Fans of Irish crime drama Kin urged to watch first episode again to spot funny detail

We had the Bafta-winning director of Kin in the JOE studio, who told some great stories about the making of the show.

So, when JOE had the crime drama's director Diarmuid Goggins in our studio to discuss his recent Bafta win for his work on the excellent Code of Silence, we had to ask him if he had fond memories of working on the Irish series.

To our delight, he was full of great stories about the making of Kin. One in particular involved filming the climax of the pilot episode.

This is when Jamie (Cian Fitzsimons), the son of lead characters Amanda (Clare Dunne) and Jimmy (Emmett J. Scanlan), is accidentally shot and killed in a drive-by shooting.

Goggins explains: "It's funny. I had a huge plan to shoot the end of the episode. It's the pilot episode. You've got to send the audience out with a bang. 

"The boy gets shot underneath a train track bridge in town. I wanted the train lights to flash by as the shooting was going on. So, you'd have the sound of the train, the lights flashing by.

"When you get down there, obviously, you realise when the DART goes past, it's actually not that fast, and it doesn't create that. 

"So, I was like, we're going to have to recreate this. So, we brought in this huge lighting rig that had this strobe lighting, and I wanted to do it in one shot. 

"A car had to come in, spin around. We tracked down, tracked in, tracked out, and basically all of that happened in one shot. It was all masterful. 

"We had four hours to shoot it in. We get there and, and Cian, who plays the boy, lets us know at that point that he actually can't drive. 

"I was like: 'You have to drive in,' and he's like: 'Yeah, I know, I can't drive though.'

"'Give it a try.' Obviously we try the first one, and he cuts out halfway down. Second one, a bit of kangaroo petrol [Goggins mimes jittery driving]. It's like: 'This isn't really how I envisioned it.'

"So, we had to push him in. The beauty of that scene is, watch it again, there's men behind that car pushing him down the hill, and they have to let go at the last moment of the car just to get around and stop. 

"We put in a few sound effects of the car moving. The lights all work.

"So, watch it again... because you'll notice it now because you'll go: 'Oh my God, the car is going really slow.'"

Goggins also told JOE about how he came on board with Kin in the first place.

According to the director, the "career-defining moment" was "never supposed" to be his.

"Here's the mad thing. We shot Kin during Covid. At the time, I was attached to do a different show, which was going to shoot in Belgium, but had the same writer," he told JOE.

"Peter McKenna is the writer of Kin. He is also the writer of this other show, which at that time wasn't called Hidden Assets, but became Hidden Assets. 

"Because of Covid, that show got [postponed] because no one could travel out of the country. We were all in lockdown. 

"Lockdown happened and, basically, Kin had no director attached. When Hidden Assets went kind of by the by, Peter asked me if I would pitch for this show he had called Kin.

"He was under the understanding that because it was a big American show, there was big American finances behind it, it was a bigger cast, that with my experience at that time, I probably wouldn't have got the lead block director.

"He thought: 'But we'll give you a second block. Will you do a pitch?' I said: 'Yeah, of course.'

"So, I read the scripts, sat down, and I did a visual mood board. I did kind of a mood reel, which is I get a load of films, a piece of music, cut it together into a two-minute sizzle reel."

Goggins notes that an inspiration for Kin's look was a particular Paul Thomas Anderson movie.

"One of the things for Kin that was really pertinent and really kind of clear to me from the outset was I wanted the characters to break the fourth wall. I wanted the characters to look straight down the lens for specific moments," the director told JOE.

"One of the things that the director has power over is obviously the camera, and one of the main things that I say that can connect an audience is what we call eyeline, which is the connection between the audience and the eyeline... It's very engaging.

"There is a film by Paul Thomas Anderson called The Master that has really specific examples of that. 

"He has really gorgeous shots where the actors look straight down the lens. So, the opening and closing shot of the mood reel were two shots from The Master of someone breaking the fourth wall."

A still from The Master

Goggins sent this reel to McKenna and his team, who loved it, feeling like it matched the show's tone and mood.

"They said: 'Would you come and do a meeting,' and I was like: 'Yeah, of course,' the director recounts.

"And they said: 'Will you do it on Friday?' And I said: 'Yep, that's no problem.'

"Friday morning I wake up, my wife was pregnant, and she went into labour. We rushed into a hospital to get my wife in. It's Covid. I'm not allowed to go in the doors, so she's rushed up. 

"I'm thinking: 'My wife's going to have a baby. Am I going to see the baby? Is she going to give birth and I'm just going to be a dad?'

"All these things go to my head... So, I have to text Peter and say: 'Listen, I wonder, could we push it?'

"He's like, 'We can push it, but it has to be Sunday.' Because they were under pressure to get it done.

"They pushed it, but in that moment, I sat down on the wall outside Holles Street Hospital. I was a very emotional person, and I wrote a director's treatment.

"I wrote something that I felt connected me to the story. Kin is a crime drama. It's a gang drama, but at the heart of it, it's a family drama, and what I wrote was a very emotional piece about becoming a father. 

"And the power and the hurt and the pain and the fear you have of being a father, and how, to imagine losing a child, what impact that would have on my life. 

"So... I sat on a wall in Holles Street and literally cried while I wrote this thing. I'd say people were walking past going: 'Who is your man or what's going on?' 

"I submitted it, and they loved that as well. So, I went into this meeting on Sunday, having had a new baby boy, and spent about two hours on a call with Peter and all the American execs that were involved. 

"I pitched the show off, and at the end of the call, they offered me the job. So, it was kind of the job that wasn't supposed to be mine."

We noted to Goggins that Kin is one of JOE fans' most popular shows, based on the comment section of our socials.

The director expressed his delight at this, but also said: "When we made it, it didn't feel like it was ever going to be the best show in the world.

"I had this vision for it, which is I wanted it to be very glossy and high-end and lots of clean lines and big windows and a very different side of Dublin that I'd ever seen on TV before. 

"We made it, and then it launched on RTÉ. I remember the night. Twitter was big... [After] the first 10 minutes I went on, I clicked on Twitter, and it was slated. 

"I remember just kind of going: 'Oh my God, people hate it. '

"People were like, 'Who the hell names a gangster Caolan? There's no way there's a gangster called Caolan. What gangsters dress like this?'

"I remember texting Peter going: 'We're dead. This is it. It's all over.'

"Then slowly, I think by the end of that and then the end of part two and part three, the audience started to turn a little bit. By the end of the season, it became, I think, very successful. 

"People always related it to Love/Hate. They're like: 'Well, it's no Love/Hate.'"

When JOE mention that our fans often propose a Kin and Love/Hate crossover, Goggins responds: "Wouldn't it be good?"

Continuing, he said: "[Kin] literally got slated, and then it did well. It did really well, obviously on RTÉ.

"But the door for me creatively in terms of my career, it blew off when the BBC broadcast it, and Netflix bought the show. 

"It was a game-changer for me. The meetings that I got in the UK off the back of Kin being launched on the BBC were incredible. 

"You look back at those moments where you thought: 'We've made an absolute stinker' to like: 'Yes, we knew it [was great].'

"So, it was a slow-burn win, and so when you hear that the JOE fans love it, I love the JOE fans even more. 

"It means so much when people say to you, I love that show. Because don't get me wrong, people still come to me and say, I never liked that show. 

"Even my own brother, my own brother says, I never liked Kin... It's a hard thing.

"The hometown fans are probably always a bit more critical of the hometown stuff. I think that's probably the nature of what it is.

"I think there's a bit of small-towniness where we're like: 'Well, it's not that good'. But when it lands internationally, people then realise: 'Well, maybe it is that good.'

"We're just good at putting people down in Ireland. I think we love that. We're good at, if someone gets up too high, we just put them straight back down again. 

"In a way I kind of love that. But it's hard when you've made a show that's someone slating, but at the same time, there is something nice and very grounding about it. 

"No one can ever run away themselves in Ireland and be kind of above their station."

While Goggins isn't working on the soon-to-be-filmed Kin season three, he is delighted for McKenna and the cast that it is coming back.

"Peter... always said he wanted three seasons to kind of wrap it all up. I think he might have a 4th in there. I don't know," the director told JOE.

"But it's definitely going to get 3 seasons, I think now, which is amazing."

The first two seasons of Kin are streaming on the RTÉ Player now.