These have been a shaky few years for RTÉ, but the national broadcaster isn’t dead and buried quite yet. Amid such setbacks as Tubridy-gate and a slew of dire scripted output, it has produced the occasional gem, of which the brilliantly bleak Obituary (RTÉ One, 10.15pm) is perhaps the pick of the bunch.
Series one was a wonderfully dour blend of Netflix’s Wednesday, serial killer caper Dexter and a Cure video shot in Donegal. It starred Siobhán Cullen as a frustrated freelance journalist who decides to top up her income as an obituary writer by taking extreme measures (we’ve all been there).
Her plan was to keep the demand for obits in the fictional Donegal seaside town of Kilraven ticking over by adding to the body count herself. Unfortunately for her, the strategy quickly went off the rails.
Obsessed with recent deaths, Elvira became accidentally entangled in the mystery killing several years earlier of a German journalist, with consequences that ultimately proved horrific.
RTÉ isn’t dead and buried yet. Obituary is a genuinely engaging murder mystery
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The gothic Irish trappings are also fleshed out with a genuinely engaging murder mystery
Obituary series one was smartly acted with an enjoyably tart script – though the plot turned a tad too convoluted in a confusing finale. The show also won an unlikely cult following in the United States, where it streamed on Disney’s Hulu network, and viewers both at home and abroad will be delighted to catch up with Cullen as Elvira moves forward with her bloody adventures in journalism.
The major addition to the cast in season two is the impressive Máiréad Tyers. She shrugs off her involvement in the atrocious adaptation of Marian Keyes’ Walsh Sisters to play the hard-nosed new editor of Cullen’s local newspaper. A disrupter who believes in setting journalists at each other’s throats – indeed, a not unrealistic depiction of certain Irish newsrooms – she demands that Cullen and her fellow journos pitch exciting new stories. The winner will thrive, the losers will be fired.
Elvira’s chief rival for Vivienne’s approval is spoiled intern Ruby (Aisling Reid), which leads our homicidal heroine to scheme her murder. But Elvira’s bloody plans go astray when a masked intruder dispatches Ruby first, as an aghast Elvira watches from a parked car outside. Who is the killer – and what was their motivation for bumping off the daughter of the owner of “the county’s third biggest waste disposal business”?
Obituary is ghoulishly gripping and Cullen excels as a woman dealing with bone-deep trauma. As with series one, the gothic Irish trappings are also fleshed out with a genuinely engaging murder mystery.
It isn’t quite enough to raise a moribund RTÉ from the dead, but it is an excellent example of what can happen when a broadcaster dares to do something different. Amid so much home-produced stodge, it’s great having a killer drama in our midst.
