As RTÉ celebrates its 100th anniversary, we're celebrating Irish TV's cult classics - the unsung gems that over the decades have won their way into the hearts and minds of Irish viewers.
Paths to Freedom (2000-2001) achieved in six episodes what most long-running series can only dream of. Wickedly satirical and formally daring, the Network 2 show proved a hit among viewers and critics, launched enduring careers and kicked off a golden age of comedy on RTÉ.
You're likely to remember the show's co-creator and director, Ian Fitzgibbon, from another TV classic. In Father Ted, he played the sarcastic priest father Jessup, last seen trapped in Jack's underwear hamper. By that point in his career, Fitzgibbon had trained at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, acted alongside Marcello Mastroianni, and directed a short film which competed at the Venice Film Festival in 1999. The film starred fellow Rada alumnus Michael McElhatton, with whom Fitzgibbon would create Paths to Freedom the following year.
The mockumentary follows two very different men with one thing in common: they've been released from Mountjoy Prison and have agreed to let a film crew track their reintegration back into society. Middle-class snob Jeremy (Brendan Coyle) is convinced his drink-driving arrest was a gross miscarriage of justice and becomes obsessed with restoring his reputation. Lovable eejit Rats (McElhatton), meanwhile, believes his petty criminal past as the prelude to rap megastardom – and with rhymes like "Margaret Thatcher / get me scratcher," who are we to doubt him?
Paths to Freedom came at a time when RTÉ was revamping its Independent Production Unit, signaling a massive shift in taste for the national broadcaster. The rural soaps that came to define the network were now making way for grittier, more contemporary dramas. Alas, at no point during this show do we encounter sexually repressed farmers grappling with youth culture, nor do we hear the canned laughter of earlier sitcoms.
This was something new. Notably, the series was among the first to make use of the mockumentary for-mat (predating BBC’s The Office by a year). Its humour, on the other hand, felt familiar and unmistakably Irish. It poked fun at both sides of the class divide, taking most pleasure in charting Jeremy’s downfall from Michael Flatley-apologist to violent psychiatric patient. A slippery slope!
Coyle embodied Celtic Tiger toxicity with such commitment few would have guessed his big break would come as a middle-aged sex symbol on Downton Abbey. Likewise, Rats’ hairdo should’ve ended any chance McElhatton had of being taken seriously as a dramatic actor, let alone a Game of Thrones all-star! Giving both men a run for their money, however, is Deridre O’Kane as Jeremy’s domineering wife. She alone has the power to leave our jabbering heroes speechless with lines like "Have you ever made love in a crate of aubergines?"
Over 25 years later and we have yet to get a definitive answer from Rats. And while Fitzgibbon and McElhatton have long hinted at a follow-up series (they reunited for a big screen version, Spin The Bottle, in 2003) a reunion doesn't look to be happening anytime soon.
Still, we’ll always have those original six episodes to return to. Not a lot, but as with all tiny titans of Irish culture – I’m thinking Fig Rolls, My Bloody Valentine’s discography, and Michael D. Higgins – Paths to Freedom stands to prove that good things come in small packages.
