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Ros na Rún

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Ros na Rún is one of Ireland's most successful tv shows.

Ros na Rún is an Irish soap opera produced for Irish language TV channel TG4.

Show history

Previously shown on RTÉ One, Ros na Rún began its eleventh season in September 2006. The title plays on the double meaning of the Irish word rún, which has a basic meaning of 'secret' but also has a long history as a term of endearment, similar to "honey", "sweetheart", or "darling". Ros can mean either "a wood or wooded headland" or "a headland or promontory", so the title can mean either "Wood/Headland of the Secrets" or "Wood/Headland of the Sweethearts".

Ros na Rún is also shown on WYBE public television in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States and on UK terrestrial Freeview Scottish Gaelic channel TeleG with Scottish Gaelic subtitling.

Show facts

Characters and settings

Ros na Rún retains many of the characters from the show's inception; the inhabitants of the village, however, are usually best known by their first names. Tadhg Ó Direáin, split from his wife Angela, is the owner of the public house "Tigh Thaidhg" (meaning "the house of Tadhg"), where the locals flock for 'ceol agus craic' (and some sarcastic comments from Tadhg!). Mícheál Seoige, recently released from prison for the assisted suicide of his second wife, Poilin, is a fisherman and owner of the local farm shop. His first wife, Berni, still lives in the village however, and runs the cafe "Cúl Chaint" (literal translation: "corner talk" although it is taken more to mean "gossip"). Berni is currently indulging in an illicit affair with the Catholic priest father David! They have recently revealed their affair to the public, and in the season finale this year, David proposed to Berni. The police Sergeant Una has been revealed to be the birth mother of local teenager Mo Gilmartin. The problem is that Mo's father is Una's brother-in-law, Fergal. Una has professed her rekindled love for Fergal, but has been rejected by him and also her boyfriend John-Joe in the process. Jim O'Dowd is a drug lord from Dublin who is carrying out his business from the local takeaway, Rico's. Tadhg and barman Conall are aware of O'Dowd's shenaningans, and have stood idly by while O'Dowd has blackmailed Daniel McLoughlin for O'Dowd's murder of the sumptious Anne Marie. In the season finale this year, Daniel left Ros na Run for good, leaving O'Dowd able to pin the crime on him when the police discover the body. 

There are many other characters in the show, all with equally scandalous lives!

The Irish language

All conversations and scenes in the soap take place in the Irish language, still spoken in Spiddal, where the show is filmed, and parts of Kerry, Galway, Meath, Cork, Donegal, and the Aran Islands. Most of the actors/actresses in the show are native Irish speakers, while those that are not are always fluent in the language. The dialect used in the show is mostly the Connacht dialect of Irish, although there are some characters from Donegal played by Gavin Ó Fearraigh and Niall Mac Eamharcaigh. The Munster dialect is spoken by An tAthair David (Father David).

The show has come under fire for encouraging the Anglicisation of the Irish language; examples include the regular usage of "Hello" or "Hi" in place of "Dia Duit", the use of English phrases such as "For God's sake" and even "Sorry" instead of the Irish "Tá brón orm"; on the other hand, the show has re-introduced the Irish language in modern and popular form to areas of the country where it is not spoken and it can help in learning the language. Many would also argue it is much more satisfying and, at times, humorous to hear the characters converse rapidly in the Irish language and hear the Irish idioms and seanfhocail (proverbs).

Viewing figures and critics

Ros na Rún performs consistently well in the viewing figures, often among the top ten programmes of TG4 in the week where there is no sporting activity. Almost always the soap is among the top ten Irish language programming for the station. The typical viewing figures for a weekday episode are around 50,000; the omnibus usually pulls around 60,000 or 6.5% of the Sunday night audience share.

Critically the show performs very well, much better than the only other Irish soap on air, the English language Fair City on RTÉ One, although the latter has 10 times the viewership. The acting on Ros na Rún is widely considered to be much better despite having a much smaller pool of actors to choose from, while the storylines are often teased out and left to simmer in a style very different from that of Fair City, which tends to take up and drop storylines quickly.

See also

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