Bachelors Walk

After many half-hearted efforts at comedy dramas, RTÉ have finally made a show that's both compelling viewing and quite funny.

What probably makes Bachelor's Walk such a great show is that we care about the characters - we feel as if we knew them all our lives. Whether it's Raymond, a man torn between two women; Michael, the huggable teddy bear with wandering eyes; or Barry, the likeable eejit.

The second series has just finished in Ireland, but no doubt there will be a third. Unless the great Keith McErlean (who plays Barry) gets a job in Hollywood - look out for this guy, he's that good!

Hilarious and fresh drama from RTÉ (at last)!

This is possibly the best home produced show of its kind ever made in Ireland. The show revolves around three guys living in a house on Bachelors Walk, which is a quay in Dublin. The three lads are best described as easy-going wasters. Set against the backdrop of modern Dublin, the stories tell about the trials and tribulations of our heros. It's probably not ground breaking stuff, and almost certainly has more appeal for Irish people especially those who know Dublin than it would for a more global audience. Where the show really excels though, apart from the fine acting of the entire cast, is in managing to use the backdrop of the new Ireland and just show normal people here going about their daily lives, albeit in a whimsical fashion. In fact-ah, deadly.

This show is superb. As someone from Dublin it's so refreshing to be able to chat animatedly to friends the next day about an Irish-produced TV series that doesn't fall into the cliches and mediocre mimicry of foreign programmes that has dogged TV output in this country. Bachelor's Walk is deceptively easy-to-watch while being exceptionally careful to portray its character's lives as truthfully and authentically as possible. The series is warm and projects the cosy, embracable aspects of the city of Dublin - a refreshing change from the usual gritty drug and crime dramas set here.

Let's hope it doesn't end after the third series - and let's hope the DVDs of Series 2 and 3 come hot on the heels of the excellent 6-part opener...congrats to all involved.

This is a brilliant programme. One of the few Irish made programmes worth watching.The dialogue is great. The storylines are interesting while not totally unrealistic. The charactors always keep your interest. The only thing I have to say is that there had better be another series......

It's about time the Irish public had some successful home-grown comedy to call their own, and Bachelor's Walk is it. Okay, so it's not perfect. It's certainly not the insightful study of boom time Ireland that some people claimed it was. What it is though, is charming, witty, light-hearted and deeply Irish, and in the context of other Irish sit-coms like the Cassidys and Upwardly Mobile that hopelessly ape foreign styles and get it all so terribly wrong, I don't blame Ireland for falling head-over-heels in love with this little gem.

It's got its flaws, of course. The three affable, jobless wasters that the programme centres on didn't, for the longest time, seem to have any discernable means of paying for their easy-going, coffee-bar lifestyle in Dublin city centre. It doesn't quite manage to dodge the veneer of smugness that characterised much of nineties Ireland, and if I'd encountered some of the representations of rural Ireland that this programme made in a foreign sit-com, I'd have been pretty offended.

Despite all that, the writing is witty, and the direction superb. This programme, as I've said, is deeply Irish, but more specifically still, it's clearly in love with Dublin. It makes the city come to life around the characters - makes it a character in itself. More than any other single feature though, the performances carry the piece. The characters are all wonderfully written as likable bums, but the actors bring them to life with a wonderful chemistry and a magnificent shared charisma.

To outside eyes, there's probably nothing too groundbreaking about this admittedly charming but fairly unassuming little comedy/drama, but to anybody from Ireland who's seen the many missed opportunities that have characterised the recent history of our comedy output, this is something to see. I hope it's just the beginning. Here's to opening the floodgates!

(Okay, okay, so with RTE running the show, that mightn't seem likely, but a guy can hope, can't he?)