Barrel of laughs

NEW COMEDY:A new RTÉ comedy sketch show with an all-star cast promises to raise the bar

A POWER-HUNGRY businesswoman who speaks only the language of sexual metaphor and lecherous kerb-crawling business types are just some of the characters audiences will be introduced to next week when RTÉ airs the first of a new six-part comedy series, Your Bad Self,directed by John Butler.

“The idea comes from living in a world where you’re surrounded by things that you would love to respond to in a certain way but can’t, because it’s [perceived as being] not decent,” says Butler, who is also co-producer and co-writer of the show. “The Germans have a word for it – treppenwitz. It’s that sort of on-the-stairs humour, like that thing you think of when you’re leaving a party, you know, that thing you wanted to say at the time but didn’t.”

The series is a comic investigation into people's dark side, commissioned after a pilot screened on RTÉ2 last December met with positive reviews and good public feedback. Through a series of observational and sometimes slightly surreal sketches Your Bad Selfattempts to take the absurd, unsaid and unexpected world of unspoken thoughts and make them manifest.

Butler has been working on this project for some time. “I started writing this with a couple of friends, Ben Kelly and Eoin Williams, more than 10 years ago,” he explains. “It has just taken this long to get on air. I guess sometimes that just happens, things fall between the cracks.”

The intervening years have been busy. After completing a BA in English and Greek and Roman History at University College Dublin, Butler went on to do an MA in film at the college, which he describes as being “great – lots of theory and rather academic”.

In 1995 he moved to San Francisco, where he lived for three years before moving back to Ireland and working at various times with TV3 and RTÉ as a promotional producer. Regular readers of this magazine will also recognise him as a contributor. He now lives in Shepherd’s Bush in London, though work frequently brings him back to Dublin.

“Stand-up comedy in Ireland has really developed,” he says. “It’s in great nick. David O’Doherty winning the Perrier Award is one example, and David McSavage pulls in huge crowds. Tommy Tiernan is great. So Irish stand-up is in rude health. But we don’t really have anything to do with stand-up because none of us are from that particular background. All our cast are actors and there’s a difference there.”

The impressive cast includes Michael McElhatton of Paths to Freedomfame, Domhnall Gleeson, who made his name in Harry Potter, and the very talented Justine Mitchell.

“To get an ensemble of actors together like this is really tricky,” says Butler. “We’ve done really well. They’re all so good that they could have their own series. And they all write as well. They have all contributed – there’s a list of about 14 writers – so they have lots invested in it too.”

The inclusion of Amy Huberman in the cast is a bonus, too. A comedy sketch show seems a world away from the earnest character of Daisy she portrayed in The Clinic. "I did a short film with Amy back in 2005 and she was amazing and very, very funny," says Butler. "So I've always wanted to do something with her since then. She's a really good comic actress; I think that might be where her strengths are, actually. And very dark, which is great, because she's such a bright bubbly person but she has a dark streak."

Huberman, who is currently working on her second novel, says she was delighted to be included in the series and admits that the opportunity to break out of an acting mould before it started to set was an important incentive.

“As an actor, you really appreciate it when people take a punt on you to do something that’s outside what you’ve been seen to be doing,” she says. “I think particularly with women, a lot of people are kind of ‘oh that’s what you do, that’s just your bag’. So to be given the chance to do an out and out comedy is fantastic.”

She is clearly excited about the series and responds wickedly when asked if audiences will see a darker side to her. “I’ve done quite a few things that are a bit dark lately,” she says, “but this is certainly a little bit left of field. But it’s great, it doesn’t worry me in the slightest.”

Huberman explains that although she was not part of the original pilot and was therefore “mind-numbingly worried about arriving on set the first day, all of the cast got on brilliantly. Which is something that fellow actor Hugh O’Conor confirms: “We had a great time doing it, we had so much fun. Obviously, we’re all friends, having worked together before on different things. Everyone kind of knew each other and it was like a big family, really.”

O’Conor, who at the age of 10 made his name alongside Liam Neeson in Lamb, believes that the size and range of the cast was key to the madness of the ideas.

“It’s great that there was a mix of writing going on as well as acting, because I think that’ll make it quite varied in terms of who it’s going to reach,” he says. “And we all have really different styles. Domhnall [Gleeson] gets the younger audiences. Most of my stuff involves animals for some reason. Justine [Mitchell] seems to deal with a sort of feminine embarrassment a lot. So it’s great to have all that variety in there.”

Of all the characters that he writes and plays, O’Conor has a particular love for a children’s TV presenter call Barry Jaguar, who trains animals – unsuccessfully of course – through telepathy.

Are there any characters that will offend? “Whether it offends or not, I don’t know,” he says bluntly. “We’re not trying to offend we’re trying to be funny.”

John Butler agrees: I hope they're not offended. I don't think there's anything that . . . I hate the word . . . vulgar. I don't think it's that shocking but yeah, hopefully it's provocative. Ultimately it's about making people laugh."

Your Bad Selfis on RTÉ2 on Monday at 9.55pm

PHOTOGRAPH HUGH O'CONOR