Quirke

Lisha

le la rat wrote: »

This boyo isn't nice at all

As Fr Dougal said to Fr Ted


Seriously he is s complete head case !!!
I hope Phoebe tells on him when she gets back to house.... If she gets back that is.

Lisha

Oh poor phoebe !!

Get OUT of the carrrrr

whisky_galore

This aint gonna end well.

jos28

Brilliant stuff, very impressed so far

Mars Bar

Has that cameraman got Parkinson's?

Wooly Woo

Can anyone tell me what the building above the bridge is? I thought it looked like the Aviva but surely that's not something that would have been overlooked?

tampopo

Wooly Woo wrote: »

Can anyone tell me what the building above the bridge is? I thought it looked like the Aviva but surely that's not something that would have been overlooked?

Connolly station, from the convention centre side...

Wooly Woo

Thanks a mill. Thought it looked very modern though. Was that not the roof that was built over the platforms in the late 90's?

FloatingVoter

Quite good that.

Though I had my suspicions about Dumbledore from the start

.

mrsdewinter

Well, I was left underwhelmed. A great performance by Dublin city - and Byrne, Dunning, Gambon et al. But the pacing felt a bit off. The characters were nipping across the Atlantic with the kind of carefree abandon I used to associate with Celtic Tiger cubs hitting Woodberry Common for the Xmas shopping during the boom.

FloatingVoter

mrsdewinter wrote: »

Well, I was left underwhelmed. A great performance by Dublin city - and Byrne, Dunning, Gambon et al. But the pacing felt a bit off. The characters were nipping across the Atlantic with the kind of carefree abandon I used to associate with Celtic Tiger cubs hitting Woodberry Common for the Xmas shopping during the boom.

That emphasised the point that we were dealing with the top 0.1 % of the ruling Irish elite at the time. Plenty of Irish made it big in ehhh.."transport" (bootlegging) back in the 20s. Hell, even Boardwalk Empire tipped a wink to the Irish Sweepstakes in one episode.

PeterDuggan

What's with these 30 sec ad breaks? Is that allowed? If they get away with that we'll have 30sec ad breaks peppered through everything. Gave up when that started ...will watch on BBC instead.

p.s. ...Hmmm it seems that RTE research suggests that viewers are less inclined to switch channels during these short 30s ad breaks. But just remember, if you have a PVR (and most receivers do these days), you can just hit pause, go and make a cup of tea, come back and fast forward through the short break

...aaaand then you'll probably also be able to fast forward through the next ad break as well. hehehe :-)

Wooly Woo

PeterDuggan wrote: »

What's with these 30 sec ad breaks? Is that allowed? If they get away with that we'll have 30sec ad breaks peppered through everything. Gave up when that started ...will watch on BBC instead.

p.s. ...Hmmm it seems that RTE research suggests that viewers are less inclined to switch channels during these short 30s ad breaks. But just remember, if you have a PVR (and most receivers do these days), you can just hit pause, go and make a cup of tea, come back and fast forward through the short break

...aaaand then you'll probably also be able to fast forward through the next ad break as well. hehehe :-)

ITV2 did that on Friday night during Meet Joe Black. Here's me thinking I had time to make tea

whisky_galore

I wanted to like it, but couldn't.

Sideshow Mark

PeterDuggan wrote: »

What's with these 30 sec ad breaks? Is that allowed? If they get away with that we'll have 30sec ad breaks peppered through everything. Gave up when that started ...will watch on BBC instead.

p.s. ...Hmmm it seems that RTE research suggests that viewers are less inclined to switch channels during these short 30s ad breaks. But just remember, if you have a PVR (and most receivers do these days), you can just hit pause, go and make a cup of tea, come back and fast forward through the short break

...aaaand then you'll probably also be able to fast forward through the next ad break as well. hehehe :-)

It's harder to fast forward through the break when it's only 30 seconds. If my wife has the remote it's faster to sit through the break than to watch her ff, overshoot and rewind back. Which I think is the point of the shorter breaks.

RTE 2 has them in most of their big imports, hadn't noticed them in RTE 1 before.

CarrickMcJoe

Sideshow Mark wrote: »

It's harder to fast forward through the break when it's only 30 seconds. If my wife has the remote it's faster to sit through the break than to watch her ff, overshoot and rewind back.

WHAT!! You allow the wife to hold the remote....;)

Overall, I thought it was a bit drawn out, wife loved it. Roll on Moone Boy tonight.

robbie02

i really enjoyed that, great acting, great production engaging storyline, looking forward to next week. didnt get the 30 sec ad break though either, maybe they had some technical glitch?

Hippo

Very disappointing. Terrible pacing, unconvincing American settings, a rock n roll band playing a party in the early 1950s. The Dublin settings looked good, but the script didn't convince and I couldn't care less about any of the characters - and I loved the books! This might have been an acceptable production 10 years ago, but TV has moved on a long way from then.

whisky_galore

Found it irritating that even his missus in flashback called him 'Quirke', do we find out his first name at some stage a la 'Morse'?

Qualitymark

Lisha wrote: »

I'm really enjoying Quirke

Looks like Mal has being a nasty boyo!!

That comment about sending the disgraced girls home to be raped by their fathers was tragic.

But a bit too on-the-nose as dialogue. I can't imagine a 1950s nun saying that in a million millennia.

a rock n roll band playing a party in the early 1950s

To be fair, this was a party in Boston…

Hoagy

whisky_galore wrote: »

Found it irritating that even his missus in flashback called him 'Quirke', do we find out his first name at some stage a la 'Morse'?

Not in the first five books anyway.

Qualitymark

I thought the actress who played the adoptive mother in America was brilliant. Beautifully paced performance, and true.

Hippo

Qualitymark wrote: »

To be fair, this was a party in Boston…

Still too early for rock n roll, particularly in Boston! Agree that the nun's line was ridiculous.

DeepBlue

Aisling Franciosi who plays Phoebe seems to be getting typecast as the young girl inappropriately attracted to unsuitable older men. First Paul Spector in The Fall and now Quirke.........

robbie02

Hippo wrote: »

Still too early for rock n roll, particularly in Boston! Agree that the nun's line was ridiculous.

Bill haley rock and round the clock 1954? not too early unless this series is meant to be set before that

Qualitymark

Banville is certainly writing the 1950s from personal experience, so if the rock 'n'roll band is in the original book…

grey_so_what

Enjoyed the first episode, was hiding behind the couch with the baby scene....:(

Looking forward to next week, It was good overall, delighted to see the "Chauffeur" get his just deserts!..:(

Found it a bit hard to believe the Phoebe "falling in love with her uncle" storyline...

amdublin

Is it that long every week??? I had to turn it off and go asleep

leck

coolhull wrote: »

So far the lighting looks a bit off, as if they're trying to go for a film noire look
But filming in semi-darkness doesn't add anything but annoyance for the viewer.Well, this viewer anyway.

Agree with you about the lighting, it was really annoying.

Qualitymark

The falling-for-uncle biz is a horribly common scenario with adopted-out children who find their parents or siblings - they feel a tragically strong draw to these people who are so like themselves. It's even happened that people meet their siblings or parents without either side realising they're connected, and fall in love.

Funny thing about the lighting; Anglophone-culture films always seem to use dim lighting as a way to express noirish darkness, while the Scandinavians often use bright lighting and clean, spacey decor in very noir films.

whisky_galore

I've never read any of the novels, but the storyline of the complete baxter of an American Dad struck me as short and pointless. They're an apple pie Yank couple until one min he shakes the baby and next min he's lying dead on the road after crashing the car. Maybe he got more coverage in the novel?

Qualitymark

whisky_galore wrote: »

I've never read any of the novels, but the storyline of the complete baxter of an American Dad struck me as short and pointless. They're an apple pie Yank couple until one min he shakes the baby and next min he's lying dead on the road after crashing the car. Maybe he got more coverage in the novel?

Well, he wasn't *that* apple pie! At the party he decked someone for jeering that his wife had a child without being pregnant; he was also scarily bossy about sex with her.

Edit: here's a brief extract from the book followed by commentary (which I've put in itals):

http://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/1949/christine-falls

It’s not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It’s the living. One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse—and concealing the cause of death.

It turns out the body belonged to a young woman named Christine Falls. And as Quirke reluctantly presses on toward the true facts behind her death, he comes up against some insidious—and very well-guarded—secrets of Dublin’s high Catholic society, among them members of his own family.

Set in Dublin and Boston in the 1950s, the first novel in the Quirke series brings all the vividness and psychological insight of Booker Prize winner John Banville’s fiction to a thrilling, atmospheric crime story. Quirke is a fascinating and subtly drawn hero, Christine Falls is a classic tale of suspense, and Benjamin Black’s debut marks him as a true master of the form.

What I found difficult about the miniseries is that I really had no idea of who all these people were, and why what they did should matter, to our hero or to the story.

whisky_galore

True, but would have thought the mouth at the party deserved a smack.
Besides, who brings a baby to a loud party ffs???

Qualitymark

whisky_galore wrote: »

True, but would have thought the mouth at the party deserved a smack.
Besides, who brings a baby to a loud party ffs???

Oh, I always did! Autre temps, autre moeurs!

Helpful review of the book here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/books/review/Harrison.t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

bubbaloo

Oh god this bored me to death! It was so slow and the script writing was really awful.
Gabriel Byrne (as always) was great but most the rest of them annoyed me.
The ad breaks every 10 mins were annoying too and unnecessary - why did it have to be on for almost 2 hours?? I can't be bothered watching any more episodes.

This was disappointing RTE - once again!!

Callan57

Watched the first episode on Player last night, & having read 5 of the Quirke books, I think they did a pretty good job of representing the repressed & introverted 1950s Dublin. Watching the show Nuala O'Faolain talking about her own disfunctional Dublin childhood & young adulthood kept popping into my mind.

I can appreciate that viewers more used to a modern day fast-paced thriller style might find it slow but IMO the books are close to perfect in bringing to life the specific era & the fact that even then, when Ireland was steeped in poverty, there were still those who lived their lives in a "charmed circle". (Nothing changed on that score!)

Personally, Gabriel Byrne does not fit my image of Quirke from the books, is Quirke not a much younger man? And I'm not all together happy with Stanley Townsend as Hackett either - too sauve, Hackett is more of a rough diamond in the books - I mean where is the shiny suit & the cigarette ash?

Hippo

I'd agree with the reservations about Byrne's casting, he's simply too old for the part.

As a whole, any TV adaptation of these books is always going to struggle for pace and plot, as the books are primarily atmospheric and evocative with the plot sometimes appearing less important in the scheme of things. That said, for me the show was poorly scripted and in some cases very poorly acted - some of the American parts particularly.

I also think the original story was too long to tell properly in a show of this length, but probably not long enough to justify a series of its own; this may have contributed to the pacing problems. Very disappointing, I was looking forward to it.

EyeSight

found it boring. For such a long program they didn't half rush the ending.
It was interesting at first but once they went to Boston it slowed even more so.

Go to grave, happen to see his Dad there, confront him.

eigrod

Gabriel Byrne on RTE1 (Quirke) and RTE2 (Vikings) now. Was getting confused there when I was flicking through the channels

CountyHurler

okay... I'm just checking back in .. I missed last week's episode...

Last I saw was when Gabriel Byrne said "There are no lands to the west"... Can anybody tell me what's happened since..

thanks,..

Lisha

Quirke is a coroner with a conscience. He was adopted by a judge and has a very pious brother called Mal
Last week centered on us discovering that the judge is abut of a boyo who organised selling babies of unmarrieds to muricans.
Mals daughter phoebe is actually Quirke's as his beloved wife died in child birth. Quirke hit the bottle and so Mal and his wife raised phoebe. Mals wife seems very fond of Quirke. Mal is buttoned up a bit too tight.
Phoebe is now in danger as she has gotten friendly with a dodgy chemist who supplies drugs with a Pervy camera man.
Quirke is doing a pm on a very respectable woman sho died with heroin and sleeping pills in blood . 2 guys above will be involved and now phoebe is consorting with dodgy chemist

amdublin

This guy is an awful slime

Lisha

Durtah puctures

Kerrydude1981

Its not a bad show,should be interesting next week

Quirke is some man to down whiskey

FloatingVoter

And for crimes against acting, Mr. Pierrepoint will be on his way with his trusty rope. Oh...and the murder as well.

8mv

That was OK. An improvement on last week with some good twists. Still very contrived though. Anyway, I'm enjoying the characters and will continue to tune in.

wicklowwonder

How many shows is there? Started very slow but getting much better. This week was good.

brian_t

wicklowwonder wrote: »

How many shows is there? Started very slow but getting much better. This week was good.

Next Sundays is the last of three.

Strazdas

wicklowwonder wrote: »

How many shows is there? Started very slow but getting much better. This week was good.

It's not bad at all. I don't think we've ever seen a drama about 1950s middle class Dublin.....quite plausible too that it is they who would be experimenting with things like drugs at the time.

Arthur Beesley

Lisha wrote: »

Quirke is a coroner with a conscience. He was adopted by a judge and has a very pious brother called Mal
Last week centered on us discovering that the judge is abut of a boyo who organised selling babies of unmarrieds to muricans.
Mals daughter phoebe is actually Quirke's as his beloved wife died in child birth. Quirke hit the bottle and so Mal and his wife raised phoebe. Mals wife seems very fond of Quirke. Mal is buttoned up a bit too tight.
Phoebe is now in danger as she has gotten friendly with a dodgy chemist who supplies drugs with a Pervy camera man.
Quirke is doing a pm on a very respectable woman sho died with heroin and sleeping pills in blood . 2 guys above will be involved and now phoebe is consorting with dodgy chemist

What's a murican?