Like many a ghost estate, the new RTÉ Radio 1 mockumentary series 30 Acres went through a pause in construction. Written by Colm Tobin and Aidan O'Donovan, 30 Acres offers an alternative take on the housing crisis, as three inhabitants of an abandoned estate battle to hold onto their homes.
Trowel in hand, Colm revists the lengthy production process...
It's 2019. We've just wrapped production on 30 Acres, our spoof documentary about communities fighting vulture funds and the housing crisis. Myself and my writing partner Aidan O'Donovan were fresh off making Surviving Ireland, a mockumentary about a couple who visit a very strange island off the coast of Ireland on a digital detox and where, as a lazy writer might put it, "all hell breaks loose".
This time we brought together some of Ireland's best actors and comedians and the amazing RTÉ Documentary On One crew to help us bring to life a strange story about community and resilience in the face of corporate power… or something. It's hard to remember, because due to a confluence of reasons, it's only coming out now, six years later.
You know the way these things happen - that gate at the bottom of the garden that needs painting, that broken tile on the roof that needs fixing… sometimes things are just not meant to get finished.
The Lost Tapes of Wicklow
Now, RTÉ has a reputation for taking its time. But even by RTÉ standards, this was impressive. The Beach Boys' Smile album was less troublesome.
At some point around year three, I started wondering if we'd accidentally created some kind of audio version of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Future archaeologists would discover 30 Acres in the RTÉ archives: "Here we see early 21st-century humans grappling with something called 'the housing crisis.'"
Why did we shape the story we did? I have no idea now.
But luckily for us, a St. Christopher-like character called Kevin Brew emerged in a halo out of the RTÉ Drama department, presumably tasked with the job of rescuing neglected, unloved projects from podcast purgatory and all of a sudden, we were back in business.
Meanwhile, in the real world...
While our little documentary sat in the archives, the world kept turning. CMAT wrote entire songs about the financial crisis. Was she even born when we recorded this?
The property crisis we were satirising seemed to get worse. Then worse again. Depressingly, the main premise for our daft show might still have contemporary relevance.
Why did we shape the story we did? I have no idea now. You'd have to ask the 2019 versions of Aidan and Colm about that. And they're as dead as the tracker mortgage.
No, we've since moved on, taking a lot of what we learned on those audio experiments with the Doc On One team and applied them to our various children's animation projects. We've made 52 episodes of Maddie + Triggs for CBeebies and RTÉjr in the meantime, which works both on screen and as a podcast. Audio really is a wonderful storytelling medium!
What you're about to hear...
30 Acres is a spoof documentary series about a small community fighting for their homes. We wrote the outline story and cast some of our favourite comedy actors including John Colleary, Stephanie Preissner, Barry Murphy, Philippa Dunne, Barbara Bergin and Shane Casey. And we let them semi-improvise in that Curb Your Enthusiasm style, except with more rain, when we recorded it on location in Wicklow with a proper documentary crew. The idea was to make it feel as close to a real documentary as we could, by using all the tools actual radio documentarians use, except deployed in service of what is (in retrospect) fairly bizarre comedy.
And yes, I narrated it, with perhaps more gravitas than the situation strictly required. But after six years in the archives, I think it's earned a bit of pomposity so I've been more than happy to channel my inner Louis Theroux while recording the narration these past weeks.
The time capsule we never meant to make
Listening back now is a bit surreal. These performances are genuinely brilliant, real even when they're ridiculous. And the fact that it sat in a drawer for six years like a prophecy nobody wanted feels kind of perfect.
We have absolutely no idea how the listeners will react. Will they appreciate the authentic craft? The improvisational genius? The fact that it's somehow more relevant now than when we made it? Or will it sound as out of date as it actually is?
We can but hope that it is one of those things that come around in cycles and suddenly become relevant in the culture again, like baggy pants or Marty Whelan.
Even if that truth took six years to see the light of day, we're really proud of all the great work the cast and crew put into this strange four-part series. We hope you enjoy it!
30 Acres launches in the RTÉ Drama On One slot at 8pm on Sunday nights on RTE Radio 1 (Nov 30 - Dec 21) - the series will be streamed via the Drama On One webpage and released as a podcast by RTÉ Documentary On One on Dec 15.
