Cover Story
Taken Down A major new crime drama from the makers of Love/Hate kicks off on RTÉ this week. Donal O’Donoghue travels to the set to meet the cast and crew
It is mid-August, the lee of a long, hot summer. In the bones of Pigeon House, the old Dublin power station with the iconic red and white chimneys, Taken Down, RTE’s new crime drama, is in the final weeks of production. Cranes punctuate a skyline dominated by the monolithic city incinerator and a passenger ferry churns past amid the constant racket. But it is the smell from the nearby waste treatment system that is all pervasive. “Do you ever get used to it?” I ask a crew member. He shakes his head. We’re in the bowels of the city, a place of departure and also arrival: appropriate for a layered TV drama about the forces of law and order as well as those who thrive in the shadows and those who get lost in the cracks.
“I started with an image in my mind of a very industrial place for the location of the Direct Provision centre for asylum seekers,” says director David Caffrey of his vision for Taken Down, a crime drama with a twisty narrative winding in and out of the worlds of the police, the criminal fraternity and the asylum seeker. “There was this place on the Long Mile Road in Dublin that I used to see a lot when we were filming Love/Hate. It had all these huge gas containers in the backdrop but the CGI would have been too expensive. Then someone said that there were Bladerunner- style gas towers in Poolbeg. So we had a look and it fitted the bill.”
From early on, Taken Down was touted as the new Love/Hate, RTÉ’s seminal TV gangster drama. In some ways, it was a useful shorthand, or marketing line, with many similarities, not least the production crew of executive producer (Suzanne McAuley), co-writer (Stuart Carolan), director (Caffrey) and some cast members (Brian Gleeson, Lynn Rafferty, Jimmy Smallhorne). But this is another beast altogether, sparked from an original idea by crime novelist, Jo Spain (co-writer with Carolan) about the murder of a Nigerian migrant near a Direct Provision centre. In the consequent investigation, led by a female Garda Inspector, worlds collide. “In a way like The Wire in the States, it’s an attempt to get across a different layer of society that many of us watching won’t be familiar with,” says Brian Gleeson.
The Thin Blue Line
On Pigeon House Road, a blue sign stating ‘Direct Provision Centre’ looks like it has been there forever. But this is the land of makebelieve, where cast and crew come and go. Today is press day and we are ushered into the Garda Incident Room. On one wall a jigsaw of crime photographs is pinned up. “Oh no someone has forgotten to take down the incident board,” cries eagle-eyed Gavin O’Connor (who plays Mac, a detective assigned to the murder investigation) but there are no spoilers here. In any case, it looks like it would be impossible to unravel the labyrinthine plot from merely a few images of the murder victim. “Everyone is a suspect,” says Lynn Rafferty, who plays Garda Inspector Jen Rooney, the detective heading the murder investigation. “It’s like a game of chess and we’re always trying to be one move ahead. There can be 50 pieces behind each crime and the picture keeps getting bigger and more complex. That’s the kind of drama I binge watch, trying to solve the crime myself as I sit there on the couch. Such shows also start conversations at home and I believe that Taken Down is going to do that.”
You might recognise Rafferty as the other half of Aido from Love/Hate. Her new role is a bit of a U-turn, from gangster rap in Love/Hate to being on the right side of the law in Taken Down. “It’s a dramatic turn to cross the line as it were, but I really enjoyed it,” she says. “There is a psychology behind both sides and it’s good to play that. Walking through a police station and knowing that you’re the boss is a pretty good feeling. I even enjoy the noise that Jen’s shoes make.”
The Toronto-based actress is teamed up with Orla Fitzgerald, who plays Niamh, a detective working under Inspector Rooney, who is both her friend and driver. “When I got the part, I read the script and thought ‘Whoa, that’s a lot of driving!’” she says. “But nobody had asked me if I could drive. It was only when they asked me to send through my driver’s licence, two weeks before filming, that I had to tell them I couldn’t drive. So there was total panic. I had to learn to drive in a week and I was terrified but I did it. During one scene Lynn beside me was white-knuckled. One of the crew said to me, ‘You’re diving like a learner driver’ and I said: ‘I am a fecking learner driver!’” Both actresses name-check some of their favourite police dramas, all with strong female leads, including The Fall, The Killing and back as far as the groundbreaking US show, Cagney and Lacey. “I was obsessed with The Killing when it first came out,” says Fitzgerald. “I do love a detective series and I even remember Cagney and Lacey, which was a favourite of mine when I was a kid. I had only RTÉ One and 2 growing up in Cork and they were brilliant, those two. So to be playing a female detective in a show now is like a dream come true.”
The Bad Guy?
Jimmy Smallhorne is a character. Born in Dublin, the writer and performer cut his artistic teeth in New York, where he worked in construction and helped found the Bronx Irish Theatre Company. When he returned to the old sod a few years back, he nailed a memorable role as vicious IRA boss, Git, in Love/Hate. “I’ve been tipping away ever since,” he says. “But I like being home.”
Today is Smallhorne’s day off, but he’s here to press the PR flesh, talk about Taken Down and his role as the shady Gar. “I’m not usually dressed up like this,” he says of his dapper wardrobe. “This is my courtroom stuff.” And he laughs a rat-a-tat laugh. So what’s the story with Gar, Jimmy? “I guess he’s a villain” he says of the underworld figure and brothel owner. “He’s a shady opportunist who is out to make money. He has his hands in a few pies even if it’s difficult to determine what those pies are. But he’s also an affable guy, charismatic. So the challenge with a character like this is to like someone who is a shady hoor.”
Gar runs a brothel with Nigerian wheeler-dealer, Benjamin, and a few others. “There’s a lot of money to be made in this business and Gar is good at it,” says Smallhorne. “He is also connected to Wayne, a character he has managed to manipulate and control. Gar is a chameleon and for an actor that is just so great to play.” What about research? Smallhorne chuckles, at the suggestion. “The only bit of research I did was to go out on the golf course because I have a golfing scene,” he says. “I’d never swung a gold club in my life except maybe in self defence. And I don’t think I’ve been to a brothel in my life, well, at least that I can remember!”
Did you have any reservations about playing another bad guy? “If David, Stuart and Suzanne had asked me to act in a film about a gangster rabbit I’d have come running because to work with these people is such a pleasure. I had been offered a gangster part in another TV show
I think this drama is even more ambitious than Love/Hate (Brian Gleeson)
It’s like a game of chess and we’re always trying to be one move ahead (Lynn Rafferty)
and I didn’t want to do it. And listen, I don’t know if you’ve ever dug a ditch but I have and that was digging through rock. So playing a bad guy is a lot easier than digging a ditch. And Gar is written so well that Bozo the Clown could play him.”
Asylum Seekers
In front of a mountainous red-bricked building, the cameras are rolling on a scene involving veteran French actor, Slimane Dazi ( A Prophet) and Brian Gleeson ( Love/Hate, The Bisexual). Dazir plays Samir, a refugee living at the Direct Provision Centre (“an older, wiser man” as Caffrey puts it) with Gleeson as Wayne, the malleable manager of the Centre with connections to the underworld. Samir is standing at a wall beside a young man as Wayne snarls at him to come away. A number of takes are filmed before David Caffrey is happy.
Later, Caffrey manages to squeeze in a few minutes to chat between set-ups. Wrapped in the uniform of his trade – warm jacket, jeans, comfortable shoes – he talks of how he first came to Taken Down and his priorities as a film-maker.“First off, my job is to make interesting drama so that lots of people watch the show,” he says. “The ancillary benefits are if we look at the people who go through Direct Provision and see them as human beings and not statistics. Some of our cast have been through Direct Provision and now have got their Irish papers and some of the cast are international actors depicting these people, but overall it is about humanising the story.”
Scene in the can, Gleeson and Dazi talk about the production. Gleeson, a gangster in Love/Hate, now plays another dark character, Wayne, who runs the Direct Provision Centre near where the body is found. He is a man with an eye on a quick buck, willing to bend the rules and milk the system to his own benefit regardless of the cost to others. “Love/ Hate was about the cost of violence and what it does to people,” says Gleeson. “This is a different type of violence to Love/Hate but it is still violence. It’s not necessarily someone with a gun in your face but make no mistake, people are suffering because of it.” Dazi plays the father figure in the Direct Provision Centre, the wise, older man Samir who tries to be a mentor to the new arrivals. “Samir is the oldest person in the Centre and knows all the migrants and is especially friendly with Abeni and her two sons, Isaiah and Oba. He tries to help them and yet his own story, which is very sad, is sometimes forgotten in all this. His relationship with Mr Wayne is OK but he needs Samir because he speaks Arabic.” Slimane, who is writing his memoir, sees Taken Down as a TV drama with an international resonance. “Yes it is a universal story and I know this because I have my own stories,” he says. “It’s not similar but I’m still a migrant in France. I was born in France in 1960 when Algeria was fighting for its independence. When independence came in 1962, the French government cut my rights and to this day I only have an Algerian passport. This is a true story and that is why this script really touched me.” Gleeson, scion of the well-known thespian clan, sees the political elements in the story. “The global capitalist project, which we are all a part of, leaves people behind,” he says. “I don’t know what the answers are, I don’t think any actor does, but figuring it out through entertainment can be very useful. Drama can really get you in the gut, so hopefully through Taken Down, and the dignity that Stuart and Jo give to the characters, we will at least understand how something like this can happen. Like Love/Hate maybe Taken Down can get people talking as well.”
Epilogue
Can lightning strike twice? Will Taken Down be the Love/Hate of 2018? Both shows, as cast and crew were keen to emphasise, are different animals even if the comparisons are inevitable. “Love/Hate is over, it’s gone,” says Jimmy Smallhorne. “Taken Down is something new, fresh and relevant and I really believe it will be as loved and as thought-provoking as Love/ Hate.” Brian Gleeson reckons the Love/Hate link is no bad thing. “People will tune in and that’s good,” he says. “But I think this drama is even more ambitious than Love/Hate. This is set in Dublin but shows us parts of the city many will have never seen. Love/Hate was about that as well but this is the New Ireland that is emerging and Taken Down is tackling all of that and more.”
As you leave Pigeon House and Taken Down, the rattle and hum of the city still buzzes in your ears, and the smell lingers.