What happens when Hollywood descends on a small-town in Ireland where the unexpected keeps happening?
All hell breaks loose – as Sky‘s new comedy drama Small Town, Big Story reveals.
Written by comedian and actor Chris O’Dowd, it is set in a small border town in Ireland where strange things tend to happen.
And when one former resident returns, the past catches up with her and those who still live there.
O’Dowd, who has starred in The IT Crowd, Moone Boy and Bridesmaids, said: “I bloody love television, and am most engrossed by stories that bring the remarkable to the everyday.
“I hope we’ve made a beautiful show that an audience will find funny and will keep people on the edge of their seats…and beyond.”
Small Town, Big Story is about rural town in Ireland and what happens when a Hollywood production rolls into town, throwing a spotlight on a secret which has been kept hidden since the eve of the millennium.
Wendy Patterson is a local girl from Drumbán, who found success as a television producer in Los Angeles and is now returning to her hometown after more than 20 years to film a TV series based on Ireland’s ancestral history.
However, her homecoming is complicated by the fact she left the town originally under something of a cloud.
Back in the chaotic microcosm of Drumbán, this time with a film crew in tow, she finds herself caught between her past and her epic new production.
Meanwhile, Séamus Proctor (Paddy Considine) is the local doctor and a respected pillar of the community.
His life is neat and well-ordered or at least he thinks he it is.
But that is all about to change, as he has a shared history with Wendy that he would rather keep quiet about.
Soon he finds himself in the eye of a storm as the celluloid circus descends.
And worse than that, it threatens to blow open the secret he has been harbouring since the millennium.
Christina Hendricks leads the cast as Wendy Patterson, a local girl made good in Hollywood.
Speaking about her character, she said: “Wendy starts out very trepidatious about going home to Ireland.
“It’s been over 20 years, she’s completely reinvented herself in LA with her job, but she has this opportunity to bring this big production back home.
“She thinks if she’s ever going to go back and confront her past, if she’s going to have a relationship with her father again and really put to bed her negative feelings about this hometown, this is the time to do it.”
The American actress and former model, 49, rose to fame playing Joan Holloway in the period drama Mad Men.
She has gone on to appear in films such as Drive, Ginger & Rosa and Lost River.
On television, she has starred in The Romanoffs and Good Girls.
Paddy Considine stars as Séamus Proctor, the local doctor and pillar of the community.
He said: “You meet him as he is just going along with his life as normal.
“When Wendy comes back to town and begins a big film production, all this stuff about his past starts to surface again.”
British actor Considine, 51, will be well-known to television audiences for his roles as Viserys I Targaryen in House of the Dragon and Father John Hughes in Peaky Blinders.
He played Claude Bolton in The Outsider and Detective Inspector Jack Whicher in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.
And he has won two Bafta Awards for his writing and directing on Dog Altogether and Tyrannosaur.
Eileen Walsh stars as Catherine Proctor, Séamus’ wife and local schoolteacher.
The Irish actress, 47, has starred in films such as The Magdalene Sisters, Rialto and Small Things Like These.
On television, she has played Kate in Catastrophe and Orla Mills in Death in Paradise.
David Wilmot plays Drumbán resident Keith McCurdle.
The Irish actor is best-known for his roles in the films Michael Collins, Intermission, Anna Karenina, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and Ordinary Love.
He played Sgt Donald Artherton in Ripper Street, Arthur Scargill in The Crown and Clark Thompson in Station Eleven.
The remaining cast includes:
Filming for the series took place on location in Ireland in County Wicklow, south of Dublin and Boyle in the north-west of the country.
The show is set in a small fictional town, on the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Writer O’Dowd said: “I’d been looking for something to set in the north-west of Ireland.
“I’d previously shot in Boyle before with Moone Boy, and I always wanted to go back, but never got around to it.
“I suppose I was looking for a ‘small-town’ story but this time I wanted to make somewhere up – ‘Drumbán’.”
He said he wanted to set it somewhere small and more like a village.
“I imagined my mother’s home which is ten miles or so outside of Boyle,” he said, adding: “I wrote about it imagining the configuration of streets and the river which runs through.
“I had been working in Ireland up by the lakes and I had forgotten how beautiful they were.
“I thought they would be a beautiful place to set a show.”
Small Town, Big Story premieres on Thursday 27 February on Sky and streaming service Now in the UK and Ireland.
The first episode of the six-part series will air from 9pm to 10pm, with the remaining episodes shown at the same time on successive Thursdays.
Sky packages start from £15 per month and Now subscriptions from £6.99 per month.
The show will not be available to watch on any other streaming services.
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