Picture the most desolate, wind-swept chunk of rural Irish coastline you can fathom. Then imagine you’re the new sheriff in its community, tasked with the mind-numbing grind of keeping the peace in a generally quiet area but also burdened with ferreting out the truth on your own from its insular residents when serious crime occurs. That’s the situation facing Garda Sergeant Jack Driscoll (Owen McDonnell) in the superb Irish drama series Single-Handed. He’s not a total stranger to the area, as he grew up there and is replacing his own father as the top cop, but he’s been away in Dublin for long enough that he’s viewed as an outsider by many of the locals. In the three movie-length episodes presented in this DVD set, he begins to learn his true role, limitations, and the extent he can trust and be trusted.
Driscoll is a straight arrow at the start of the series, but many of the other folks including his father don’t always have the most noble of intentions or histories. When crime occurs, their natural tendency is to close ranks to protect their own rather than risk public scrutiny and shame. That makes Driscoll’s role even more difficult as he constantly hits brick walls in his investigations. Everybody knows everybody else’s business except outsider Driscoll, keeping the truth one step ahead of him as the residents keep each other informed of his inquiries.
The real pleasure of the series comes from the development of the Driscoll character, making this far more than a brainless CSI:Boondocks crime procedural attempt. The episodic mysteries are fully compelling, but the conflicted character solving them is even more so, making the payoff all the greater when justice is achieved. I was reminded of Kenneth Branagh’s star character in BBC’s excellent Wallander series (and likely the original Swedish version as well, though I haven’t had the pleasure of watching it), as both characters are more interesting than their investigations, pursuing their leads with dogged determination while concurrently dealing with their own internal conflicts. But where Wallander isn’t always the most sympathetic of characters, Driscoll is a shining knight doing his utmost to keep to keep himself and his community on the straight and narrow. Whether he’ll remain so virtuous after prolonged exposure to the community and its idiosyncrasies makes for more than reason enough to follow his ongoing adventures.
Not knowing much about the series, I anticipated some dodgy production values, maybe video quality instead of film, and possibly some obvious soundstage work, but was thrilled to find the episodes to be of theatrical quality and seemingly filmed in entirety on location, another parallel to the Wallander series where the beautiful foreign countryside is as much a character as its inhabitants. The acting is also top-notch, with McDonnell completely owning his lead role and the other locals suitably craggy and hard to read. I was also pleased to find that the Irish brogue is actually quite slight and completely decipherable, although subs are included for anyone needing the extra assistance.
Single-Handed Set 1 is available on DVD on February 1, 2011. It contains the first three feature-length mysteries of the series spread across three discs. There are no bonus features aside from a cursory text interview with the producer and production notes. For more information, visit www.acornonline.com.
This show sounds really great Steve, thanks so much for helping to expose quality programming that may not be on the radar for many of we TV geeks in the U.S. !
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