is none of the humour. The genius of Rachel's Holiday is that we start the book believing that she's really not that bad and only when Luke and Bridget come to rehab do we realise how very, very bad her addiction is.

E3 tonight

On later tonight 10.30pm +

Just finished E2.
I thought when Aiden talked to Anna it was going to turn out to be in her imagination, so there'd be a little bit of the feeling of the book when you don't realise how bad things are.
But it seems not 🤷‍♀️

22:45 now

mam.my.wal.sh. I don't know why I am still watching, I need a pillow I can scream in to. If I were Rachel I might do a fair amount of storming off as well.

Mammy Walsh was particularly awful in episode 3. I don't think there has ever been a book character cast so spectacularly wrong in the transference to screen. Mammy Walsh on screen is a cold hearted bitch. There's no warmth or humour in her which is in abundance in the books.

Having said that, I am enjoying Rachel's journey to sobriety in The Cloisters. I think this is something they have got right that is true to the books. The actress is going a great job portraying an addict in denial and there is at least some humour. Anna's grief is also being done well and her denial that Aiden is dead which is how she is in the book.

“……I don’t think there has ever been a book character cast so spectacularly wrong in the transference to screen. Mammy Walsh on screen is a cold hearted bitch. There’s no warmth in her which is in abundance in the books…..” you post @PrincessScarlett

I don’t know why Marian Keyes or the scriptwriter Stephanie Preissner (Maggie in the show) haven’t addressed this.
Why did they decide to change the character ?

I get, all the it's not like the books, disappointment, but I enjoyed it and hope there's another series.

On Episode 6 ... MAMMY WALSH IS ALL WRONG!

The office sex scene where they are TTC is really not something I need to watch again....not a prude, not bothered in the least, but it gave me the ick, in fact her DH in the series gives me the ick in general
I don't really remember him from the books so I'm sure whether he is supposed to be so meh