Hardy Bucks
Hardy Bucks is an Irish comedy series, filmed in mockumentary style and following the fictional exploits of a group of twentysomething slackers living in small-town Ireland.
It started out as an online series of largely improvised scenes. A six-part webisode series went on to win the 2009 Storyland competition held by Irish national broadcaster RTÉ Television.
Production
Hardy Bucks was created in 2007 when Chris Tordoff filmed Martin Maloney and Owen Colgan for a college project. After sitting on the footage for a year, Tordoff uploaded the shorts to YouTube. Hardy Bucks was entered into the RTÉ Storyland competition and from a total of 122 applications, nine projects were commissioned to make one episode each. These episodes were released in March 2009. With all nine projects on the website, the public could vote for their favourite and at the end of every month the shows with the fewest votes would be voted off, leaving the remaining teams to make the next episode with the same €8,000 budget per episode. Hardy Bucks made it all the way to the finals and ultimately won with the largest number of votes. The show was filmed on location in Swinford, County Mayo, from where many of the extras were sourced.A three-episode television series, written by the writing trio Tordoff, Maloney and Mike Cockayne, was commissioned and broadcast by RTÉ from 12 October 2010 until 26 October 2010. Following the success of the debut television series, RTÉ commissioned a half-hour Christmas special which aired on 26 December 2010, with Liz Gill succeeding Cockayne as director. Hardy Bucks second series, a six-episode run, was broadcast by RTÉ during 2011. The Hardy Bucks Movie was released by Universal Pictures in Feb 2013, achieving Box Office no.1 on its opening weekend and becoming the most successful Irish film of the year. Hardy Bucks returned with a third series in November 2015, and again with a fourth series in March 2018.
The programme has been compared to Trailer Park Boys, a Canadian mockumentary, with Tordoff citing the show as an influence.
Characters
Protagonists
- Eddie Durkan - the main character, an unemployed and lazy youth with vague ambitions of emigrating to find a better life.
- Billy "Buzz" McDonnell - Eddie's best friend, something of a philosopher who often argues with Eddie. McDonnell regularly wears a Celtic shirt and has a love of jambons and crows.
- "Frenchtoast" O'Toole - known for his love of nature, fishing, and making political statements. Rapidly fluctuates between being a spiritualist and an alcoholic.
- Tommy "The Boo" Boogenhagen - a fitness lover with a mysterious past.
Antagonists
- Francis "The Viper" Higgins - the main antagonist, a vain, arrogant but woefully inept small-time drug dealer whose wildly ambitious and poorly planned schemes almost invariably land him in trouble.
- Stateside - one of the Viper's henchmen. Has vague ambitions of becoming a singer/dancer.
- Dragon - The Viper's driver and henchman.
- Viper 2 - an actor hired by the Viper to act as a decoy.
- Jimmy 'The Hammer' Harrington - Buzz's psychopathic, cross dressing, hammer-toting long lost cousin. Appears in Season 4, when he hides from the law in Eddie and Buzz's cottage.
Other characters
- Salmon An unemployed man who befriends the Hardy Bucks. Married Sveltana and works for Seamus Mortimer and Aloysius Lavin.
- Seamie / Rama - A posh and snobby college student who speaks with a D4 accent.
- Svetlana Salmon - Salmon's improbably attractive Russian girlfriend.
- Big Mick - Eddie's uncle and lover of the craic. Always tries to push Eddie to get a job and make the family proud.
- Seamus Mortimer - Local businessman and politician. Salmon’s boss and friend of Aloysius Lavin.
- Ciara - Eddie's overbearing nymphomaniac girlfriend in series 3 and 4.
- Sim Card - The Viper's apologetic "hash gimp"/accomplice, but his true love is ice cream.
- Patty - Briefly the Viper's girlfriend, but she soon left him for Buzz in series 3.
- "Scorpio" Lyons - local DJ, head of the 'Almera Bois'.
- Noreen - Eddie's girlfriend in series 1 and 2.
- Cowboy Lavin An America-obsessed friend of the Hardy Bucks.
- Orla Flannery
- Lexus - Eddie's cousin and recovering alcoholic.
- Crowbar - leader of the Sligo Boys. Serves as Viper’s aggressive and violent counterpart.
- Garda Koffi
- Aloysius Lavin - Owner of the Castletown golf club, landlord, businessman.
- Sligo Boy
- Ladybird
- Shady Ganley - local hardman who was raised by crows.
Episode list