Adare Productions are currently in pre-production with ‘G-Day’ a series that will organise and follow the battle to become TG4’s Top Irish Speaking Town. The series, which will shoot after Christmas, will feature a pair of villages whose residents will compete to speak only Irish and ultimately be crowned the top Irish speaking town outside the Gaeltacht. Adare also goes into production tomorrow with a new series of ‘Livin’ with Lucy’ where Lucy will move in with Crystal Swing for a week.
Produced by Brian Graham (Livin’ with Lucy, The Ex-Files), ‘G-Day’ (Gaeilge-day) will soon invite villages to enter for the competition where the chosen areas will have three months to prepare for ‘G-Day’. On that day the villages will put on a festival celebrating their heritage, local traditions but most importantly they will put in their best effort to carry out everything using the Irish language. The overall winner of the series will walk away with a major tourism marketing campaign for their village.
Brian explains to IFTN exactly what the effort will entail: “We’ll have hidden cameras and closed circuit cameras planted everywhere and the residents will be expected to make a big effort – restaurants will have to change their menus to Irish, Facebook pages will have to completely changed – shopfronts will havew to be re-done. This is why there’s so much preparation time given.” The series is being funded by TG4 and the Broadcasting Association of Ireland (BAI).
In the months leading up to G-Day, audiences will watch as the village occupants prepare for festival day. Getting to grips with the Irish language will be their priority. Schools will start adapting and road signs willl be changed. In each village a team leader will be selected to encourage their comunity to make a huge effort in carrying out all activities through Irish.
From daylight of Day 1, each village will be under the scrutiny of two judges until midnight. The following morning both team leaders face the ‘G-Day’ judges where they will answer to any shortcomings from the previous day. Following this the judges will make their decision on which village will be going through to the next round.
Brian tells us that 20 villages are to be selected to take part in the competition with the judges choosing the winning village each week except for the show’s final which will feature live online streaming and will be decided by public vote.
A new series of Adare’s other production ‘Livin’ With Lucy’ starts production tomorrow and will see Lucy Kennedy (The Ex Files) move in with Crystal Swing for the week. The series is directed and produced by Brian Graham.
