After last week’s almost impossibly bleak opening episode of Paula, the three-part drama really uppped the action in part two on Wednesday night with Det Garda MacArthur taking centre stage as things become very dark indeed.
Warning: Spoiler alert
We caught our first sight of the down at heel detective, who is played by Galway-born actor Owen McDonnell, at the end of the eventful opening episode of the dark and bruising new TV debut from Irish playwright Conor McPherson.
MacArthur arrives on the scene after a murder in a scrap yard, which has been preceded by a seedy one night stand, rats in a basement, and some very wayward behaviour from Paula, the very unhappy central character played by Clare-born actor Denise Gough. Add to all that the fact that it seems to be constantly raining and this is one drama with a decidedly dank and gothic atmosphere.
However, McDonnell promises another dimension in part two. "The thriller element really gets going and it’s really, really tight and just keeps on ratcheting up and ratcheting up," he told RTÉ Entertainment.
"Alex Holmes, the director, has done a really good job of distilling what Conor was trying to do visually. I’m very pleased with episode two and while most of the characters aren’t particularly likeable, Mac is probably lighter than the others."
But this is Conor McPherson, a writer who has made a name from teasing out hidden emotions and coaxing out demons and like pretty much everybody on Paula, MacArthur is living a lie in a vertiginous world of self-delusion.
"He tries to take life as he sees it and sometimes it perplexes him and he can’t help but show it. He thinks the situation Paula finds herself in is just insane, mental! He thinks 'what are you doing?’" McDonnell says.
"He’s a guy who’s kinda at his lowest ebb. He knows how he should be living life but he’s always failed to achieve the standard he’d like to achieve. He knows how he should behave . . . however, in effect he hasn’t succeeded in doing that over the years.
"He’s ploughed himself into work because it means he doesn’t have to deal with his family and I think when he meets Paula, there’s something about her that he feels actually might elevate him to being the person he aspires to be ultimately but it just mires him even deeper in the s***."
Watch episode one of Paula on the RTÉ Player
42-year-old McDonnell has quietly built up an impressive CV since he moved to London nearly 20 years ago with roles in Spooks, My Mother and Other Strangers, and a lot of stage work.
He has returned to Ireland on several occasions to appear on stage at the Abbey Theatre in The Plough and the Stars and A Doll's House and he also landed roles in Silent Witness and two seasons of the sitcom Mount Pleasant, as well as acclaimed TG4 drama An Klondike.
And what does McDonnell make of Paula herself? She's the chemistry teacher whose life begins to spiral out of control after an affair with a married fellow teacher and a handyman who comes to get rid of those possibly metaphorical rats in her half ruin of a house.
To put it bluntly, she is a ball of pent-up miserablism. "I read an interesting conversation with Conor McPherson recently and he said he has been criticised in the past for not writing a lot of female characters," says McDonnell.
"And he said this show is the first time he’s allowed himself to explore a female character that’s as messed up as his male characters - just because you’re a woman that doesn’t mean you are coping well with life."
McDonnell adds: "Things can get on top of you whatever your gender and I think in Ireland we have a tendency to look at women as being fantastically able to cope with all the chaos and indiscipline that Irish men throw at them but with Paula we find a woman who actually isn’t coping particularly well with where she finds herself in life. It’s difficult to know what she wants from life and I don‘t think she knows herself."
Alan Corr @corralan
Paula can be viewed on the RTÉ Player here.
