Secrets & lies
Based on Eugene McCabe’s classic, this three-part drama, co-starring Ann Skelly, Jamie Dornan and Matthew Rhys, is a riveting tale of love, betrayal and revenge. Adapted and directed by Allan Cubitt ( The Fall), the story is set in 1885 in the troubled countryside of Co Fermanagh. It’s a place of squinting windows, where neighbours observe each other and where the landscape’s beauty is shadowed by menace and a sense of impending doom. Growing up, Beth Winters (Skelly) was caught between two warring parents: her Catholic mother Catherine married her Protestant step-father Billy (Rhys) when she was already pregnant by an unknown Catholic man. On her 23rd birthday, her mother long dead, Beth plans to escape the claustrophobic grip of Billy and their closed community by running away with charming, mysterious Liam Ward (Dornan). But with the hour of reckoning fast approaching, can Beth hold her nerve?
Death and Nightingales is a powerful and gripping drama about a young woman struggling to control her own destiny and bringing tensions to the surface that threaten to tear both families and nation apart.
“I’m thrilled to be reunited with Allan and his brilliant scripts,” says Jamie Dornan, “to play such an intriguing character as Liam Ward and to return to Northern Ireland.” For Ann Skelly, the rising star who made such an impression in Red Rock and in Aoife McArdle’s superb debut feature, Kissing Candice, Death and Nightingales is also an intriguing challenge. “Playing such a strong character as Beth Winters is truly an actor’s dream,” she says, “and fantastically intense. To get to work with such brilliant actors as Matthew and Jamie, and a director like Allan Cubitt, is just surreal to me.”