Frontlines: Republic Of Telly

With shows like Ripper Street, Foyle’s War, Moone Boy and Quirke all shooting here over the past year, it’s clear that Ireland has become a Mecca for television producers. And no wonder. Thanks to HBO, the last decade has seen the standard of big budget television shows improve exponentially, and audiences now have an insatiable appetite for ambitious and edgy television dramas.

As a location for filming, Ireland has a number of attractive qualities: a wealth of talented writers, producers and actors; a unique landscape that offers both city and rural settings within close (and therefore cost-effective) distance; and of course Section 481, our competitive tax incentive that’s proving to be a real attraction for foreign film producers.
It wasn’t until 2007 that the international film and television industry began to consistently take notice of our potential. The IFB’s Film Commissioner Naoise Barry not only supports local producers, but promotes Ireland internationally, with the aim of attracting foreign direct investment in the areas of TV and film. He says Ireland’s remarkable success in attracting large television productions can be traced back to period drama The Tudors.
“We had ingenious entrepreneurial producers,” Barry explains, “who took advantage of both our tax incentives, and the cast and crew base that had been built up over here by working on feature films, and put them to work on programmes like The Tudors – with an Irish guy in the lead, in the shape of Jonathan Rhys Meyers. So we have Irish businesses that have diversified, and grown away from feature film into TV drama.
“Initially with The Tudors it was about providing a production service to overseas partners and broadcasters. But over the past five years – and this has been the Film Board’s aim – our producers have moved from making other people’s projects to designing and producing their own shows. These are big, ambitious TV drama series, aimed at an international market and pitched to international broadcasters, not just to be shown to RTÉ.
“We had guys like Morgan O’Sullivan, who was producing The Tudors for an overseas producer and was servicing that production. He’s now moved on, to a point where he’s developing his own big TV series. He owns Vikings. He owns that intellectual property.”
Another example of this hugely successful diversification is Element Pictures, which began by providing production services to UK companies. They’ve now moved into producing their own shows, which they’re successfully pitching to UK broadcasters. An example is the upcoming Dublin-shot BBC drama series Quirke, starring Gabriel Byrne. They’re also the co-producers of the hugely admired period drama Ripper Street, which features Raw star Charlene McKenna and was shot in Clancy Barracks last year.
Ed Guiney, co-founder of Element Pictures, has previously worked on films like The Guard and What Richard Did, and is a bone fide expert in both pitching and selecting film locations. He explains why a combination of tax incentives and Dublin’s unique cityscape made it the ideal base for shooting Ripper Street.
“They came here initially because it was pre-UK tax credit, so it was advantageous. Also there’s the period architecture and the fact that they have the ability to build sets here. They had real difficulty finding that in the UK. Also we had a long track record with the company who are the main producers on that, Tiger Aspect.”
It’s clear that these collaborations and the high standards of homegrown projects have pushed Ireland to the fore in attracting international television producers. It’s estimated that 75 percent of all incoming projects are television series, with film productions making up 25 percent.
This burgeoning success hasn’t gone unnoticed. In response, authorities in the UK decided that they wanted a piece of the action. While their old tax incentives catered only for films, since April 1 2013, television productions are reaping the benefits too. With the UK now more competitive – and thus more attractive to international producers - Barry feels it’s time for the Government here to respond. Investment in the industry and simple adjustments to Section 481 (such as offering tax credits on the wages of big stars, as the UK do) could result in a massive upswing in the volume of film and television productions coming to Ireland.
“You can see the benefit of this approach in the upturn that the Northern Irish film industry is currently enjoying,” says Barry. “They offer the UK tax credits for feature film – and now TV – and they have invested significantly in big sound stages and studio infrastructure, which the big Hollywood studios need to make big movies. As a result, Game Of Thrones is being produced there. Also, Belfast just recently won a bid to bring a big picture from Universal, a movie called Dracula: Year Zero. Northern Ireland has put in place the tax incentives, coupled with the studio infrastructure, and so the investment has followed.”
That said Barry insists that’s he’s optimistic about the future south of hte border.
“I think the government may be seriously thinking about making the changes required. They’ve always been hugely supportive of the industry and it seems like the small strategic changes that need to be made to our tax incentive scheme may already be in the pipeline.”
Fingers crossed, and cameras at the ready. Ireland is ready for its close-up.