User reviews

'Pure Mule' is set in contemporary, rural Ireland in the same terrain as award-winning playwright, Eugene O'Brien's play 'Eden'. It's a midlands market town, unnamed, but utterly familiar. Each of the six episodes is a self-contained story focusing on the weekend of one particular character from a Friday until a Monday morning. Although the focus moves from one character to another with each episode, they all weave in and out of each other's stories as the series evolves. In each story, disillusion and fear hover behind cocky bravado as the characters desperately signal for attention.

By times sexy, violent, comical and elegiac, the series expresses the frailty and longing that is at the heart of each booze-fuelled weekend. The drama is rich in language, loss and the edgy exchanges that can turn a night out into one of magic or misery. The phrase 'Pure Mule' can be positive or negative - 'went out, long queue, shite beer, no craic, walked home in the rain on me own, it was pure mule' or 'went out, straight in, no kissin', loadsa drink and scored big time, it was pure mule'. It all depends on the intonation.