With the fifth and final episode of RTÉ’s ‘Rebellion’ airing this Sunday, IFTN talks to writer Colin Teevan and producer Catherine Magee about the series.
The €6m period drama, which Teevan is quick to point out is “probably less than half per episode of what it costs to make ‘Downton Abbey’”, has been a moderate hit for RTÉ with the series hitting a high of 646,800 viewers in the second episode.
Commending the work of producer Catherine Magee, Teevan said: “Catherine has done a fantastic job in making this look as good as it does because this probably has ten times the ambition – you don’t see huge gun-fights on streets in ‘Downton Abbey’. The reality of TV drama is that it is expensive though – you have to speculate to accumulate especially if you want an international audience.”
As TV dramas go, ‘Rebellion’ was a quick turnaround, shooting in the summer of 2015 for delivery in early 2016. The shoot was 10 weeks for five episodes which equates to just two weeks per episode, quite a feat when you consider that every Dublin location had to be prepped to make it look authentic.
Producer Catherine Magee said: “With period dramas, everything has to be considered – there is no shooting on the fly, extras take four hours to get dressed, a horse and cart might take 25 minutes to reset so there was certainly a lot of pressure there.”
When the question comes up of whether or not ‘Rebellion’ was given the go-ahead after Teevan’s political drama series ‘Charlie’ proved a critical and commercial success last year, Magee spoke over Teevan’s modesty and said: “It was green-lit after ‘Charlie’!”
Teevan added: “As a writer though, ‘Charlie’ had absolutely no impact on the form of this. They are such separate stories. ‘Charlie’ is the story of a man and ‘Rebellion’ is the story of a time and a city. The one thing ‘Charlie’ did show me however is that there is a huge appetite in Ireland for dramas about our own history. There is a constant debate about Irish identity and Irish politics and they are great fodder for drama, aren’t they?”
An element of ‘Rebellion’ that has received a lot of attention is the series focusing on five fictionalized characters (played by Charlie Murphy, Sarah Greene, Ruth Bradley, Brian Gleeson and Barry Ward) and leaving a lot of pivotal historical figures such as Padraig Pearse, James Connelly and Countess Constance Markievicz on the periphery.
Teevan said: “This story is about an event – it’s all about perspective. I wanted to write about characters that had normal stuff going on in their lives and then the Rising happened. There were so many interesting historical figures at the time that to focus on one character would have given a skewed perspective on all the other aspects of the time.”
With so much action contained within The Rising – six days of fighting within Dublin resulting in unprecedented carnage in the city – the budget would surely have been astronomical to portray this but Magee said they went around this by always having a rule of “following the characters”.
“What’s good about focussing on the characters is that it all feels very powerful”, said Magee. “You see the shock on their faces and shells landing and it all feels very real. They have a huge impact without being big, spectacular sequences.”
‘Rebellion’ has already sold internationally with Robert Redford’s Sundance Channel picking up the series to air later in the year and there are also rumours of a second season set during the Irish Civil War.
“It has been such a relentless process from development to writing to filming to editing”, said Teevan. “I don’t think Catherine has seen her kids in about 15 months! But it still is very exciting to see it go out there.”
The ‘Rebellion’ finale airs on Sunday, January 31st at 9.30pm.
