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AFTER experiencing the drum-beating drama of EastEnders and the unwashed dysfunctional Gallagher family of Shameless, Dearbhla Walsh might be forgiven for turning her attention to something a little more, well, fragrant. Instead, the awardwinning director . . . rapidly becoming Ireland's Most Wanted . . . has taken on a gritty kidnap drama that follows a father to the edge of a nervous breakdown and found Walsh spending Christmas week on a boat on the Shannon. "We were shooting one scene with the father and son and the fog came down; they were completely shrouded in fog and I thought, 'I'm shooting a Russian film in Offaly.'" In fact, Hide and Seek is a wholly Irish drama, produced by Accomplice TV for RTE. It stars Michael McElhatton . . .of Paths To Freedom and Fergus's Wedding fame . . . as Paul, a man haunted by a childhood tragedy who takes his son away in what appears to be a psychotic episode, leaving his wife, played by Maria Doyle Kennedy, and brother (Karl Geary), to pursue them across the country. It's a dark and disturbing tale, beautifully shot by cinematographer Owen McPoland under the direction of the visionary Walsh.
"It's about stillness, " she says. "It's a very introspective piece. It's not served to you on a plate. It's not serving you plot all the time. If you like your stories mean and fast, you might be bored by it."
Since graduating from DCU in 1988, the 36-year-old from Tubbercurry in Sligo has hardly put a creative foot wrong. After a brief spell in RTE after college, she got a job in promotions at Granada in Manchester. "It was the post-Thatcher era and the unions had collapsed, which meant that researchers were allowed direct. It wouldn't have happened here."
She used her experience of directing three-minute arts pieces to secure a place back on RTE's producer/director course and found herself working on children's programming. In 2000, she directed the Bafta awardwinning RTE/BBC co-production, Custer's Last StandUp (starring a stripling George MacMahon). Suitably impressed by it, the executive producer of EastEnders gave Walsh a call and invited her to direct the single-camera special, The Trial of Little Mo. In 2003, she was invited to direct two episodes of Shameless for Channel 4. She had, she says, no idea how successful the show would prove.
"When we were working on it, we were constantly asking, 'Is this funny?' We knew it was great drama but we didn't know if it was funny.
But it's the one thing I've worked on that really seems to cross all the social divides.
Everyone, from people's mothers to taxi drivers, really likes it."
She filmed a series and a half of the hit show before deciding she needed a fresh challenge. That came with Funland . . . written by Jeremy Dyson of The League of Gentlemen and coming to BBC2 in April . . . and Hide and Seek.
Next on the calendar is a major new drama for ITV that will find her, quite by accident, in Manchester for the fourth summer in a row.
She's a home bird . . . she lives in Dublin with her partner, TV presenter Anna Nolan . . . but she doesn't mind stretching her wings on her own terms. "I suppose I'm lucky to have got the break in drama in my 30s, so I don't have to do that living-in-London thing. If they want me, they have to bring me over and put me up. It's not a bad position to be in."
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YOU ARE HERE: 19 March 2007 / tribune.ie / 2006 / 03 / 12
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