Quite a stroke of luck

I like to think of myself as one of those well-fed, rubicund burghers one sees in old Dutch pictures: my stout, ruddy-cheeked, cheerful wife laughing uproariously by my side as I drink heartily from a carafe of wine, while a tiny crumb from a freshly baked loaf falls from my fat, wet, full pink lips, and gets lost in the moist, seldom-washed crevice that has developed between two of my chins and my upper chest area.

Oh, that it were so.

The reality is different.

I began life a nervous, highly strung child with an inferiority complex, crippling shyness and a stammer, who suffered from weak stomach muscles and intussusception.

That developed into both an irrational fear of an early death, from which I have been suffering since at least my late-90s, and an irrational fear of the Irish, which developed more recently.

It is quite the coincidence, then, that this week's column relates the work of an actor who used to play a psychotherapist, but who now plays the chief pathologist at the Dublin city morgue - a charismatic loner whose job takes him into unexpected places as he uncovers the secrets of sudden death in 1950s Dublin.

Quite the coincidence, I'm sure you'll agree.

Yes, dear friends, we speak in hushed, reverential tones of Gabriel Byrne, in the new UKTV drama Quirke.

Well ... sort of reverential.

Seriously, if you were a television writer would you honestly come up with another bloody television show about a pathologist?

Would you go to a network with a script, and say ''Hey! I have this idea for a television show about a ... get this ... a pathologist.''?

Would you go with a little sparkle in your eye, thinking ''Gee, this is a new idea'', and suggest the hero gets caught up in the murderer's private life, and by bending the rules of reality a bit allow him to interview and arrest suspects?

Would you make him a charismatic loner whose job takes him into unexpected places as he uncovers the secrets of sudden death in 1950s Dublin?

Brilliant.

Fortunately, Gabriel Byrne, who was just excellent as the world-and-therapy-weary-therapist in the HBO series In Treatment, stars in a show that, despite its hackneyed subject matter, looks good.

It includes the wonderful Michael Gambon of Singing Detective fame in a supporting role.

The series is based on the books of Irish writer John Banville, who has won both the Booker and Franz Kafka prizes.

Quirke walks the smoky streets and damp alleyways of Dublin, and wears a terrific hat.

The three-episode miniseries begins at 8.30pm, March 24.

Well worth a look.

- Charles Loughrey

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