Prestige Drama - Séamas O'Reilly

If there is one good thing to come out of the Troubles - and I say that as someone who lived through them and finds it hard to see any positive side - it's that the period makes for a great television or movie drama. Or more often a bad one riddled with clichés, to be honest, but even then it provides lucrative work opportunities for local actors, extras and media people. It's sad but it's funny at the same time and Séamas O'Reilly recognises both sides of that equation. It adds up to an entertaining and thoughtful read, one that relies itself on the stereotypes, but with a sense of black humour that has an essence of truth to it.

Prestige Drama doesn't try to revive the past, but is more firmly rooted in the industry and the people trying to get something out of it. There's Diarmuid, the writer for 'Dead City', a forthcoming edgy Northern Ireland Troubles TV drama "inspired by real events". He lives in England now of course, but is currently revisiting the aul' sod to try to recapture a sense of the past for the series which is being set and filmed in his home city. There is Dympna whose 17 year old daughter is auditioning for a part and is trying to get her mother to open up about experiences that seem like they belong to another world. There's Turlough, who has had some acting experience, but there has been little else of note that has come his way. There is nothing he'd like more than for an acting career to be his ticket out of his day job of handing out car park tickets.

There are many other voice trying to get in on the action in subsequent chapters, but there is only one problem, and it's kind of a big one. The glamorous American actor who was going to take the starring role for this "prestige drama" has gone missing. Monica Logue has travelled over to Derry to get a feel for the city and the role of playing the grieving mother of Jamie Devenney, a child shot in the head by British soldiers in the 70s. Jamie's real-life mother Ann-Marie still feels the pain of it all, and understandably not too keen on the idea, and she's not the kind to hold back her feelings on the matter.

A missing star, an unforgiving mother and a writer who is starting to feel like he might be getting out of his depth scripting a whole season for TV series, the drama is certainly raising plenty of issues, but not really much of a plot. With only a few recurring voices, Prestige Drama is more a collection of the thoughts and impressions of very much representative Northern Irish/Derry characters and their wholly realistic reaction to the making of a TV series in the city. All of them combined nonetheless provide a rounded picture of the people who are trying to reconcile contemporary reality with their recent lived history and finding it rather uncomfortable.

While the disappearance of Monica Logue and occasional rumours of sightings of her in unlikely places provides a plot framework to hang this on - and one that has a strange ending - it's actually the multiplicity of voices and their attempts to escape their everyday reality that is the more entertaining and insightful aspect of Prestige Drama. If there is some suspicion of many of them speaking with a similar voice - irreverent and with a tendency to speak their mind - the characters are nonetheless authentic, and it's to be expected from people coming from the same background. And for me, it's the language that makes that work. It captures a period, place and attitudes that no American or British movie can replicate; a turn of phrase, an insight, a word-of-mouth passing on of tall tales they way I remember they used to tell them. And some might even be true.

Reading notes: Prestige Drama by Séamas O'Reilly will be published by Fleet/Little Brown on the 7th May 2026. I read an advance uncorrected proof supplied by the publisher through NetGalley.