True crime: ‘Darklands’ series inspired by real life
Brother of slain gangster Coates co-writes series
THE brother of one of Ireland’s notorious gangsters, Shane Coates, has used his sibling’s life as the inspiration for a new big-budget TV crime drama ‘Darklands’.
Adam Coates, whose brother was the leader of the notorious Dublin crime gang the Westies, co-wrote the six-part drama series set in Bray with Mark O’Connor.
He said he was keen to show the ugly side of crime as in real life, you can “get a bullet or a knife” at any moment.
Both writers said they used their own real-life experiences when it came to creating the hard-hitting series for Virgin Media about a young MMA fighter Damien Dunne (16), played by rising star Dane Whyte O’Hara, whose brother Wes goes missing after getting embroiled in criminality.
Shane Coates disappeared in February 2004 at the age of 34 after moving to Spain’s Costa Blanca where he and his associate Stephen Sugg tried to muscle in on the drugs trade over there. Their bodies were eventually found in July 2006 under six tonnes of concrete in an industrial estate outside Torrevieja.
His brother Adam, who was never involved in organised crime and is one of 11 children, said the plot all “came from a real place”.
“My brother Shane was the leader of the Westies so when I met Mark, we were actually working on a project about that,” Adam said.
“It’s not directly based on any real-life events but it’s certainly informed by personal experiences.” He said they were keen not to glamorise organised crime but to depict the brutal realities of it.
“We wanted to show the real horror of gangland because in the past, it has been glorified but we wanted to show it for how it is,” he said. “It’s brutal, it’s dangerous and it’s something that’s very risky. There’s a high chance of you either going to prison or dying and we wanted to show that.”
The new show will air on Monday on Virgin Media One at 9pm.