Madigan Men

I couldn't believe that RTE (the Irish national station) bought this programme. Or that Gabriel Byrne made it. Because (and it was obvious from the plot outline) this, like so many other American "Irish" projects, suffers from a major flaw; Oirishness. For decades Americans have been making this sort of rubbish, with tacky leprechaun accents & ridiculous phrases ("you played like a magic fairy"). Gabriel Byrne's father's accent is of particular note when assessing this form of "entertainment". He sounds as if the only research he's done for the part of an Irishman was to watch "Darby O'Gill" 18 times. I was glad to hear this show has been cancelled in the US, hopefully most Irish people will join me in ignoring this carp.

Hey, surprise! I tuned into this show just because I'm a Gabriel Byrne fan and actually found myself laughing! More than once! And I'm the type of person who usually sits stone faced while watching most sit coms!

Anyone who's ever seen or heard Byrne in interviews won't be surprised how funny & charming he can be, but for those who don't know this side of him, they will find Madigan Men a pleasant surprise!

This show is so funny! Especially finding out that the man who plays Shamus is actually FRENCH, is pretty interesting, since Gabriel Byrne played a French man in The Man In The Iron Mask! I really like watching this show! It makes the end of the week even greater!

Since I am interested in Irish culture, I actually liked this series because it was a very humorous mix of Irish and American cultures. Sadly, as with so many other series that came before and after this, it was not a ratings success and ABC decided to cancel it after only 9 episodes. These very short-sighted network execs seem to forget that some of the best television series were not top-10 or -20 shows in their first season but they later caught on with the viewing public and became major successes. Series like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers, Hill St. Blues and the Odd Couple started off with very low ratings (in the case of the Odd Couple, it didn't become a success until after it had gone into syndication). If these series were shown today, they probably would not survive the first season. Over the last 10 years, some very good series like Pan Am, Alcatraz, The Firm and Tron Uprising were canceled after just one season because of poor rating. Instead of having faith in their products finding an audience, the networks decided to kill these series too soon. Nowadays, if you aren't in the top-10 in your first month, you won't last very long and that's a shame.

So I'm watching an episode of Norm on ABC, there's nothing else I want to watch that night, so I stay tuned for Madigan Men. Well I made the right choice then. Madigan Men has a great bland of humor. This show was a very nice surprise indeed.