Holding out for a hero...
IF YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR A GOOD DRAMA THEN HOLDING IS THE ONE TO WATCH. MARION McMULLEN LOOKS AT THE STARRY CAST OF ITV’S ADAPTATION OF GRAHAM NORTON’S DEBUT NOVEL
TAKE one Game of Thrones star, an Oscar winner and a Father Ted legend and you have the makings of a dream cast.
There is also the inimitable Siobhan McSweeney, best known as the acid-tongued Sister Michael in Derry Girls, helping to bring to life chat show host Graham Norton’s whodunnit novel, Holding.
The series is directed by the superb Kathy Burke, who demonstrates there’s so much more to her talents than the hilarious comic caricatures of her acting days.
Olivier Award-winning actor Conleth Hill is arguably most famous for playing devious eunuch Varys in Game of Thrones, but here he boasts a full head of hair to play local police officer Sergeant PJ Collins.
PJ is a gentle being who hides from people and fills his days with comfort food and half-hearted police work.
He is one of life’s outsiders, lovable, but lonely and a bit rubbish at his job.
When the body of long-lost local legend Tommy Burke is discovered, PJ is called to solve a serious crime for the first time in his career, and he finally has to connect with the villagers he has tried hard to avoid over the years.
Conleth says: “It’s also a good old whodunnit mystery that you’ll want to get to the bottom of.
“I read the novel when it first came out and I just thought it was great.
“The fact that Kathy Burke was directing was also a no-brainer, I think she’s a genius and the opportunity of working with her was too good to resist.
“I was particularly taken with the character of PJ because he’s such a flawed hero.”
The 57-year-old, born in Ballycastle in Northern Ireland, explains: “He’s just an ordinary man and I think that’s what appealed to me.
“He’s not a brilliant detective, not a brilliant policeman, he’s not a brilliant man, but they are the roles that are most challenging and exciting to play.
“After so many years of being a Garda, PJ suddenly gets his first murder case and his life changes now that he has something important to work on.”
The four-part ITV drama was filmed on location in West Cork in Ireland and Conleth says viewers will fall in love with the area.
“West Cork is beautiful. Sometimes you wish you had a drone’s eye view of it because through every twist and turn there’s another beautiful beach, village or landscape.
“West Cork is a big star of our show.”
Joining Conleth in Holding is Oscar winner Brenda Fricker who plays PJ’s housekeeper and cook.
“She’s a typical country woman but we don’t know too much about her. She’s known to clean houses around the local area and ends up with the sergeant, which means she gets all the gossip,” says 77-year-old Brenda.
“What really attracted me to this project was this long speech that’s about six pages long and it was so beautifully written.
“I just thought, I’d like to be the person that says those words.”
Brenda was a familiar face on Casualty as Megan Roach and won the best supporting actress Oscar in 1990 for My Left Foot starring Daniel Day Lewis.
She says Holding will certainly keep viewers guessing, adding: “I enjoyed the story, the twists, the murder and the craic.
“It’s very funny in places but it’s also a very serious story. It unravels, it’s not a quick whodunnit, it’s lovely that bits and pieces come along throughout the series.”
Pauline McLynn came to TV fame as Father Ted’s tea-loving housekeeper Mrs Doyle and in Holding she plays Eileen O’Driscoll, the self-appointed mayor of the town.
“In her eyes she’s the only go-getter in town and the leader of the local community. But that is all in her head because formally she is neither of those things,” Pauline points out.
“She is a breath of fresh air and colour in the local landscape because I think she’s living a great life to be honest.
“She is widowed but that doesn’t seem to be taking too much out of her anymore.
“She is involved with everyone in the community because she’s been
there forever, she remembers them when they were in their nappies and wouldn’t be behind the door telling them that.
“She knows the skinny on everyone and may or may not share that information, depending on the situation.”
Pauline, aged 59, admits though she did not read the book before filming the series.
“I do have it in my possession,” she says. “I got to one of those strange places where I thought, what if I read it now and I just become a pain and every time something happens I’d say ‘There’s a bit in the book where Mrs O’Driscoll does this or that’.
“I thought I’ll read it afterwards and I can bang my head against a wall in case I think I missed a trick there if Graham had written something a lot better than I delivered it. So it’s very much an act of jeopardy not having read the novel yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
“One of the things about being in a version of a bestselling novel is that you’re putting yourself forward to a lot of fans of the novel.
“There’s a huge weight of expectation there and we all felt it on set.
“We want this to do justice in a different medium to a great story that Graham has told and written beautifully. So it’s nerve-wracking!”
The fact that Kathy Burke was directing was also a no-brainer Conleth Hill on one of the reasons he joined the Holding cast
■ Holding starts on ITV tomorrow at 9pm