It is a rainy Monday in Cork, back in September 2017.
JOE is standing behind a small camera set-up, and we see Conor (Alex Murphy) and Jock (Chris Walley) walking down a street together, having a quiet conversation between themselves, shaking hands, and then going their separate ways.
Behind the camera, writer and director Peter Foott watches his stars intently going through the scene over and over again. Different takes a ruined by cars driving passed – slowly, mind you, so the drivers can check out whats going on – or the come and go rain means everyone has to run for the umbrellas to keep the actors’ clothes dry.
Alex and Chris keep the spirits high, skipping back to their starting off spot, and going through it all again and again.
This is filming in Ireland in September. It is scrappy and unpredictable and funny for all the wrong reasons.
In short, it is the perfect setting to be filming The Young Offenders TV series.
Commissioned by BBC Three in association with RTE, the show will premiere on Thursday 8 February at 9.30pm on RTÉ2, based off the movie which still has a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
However, the TV show will require a little mental gymnastics by fans of the movie, primarily because the TV show is more or less pretending that the movie never happened.
Clip via WildCard Distribution
We’ve seen the first episode, and can report that it is just as funny as ever, with the two leads still bringing that perfect balance of heart-warming friendship and manic-driven troublesome youth, causing all sorts of mayhem and strife for everyone caught in the orbit.
However, the very first episode features an almost exact scene-for-scene re-take of the confrontation between Conor and his poor put-upon mother (Hilary Rose), in which he confesses “If I was gay, Jock would be the kind of guy I’d be gay with.” Initially it does seem a little “Wait, what? Why are we seeing this again?”, but once you tell yourself that this is a parallel universe where the Young Offenders movie never existed, but got a TV deal instead, then you should have no further issues with it.
But with the RTE and the BBC behind the production, surely the cast must have noticed a bit of a difference since filming the movie? The one thing everyone is aware of is not to give away any plot spoilers, but there are some important topics that the cast have no problem discussing.
Dominic McHale, who returns as Sergeant Healy, gets right to the core of the matter.
“Catering is a big part of it. Happy cast is a happy crew, and the food is a major part of it!”
Alex Murphy answers along the same lines; he had thought that more money would mean making it would be less fun, but his fears turned out to be misplaced.
“I thought it would be less craic, because it is bigger and therefore less fan. The only difference is that it is a bit more efficient. Same amount of craic, but more efficient.”
Same goes for Chris Walley, who was just a little more aware that the new job was going to be feeding a lot more mouths. This was a much bigger production than the movie version.
“We were filming a scene, and behind the camera there were all these people, and I was wondering ‘Who are you? What are you all doing here?'”
Sitting down to chat with the cast there is that same level of joy and a carefree sense of fun that comes with working on a project that you enjoy getting up early every morning for.
After a little break, we’re back out on the streets of Cork, in a suburban maze of houses and roads, and unhinged local bully Billy Murphy (Shane Casey) is in the thick of it, as he crosses paths with an out-of-breath Garda who was chasing down a masked Jock on foot. Telling the copper he had no idea where the young offender had gone, we see Casey head off on foot in the direction he reckons young Jock might be hiding in…
The homes are littered with folk staring out the front windows to get a look at the action, and the young kids in the neighbourhood are trying their best to toe the line between being respectful of the shoot and wanting to be in front of the camera.
The Young Offenders helped put Cork on the map for certain folk, but have the stars themselves found much fame in light of the movie?
“Not really, no,” answers Murphy, knowing that how he looks as Alex and how he looks as Conor are two very different things.
Walley tells the story of being in a nightclub and making eye contact with a girl, who he then overheard saying, “I thought that was your man from The Young Offenders.”
For Conor and Jock, they’ve already achieved infamy.
But for Alex and Chris, fame is only kicking off from here.
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