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How the Irish took over cable TV

By
TOM DEIGNAN,
Irish America Magazine Columnist

Published Friday, May 29, 2009, 9:16 AM
Updated Monday, May 2, 2011, 11:10 AM

 

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The cast of Showtime's "Brotherhood"
The cast of Showtime's "Brotherhood"

It’s been 10 years now since HBO took a chance on a little drama called “The Sopranos” and changed the face of television. When “The Sopranos” hit the airwaves in 1999, no one could have predicted that this offbeat drama about the mob and psychoanalysis would have been the first of many great cable dramas to win prestigious awards and earn huge ratings.

But here’s another thing few people would have predicted: that the Irish would come to dominate critically acclaimed drama all over the cable landscape.

Think about the best of the recent crop of dramas on cable:  “In Treatment,” “Rescue Me,” “Brotherhood,” “The Tudors,” even “The Wire,” which ended its glorious run last year.

All have Irish actors or deal explicitly with Irish-American characters or themes.

Perhaps most importantly, there is little in the way of shallow or stereotypical Irishness in these shows. In some ways, the 2000s have been a high point in the exploration of Irishness in pop culture.

That might have seemed unlikely a few years back when “Rescue Me” and “The Wire” hit FX and HBO respectively.  These two shows feature classic Irish-American male characters – the firefighter (Denis Leary as Tommy Gavin) and the cop (Dominic West as Jimmy McNulty).

Furthermore, both Gavin and McNulty have time-tested Irish flaws – bad tempers, drinking problems, lapsed-Catholic guilt. 

However, once these shows started gathering steam, they explored the dark, complex sides of the Irish experience in big cities, in a way that seemed appropriate for the 21st century. For Tommy Gavin, it was dealing with life after so many of his fellow firefighters (many Irish-American) died on 9/11.  For McNulty, it was the difficulties of patrolling a city (Baltimore) where the Irish no longer rule the streets or the government.

But the crusading McNulty kept the spirit of the Irish cop alive. Among other things, whenever a cop retired (or died), all the cops would retire to a bar, get roaring drunk and sing. But they would not sing “Danny Boy.” Nope. They would sing Shane MacGowan and The Pogues’ “Body of an American,” about a raucous Irish wake.

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