Fair City
Fair City is an Irish television soap opera which has been broadcast on RTÉ One since 1989. Produced by the public service broadcaster RTE, it first aired on Monday, 18 September 1989. It has won several awards and is both the most popular and the longest running Irish drama serial.
Plots centre on the domestic and professional lives of the residents of Carrigstown, a fictional suburb of the Northside part of the city of Dublin. The area encompasses a restaurant, pub, garage, corner shop, community centre, charity shop, surgery, boxing club and various businesses. Originally aired as one half-hour episode per week for a limited run, the show is now broadcast year round on RTÉ One in four 30-minute episodes per week, at 20:30 on Sunday, 20:00 on Tuesday, 20:30 on Thursday and 19:30 on Friday.
Fair City is the most watched drama in Ireland, with average viewing figures of 550,000. Devised by executive producer Margaret Gleeson and series producer Paul Cusack, it has remained a significant programme in terms of RTÉ's success and audience share, and also in the history of Irish television drama, tackling many controversial and taboo issues previously unseen on Irish television, such as rape and domestic violence.
Setting
Fair City is set in Carrigstown, a fictional suburb of the Northside part of the city of Dublin. "Carrick" is found in many real Irish locations, and is derived from the Irish-language word carraig, meaning "rock". Many of the scenes take place around the main street in Carrigstown, with notable landmarks on the street including McCoy's pub, Phelan's corner shop, The Hungry Pig, the Community Centre and Vino's. Other recurring settings include the Acorn Cabs dispatch centre, the shared office, the Helping Hand charity shop, the surgery and most recently the Peggy Tea coffee shop.According to the RTÉ Guide, Carrigstown is bounded by Drumcondra to the north, the city centre to the south, East Wall to the east and Phibsboro to the west. Carrigstown takes its name from the village that grew up around the quarries in which granite was mined until the early 20th century – carraig, as noted above, being the Irish-language word for "rock".
Fair City occasionally makes use of real Dublin locations, such as Grafton Street, the Natural History Museum and Dublin Zoo. In 2011, filming took place for the first time outside of Dublin at the National Ploughing Championships. For the 1989 Dublin City Marathon, actors filmed short scenes taking part in the marathon that were edited into the programme in the following episode.
Characters
The series was originally focused on four families: the O'Hanlons, the Kellys, the Clarkes and the Doyles. Some of the earlier characters also included Lily Corcoran, her womanising nephew, Jack Flynn, Paul Brennan, now a billionaire, at the time worked for Jack Flynn, and Linda O'Malley, an acquaintance of Jack's, to whom he had promised fame as a singer.During the 1990s, the Phelan, Doyle, and Molloy families were introduced and dominated storylines for that decade. Bela and Rita Doyle, along with their brood of six children and Rita's mother Hannah, were involved in many stories. The Phelan family originally consisted of Hughie and Natalie, but later a new branch of the family arrived including Hughie's mother Eunice, and his brother Christy, along with Christy's wife Renee, and their two children Floyd and Farrah. The Molloy family was introduced in the mid-1990s and consisted of patriarch Harry, his wife Dolores, and their two teenage children Wayne and Lorraine.
The Halpin family was gradually introduced in the early 2000s, starting with Damien Halpin, his mother Tess Halpin and younger siblings Laura and Mark. Since then, the show's focus has shifted to individual characters instead of family groupings. Notable characters introduced subsequently include Carol Meehan, Tracey Kavanagh, Ray O'Connell, and Jo Fahey.
Another change in recent years has been the introduction of ethnic minority characters such as Lana Dowling and the Udenze family. However, the Udenzes moved back to England after the father Gabriel was burnt to death in a fire, and Lana Dowling was kidnapped and murdered. In 2009 an Israeli character was introduced to the show – Avi Bar Lev, Avi hails from the town of Haifa in Israel. In 2013, Ama Chisenga, a devout Christian nurse from Zambia came to Carrigstown, and faced trouble with documentation for immigration. More recently in 2017, two Chilean brothers, Jake and Cristiano came to the show. Jake, who came first, was initially homeless, but later started a relationship with Ama. His gay brother Cristiano soon followed, and both now run a coffee shop, Brewzers, in the Carrigstown Arcade.
2012 brought the additions of the Dillon family – the Father Tommy, the Mother Judith and their three daughters Caoimhe Dillon, Neasa Dillon and Dearbhla Dillon, and their son Zak. The Bishops arrived in 2009, consisting of the mother Vivienne, her sons Decco, Denzo and Zumo and her daughter Charlotte. Vivienne's niece Sash Bishop was introduced in 2011 and the patriarch Paddy Bishop in 2013. The O'Briens came in 2014 – the father Eoghan, the mother Debbie and their daughter Katy and their son Michael.
Paul Brennan is the only character from the first episode currently in the show. Sarah Flood was axed in 2013 after 23 years playing Suzanne Doyle.
Former executive producer Niall Mathews believes the soap's success is due to the large cast and the fact that no single character or group of characters dominates. "Difficulties are inherent if you are dealing with just one family", he says. "Look at Dallas and Dynasty; both did well at the beginning, but because all the action was centred on a single family, the writers ran out of things to say."
Executive Producer Brigie de Courcy said: "I think the big thing that Fair City does that the other soaps don't quite do is that it is really rooted in the community."
Production
Running in parallel with the writing process is the production process, which includes: casting, wardrobe, make-up, design and construction of sets, purchase of props, finding locations, booking facilities, developing schedules, sound, and other administrative tasks involved in managing a large production.Each week rehearsals for the four episodes take place on Saturday and Monday. Shooting takes place on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the interior scenes are filmed at Studios A and C on RTÉ's Montrose campus. The exterior scenes are filmed on the lot within the grounds of the RTÉ Headquarters on Thursday and on location on Friday. Each day, 15 scenes are filmed. Scripts are prepared up to six months in advance, and episodes are shot six weeks before being aired. Four episodes are filmed every week. After shooting an episode, an editor will go through the episode scene by scene with the director. They will choose which shots to retain and which to cut.
From 1989 until 1994, all interior shots were filmed at Ardmore Studios, near Bray, County Wicklow. In 1994, production moved to studios at Montrose specifically adapted to cater for the show. Like Brookside, all exterior shots were initially filmed at real houses in a real cul-de-sac in Barron Place, Drumcondra and later in Booterstown. Due to the difficulties involved with shooting outside of a controlled environment, it was decided to build a streetscape, known as the lot. In 1992, the Fair City lot was built at Ardmore, where set designers replicated the facades and interiors of the original houses. In 1994, a new lot was built at the grounds of RTÉ. In 2018, production moved again for the first time in decades to the present lot in RTE. On each set appliances such as washing machines and gas cookers do not actually work most of the time.
The show has had four different opening sequences and five different theme tunes. The opening features several scenes of contemporary Dublin, while the closing credits shows a frozen image of the River Liffey.
Writing
The series is planned in various stages. The first stage is the development of story and plot, which is carried out by a team of writers. Once the stories have been fleshed out and agreed, a scene breakdown is created. The episodes are then assigned to script writers, who create the dialogue and stage directions for the actors.Writers who have worked on Fair City scripts and storylines include Anna Carey, Sarah Francis, and Michelle Duffy.