It has been quite a journey for the boys from Castle Town, as the second season of the comedy ‘Hardy Bucks’ begins on RTÉ Two at 10.20pm on Monday, 14 November.
For co-creator, writer and actor Chris Tordoff, much has change since the show's early days as a youtube hit, “It felt a lot better to be honest,” said Tordoff, “we were a lot more prepared. When we did the first series it was completely different from the internet, we felt like we could have improved a lot.”
The mocumentary originated as six-part webisode series, which went on to win the 2009 Storyland competition held by RTÉ. Set in a small town in the West of Ireland, ‘Hardy Bucks’ follows the mis-adventures of five hapless characters down on their luck, trying to reach the “Big Shmoke”(Dublin).
IFTA nominated director Liz Gill (Goldfish Memory) has taken over directorial duties for the second series, leaving Tordoff to concentrate on acting and writing. “It was important that we found someone that was on the same wavelength, once that happened we were a lot better at leaving things to her, a lot more comfortable with it,” said Tordoff, “Liz was brilliant, an amazing calming influence especially when she was dealing with us amateurs, she had a lot on her plate but she was really good.”
Handing over the directorial reigns was difficult for Tordoff, having helmed the project since its inception, but a step that was necessary for the good of the show; “Initially it’s difficult, you are handing stuff over and you kind of feel like it’s your own baby. To be honest the culture change from the internet to doing it on television was so vast, it would have been bad for us to have kept trucking along and doing it ourselves.”
While the production of the series is now a far cry from its early days, the second season has changed from a single camera production to using a second camera, a set up more similar to the one the group originally used for the webisodes. For Tordoff, who also plays small-time drug dealer The Viper in the show, the second series was an opportunity to solve some of the series’ initial problems; “The first series was single camera, due to budget, and I think that it was something we should have rectified from the off, regardless of the money. Some of the best stuff that we write is the off the cuff more natural nuances of the characters. We like to ad lib quite a bit, the unfortunate thing is that doing it with a single camera, you often have to go back and do it again, and you’ll never be able to replicate the same kind of performance.”
A new level of professionalism has also been applied to the writing and stories on the show, with RTÉ Drama Development Executive Eilish Kent, helping out with the story. “We had quite a few story meetings with her, she was trying to put the basic drama principles on it,” said Tordoff, “we are not the best when it comes to labouring over a storyline, we just like to let a camera roll on a situation and let the characters riff, so we had to meet in the middle. It worked out a lot better, for us it’s a massive learning curve, we’ve come from zero experience to getting a show.”
The vast difference between filming themselves for the show to air online, to creating a series for the national broadcaster has changed the culture of the show, “It is give and take, you do get stifled and annoyed sometimes when we don’t believe that we’ve had enough time, or it hasn’t come out right because we just had to get it done,” said Tordoff, “the flip side is that it focuses you, it was a big culture shift from internet to TV where its just more controlled, going into the new series we had learnt from the last time that its not playing around the whole time.”
While compromises had to be made, Tordoff was eager to keep what made the show such a hit in the first place; “you don’t want to lose the originality that may it what it was. There is a realisation that you can do whatever you want on the internet but on TV there a whole load of people who are going to be forced to watch it regardless of weather of not they get your humour. It’s a hard thing to come to terms with, because you really just want to go off the wall and say whatever you want and swear, but its all about working with people.”
Having seen the series have its gestation online; Tordoff has seen the power of the internet when trying to get a show off the ground, something which he thinks might be a more frequent occurrence for independent producers, “If we were ever going to do anything again, we would go back to the net and try to get an audience. I think a broadcaster will listen to you a lot more when you have got thousands of hits, rather than just saying we have got this great idea.”
So will this be the last we will see from the Castle Town boys? “Obviously we would love to do more if there is the opportunity. I’d like to keep using the internet as a secondary place to put videos, we all have different ideas cropping up every now and again to shoot different things, but we need to keep focused on this. If we get another series that would be brilliant, if not then I reckon we would start moving on to different projects, as of yet I don’t really know what, but this is still the main baby.”
Where the rest of the cast of ‘Hardy Bucks’ is concerned, co-creator and co-writer of the series Martin Maloney (The Republic of Telly) plays the shows hero Eddie Durkin. The shows sees most of the actors who made up the original internet version returning, with Owen Colgan playing Buzz McDonald, French Toast O'Toole played by Peter Cassidy, Boo played by Tom Kilgalon, Big Mick Fitzpatrick by Eugene Maloney and Dannie Cassidy appearing is Eric Montgomery.
