This weekend, Documentary & Drama on Newstalk airs the premiere of Third Time Lucky, a topical comedy-drama in which IMRO-nominated producer Brian Gallagher explores the tensions that arise when allotment holders discover that there is pyrite in their community centre.

Third Time Lucky is told partly from the perspective of Councillor Benny Kelly, a slippery local representative who has crossed swords with the residents in the past but who this time sees an opportunity to win favour.

With long-standing grievances between members of the allotment committee bubbling below the surface, tempers flare when reactionary Mick Delaney insults an official from the local council – who threatens to close the community centre because of fire and safety irregularities.

Meanwhile with government pyrite funding only available for dwelling places, Benny comes under pressure to find some way of obtaining funding for the residents.

The stakes are raised when Emma Johnson, a journalist who is also on the committee, writes an inflammatory article for her newspaper regarding dodgy builders – with whom Benny has had under-the-counter dealings.

The pressure gets to Benny, who has a heart attack, causing him to re-evaluate his purpose in life. But can the leopard really change his spots? And can he be trusted, or is it too good to be true, when he cooks up a scheme to save the clubhouse from closure?

Starring Claudia Carroll, Mark O’Regan, and Sharon Hogan, Third Time Lucky was written and produced by Brian Gallagher.

Third Time Lucky will be broadcast on Newstalk 106-108fm on Sunday 29th September at 7am with repeat broadcast on Saturday 5th October at 9pm.

Third Time Lucky can also be listened to online at: www.newstalk.ie. Podcast available at: newstalk.ie/documentaryonnewstalk after the broadcast.

The S.P.A. Weekend is a spooky and hilarious new audio drama written by Emily Gillmor Murphy and produced by the award-winning production team of Hugh Hick and Heather MacLeod.

The S.P.A. Weekend will be broadcast on Newstalk on Sunday 11th August at 7am, repeated Saturday 17th August at 9pm, and will be available as a podcast, on GoLoud and all major platforms.

Billie and Sophie are booked into a S.P.A. (Supernatural, Paranormal, Activity) weekend with a difference in the infamous Manor Hill House – a place full of bizarre characters and even more bizarre stories. But will they find the ghosts within the walls of the hotel or in their own pasts?

One part Fawlty Towers and one part Agatha Christie, The S.P.A. Weekend takes a fresh and witty look at what ghosts still lurk in 21st century Ireland and what we do about them.

This is Emily’s second collaboration with Heather and Hugh, after the Prix-Europa nominated drama The Horror Writer. Emily’s sharp and twisting script for the drama was previously shortlisted for 2022 P.J. O’Connor Radio Drama Awards.

The cast is led by Lorna Fox and Chloe O’Reilly as two best friends in over their heads when what should be a relaxing weekend together turns into a chaotic mix of hidden secrets, paranormal activity and an out-of-control dog.

Rounding out the cast is Mary Murray (BBC Audio Drama Award ‘Best Actress’ winner 2023) alongside Karl Quinn, Donncha O’Dea and Katie McCann. Original music for the play was composed by pianist Justin McCann while Peter Dunne of the internationally acclaimed horror-anthology podcast ‘Petrified’ served as script editor.

The S.P.A. Weekend was made with the support of Coimisiún na Mean with the television licence fee.

This goes back over a hundred years for a drama set in the midst of the ‘Spanish Flu’.

During the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic, a desperate father brings his sick daughter to find the ‘Miracle Well’ in Gubacreeny.

‘1918 Ireland: Having just lost his wife from Spanish Flu, a desperate father vows to bring his sick daughter through a politically divided Ireland to find the ‘Miracle Well’ in Gubacreeny, a place rumoured to cure the illness.’

Based on the written accounts by the Irish during the Spanish Flu, this story is a fictionalised version of a local Meath legend. In it, a father (Sean Sheridan) brought his sick daughter (Mary Sheridan) in a cart to the ‘Miracle Well’ in Gubacreeny, Co Leitrim. The cart got stuck and the horse pulling the cart was shot by a roving gang. Sean had to bring her the rest of the way on foot. This ‘Miracle Well’ in Gubacreeny was apparently blessed by the local priest and anyone that visited it was cured of the ‘Big Flu’.

Drama on Newstalk presents SANDWICH, an original radio comedy-drama that follows a frazzled single mum, Eleanor, who is plunged into turmoil when her eco-activist teen daughter, Hazel, is arrested for holding the Minister of the Environment hostage live on TV. While trying to dissuade the police from charging her, Eleanor learns that her estranged and difficult mother with dementia, Phyllis, has a crisis of her own and can no longer live alone. As Eleanor is an only child, she has no choice but to drag a resistant Hazel across the country to her backwater home town of Craughbeg to look after Phyllis. Eleanor hates being back and has made a promise to Hazel (and herself) that this arrangement is temporary – just enough time to find a suitable nursing home for Phyllis. Craughbeg holds too many painful memories, not least Eleanor’s shameful secret – the identity of Hazel’s biological father. How will the three generations cope with this new living arrangement and will Eleanor manage to keep the secrets of the past buried? Sandwich looks at the multigenerational squeeze, a predicament that an increasing number of people, mostly women, find themselves in – having to care for both children and elderly parents. This is the Sandwich Generation.

SANDWICH was written and directed by Anna Merritt & Deborah Wiseman. It was produced and edited by Amy O’Dwyer. The cast are Deborah Wiseman, Evanne Kilgallon, Deirdre Monaghan, Donncha O’Dea and Mary Murray.

Funded by Coimisiún na Mean with the Television Licence Fee.

Drama on Newstalk presents a new drama produced by Jonathan Farrelly and Katerina Economides. Lansdowne ‘73 is a fictionalised version of historical events.

ln January 1973, the English Rugby Team came to play lreland at Lansdowne, nearly a year to the day of Bloody Sunday... even though they were warned there could be a bomb in the stadium.

This is a fictionalised version and an alternate history of that fateful game.

Two Garda are tasked with defusing the bomb before it goes off… but in order to save the day, they need to learn to tolerate each other first!

Lansdowne ‘73 was produced by Jonathan Farrelly and Katerina Economides. The programme was funded by the Coimisiún na Meán with the television licence fee.

Acting Credits: JP Wright, Olivia Kenna, Gary Kenna, Katerina Economides, Marty AVG, Jonny Farrelly, Mark Manning and Michael Ryan.

Drama on Newstalk presents “The Man Who Talks To Statues”. An original radio drama that tells the story of Darryl, a thirty-year-old Corkonian.

Darryl crashes his father’s car, following which he goes on a magic realist road trip to Limerick and Dublin, encountering characters ranging from suspicious locals to deceased celebrities and historical figures. Darryl has a unique capacity for speaking to statues and during the story he interacts with characters such as Richard Harris, Phil Lynott and Molly Malone.

Darryl’s road trip includes acts of hedonism, aggression, denial and punch-drunk self-reflection. He is more than a little bit lost and we’re never quite sure what’s real or what’s imagined or, indeed, if it’s salvation or an escape route he’s looking for.

Written and performed by Shane Casey (The Young Offenders) and produced by Ruth Hayes (Whispers) The Man Who Talks To Statues is a contemporary story of a young man lost.

Reflecting a sense of disconnect and disenfranchisement which is so often present in young men in today’s Irish culture. According to the report by the Men’s Health forum published in 2020 by Dr Paula Devine and Dr Erin Early under the title Men’s Health in Numbers (MHFI pg 16.) ‘The mental health of males in the Republic of Ireland and NI is of increasing concern.’ Though mental health is one of the underlying themes, The Man Who talks to Statues aims to bring us on an entertaining and energetic journey with the main character DARRYL.

‘The Man Who Talks To Statues’ was written and performed by Shane Casey. Produced by Ruth Hayes. Directed by Brian Desmond. Sound Design and Sound Engineer Cormac O Connor. Additional Cast Michael Sands and Ruth Hayes

The programme was produced with funding from the Coimisiún na Meán Sound and Vision scheme.

‘Murdered while ploughing a field in Meath, belonging to his uncle, Mark Clinton was the victim of a widespread campaign by ex-British soldiers to grab land and re-divide it before the dawn of the Irish Free State. A group of local volunteers spent the next three months (and beyond) avenging his death.’  

Synopsis:  This is based on a true story from May 1920 (ending in 1923) that shows the chaotic social landscape in Ireland at the time. This is a commemorative piece to remember some of the atrocities that happened in the lead up to the inception of the Irish Free State. It’s a glimpse into a country caught in a ‘leadership vacuum’, where law and order were a lot different than today. The story starts in 1920, but ends on the 6th of January, 1923, when the volunteers who avenged Mark’s death, finally got a land governed by their ‘own’. 

'The Murder Of Mark Clinton’ was Produced by Jonathan Farrelly and was funded by Coimisiún Na Meán with the Television Licence Fee.  

Acting Credits: Stephen Gillick, John Grant, Dara Swaine, Mark Smyth, Seamus Waters, Mark Coffee, Gary Kenna, Amrit Sandhu and Michael Ryan.

Playwright Colin Murphy brings an ancient classic right up the present day in Antigone, the story of a plague, a refugee crisis, a coup, and a body too dangerous to be buried. 

A plague. A refugee crisis. A coup. This is #ANTIGONE - a dystopian alternative Ireland in which the worst fears of the pandemic have been realised, social order has collapsed, and a military government is attempting to restore order by setting a brutal example.

Antigone is the classic account of the conflict between the individual and the State. It is the story of a body too toxic to be buried, a State afraid of a funeral, a people under siege, a city under curfew, a collapse in political authority, and a conflict between loyalty to family and duty to state.

In this new version, General Críon, the first female head of the armed forces, has seized power in a coup, in a bid to defend the State both from the plague that is ravaging Europe and from the influx of refugees that are desperately trying to escape the plague. Críon has given her troops licence to turn back refugee boats at sea and shoot new migrants arriving on our shores, under the pretext that they may be carrying contagion, and ordered that the dead bodies not be touched, for fear of infection.

Meanwhile, her son, Éamonn, an aid worker in the refugee camp, has fallen in love with a refugee, Antigone. When Antigone’s brother's body washes up on the beach, Antigone flouts Críon's edict against burial, risking both infection and punishment.

Críon fears not merely the spread of the literal contagion, but a moral contagion arising from Antigone’s disobedience, and sentences Antigone, her would-be daughter-in-law, to death.

Funded by Coimisiún na Meán, #ANTIGONE is a new version of the 2,500-year-old Sophocles play by Colin Murphy, written in response to the pandemic. It draws out these contemporary resonances, provoking insight into the socio-political fault lines of recent history: the trauma of not being able to properly mourn our dead; the extreme restriction of individual rights in the name of the greater good; the heightened fear of the other (both in the pandemic and in successive migration "crises"); the potential abuse of an emergency to consolidate state power.

Colin Murphy is one of the country’s leading political dramatists. He has written numerous plays on Irish political history, most recently The Treaty for Fishamble: the New Play Company; his screenplays include The Guarantee and The Bailout. His new play, The United States Versus Ulysses, will premiere at the Pavilion Dun Laoghaire this November.

Credits:

Antigone was written and produced by Colin Murphy and directed by Aoife Spillane-Hinks. Incidental music, sound design, post-production and editing was by Simon Kenny.

It was funded by Coimisiún na Meán with the Television Licence Fee, and with additional support from the Arts Council.

Antigone was played by Leah Minto
Críon was played by Derbhle Crotty
Éamonn was played by Rowan Finken
Ismene was played by Shauna Harris
Traolach was played by Arthur Riordan
Sophie Messenger was played by Karen Ardiff
Theo Elder was played by Morgan Jones
Professor Choragos was played by Jonathan White
The Guard was played by Killian Scott