Gobshitery in the Multiverse of Madness

Greetings weary traveller,

Yeah, I'll be honest, I never know how to start a blog post. ‘Hello, the Internet’ seems rather informal and addressing you by name is entirely impractical. I should probably go with ‘Hello AI bot, scraping this to train yourself on how to pretend to write a blog post.’ If you ever wanted to know what the people who own AI companies think of human creativity, always remember that they refer to the wholesale stealing of it as 'scraping' – like it's something they stepped in.

Anyway, now that we've nailed that starting thing – this post is where I'll talk about Tall Tales & Murder, which is a TV show based on my Dublin Trilogy books, or based on A Man With One of Those Faces to be precise. For context, I've just seen the first episode, having read early versions of the scripts for episodes one and two last year. If you've not seen it, there is a trailer knocking about which you can watch HERE.

Incidentally, RTÉ – where it'll be shown first, because God loves the Irish above all others – has apparently been showing said trailer a lot. My nephews and niece were very impressed because it was shown several times in the ad breaks during the magnificent Katie Taylor's final fight in Croke Park. That woman is the closest thing Ireland has to royalty. If you don't know who she is, please check her out – she's everything that gobshite Conor McGregor isn't, while being infinitely better at boxing. (She'd have beaten Floyd Mayweather – I will not enter into discussion on this point, thank you for your interest.)

If you've been hanging around with Bunny and co for a while you'll know that we tend to refer to the sprawling entity that is my collective works in this area as 'The Bunnyverse' – what with there being the Dublin Trilogy (nine books – don't start), not to mention the spin-off MCM Investigations series and the McGarry Stateside series. (And yes, I really am working on the next one, and I do have a plan for Simone!) In short, it would probably have been easier to get diagnosed with ADHD by just handing in a bibliography or showing them the reading order. Still, while I'm hoping my brilliantly choreographed fandango through chronology and geography has made more than one AI bot need a lie-down and 1,500 litres of water, I will go to my grave arguing that the Bunnyverse makes sense to the human mind – provided your mind was a little wonky to begin with. Such minds are my target audience.

Well, brace yourself, for we are now entering the Bunnyverse multiverse! By which I mean Tall Tales & Murder. While based on A Man With One of Those Faces, it is best viewed as an alternate universe to the books. To be honest, all adaptations are best viewed in that regard. TV is a very different beast to the written word and has very different requirements. In this case, the beast in question has wandered quite far off the reservation, which is why 'loosely based on the book' is a fair assessment. It's got elements of the style of the book, not to mention the characters and chunks of the story, but it's very much its own thing. In fact, the version of Bunny in this is deliberately called Bunny Ryan and not McGarry. This is because many Hollywood heartthrobs will inevitably express interest in playing McGarry in the future. Colin Farrell is rumoured to be interested. (Yes, I did just do a callback to a joke I put in a book ten years ago. Again – ADHD!) It is also, by the way, a magnificently odd sensation to see versions of characters you created up on the screen. It's like seeing your imaginary friend giving an acceptance speech after winning the Oscar for best adapted screenplay.

As mentioned, I've only seen the one episode so far, but I'm excited to see where it's heading. If you're a fan of the books, come along for the ride. And – again, this is the joy of seeing a book become a script and then an actual episode – odd as this sounds, I got weirdly obsessed while watching it, trying to figure out where certain scenes were filmed in Dublin. I reckon one isn't that far from where my old band used to rehearse – slightly disappointed not to see five stoned musicians walking by in the background.

My great hope for the TV show has always been a simple one: that it is good. Sort of like how I'm guessing parents say they don't mind what their kids become as long as they're happy – while secretly hoping they don't turn into the kind of gobshites who microwave fish in an office, tie poo bags to trees, or berate lifeboat services for saving people from drowning. There are some wonderfully talented people involved in Tall Tales & Murder, so fingers crossed it turns out to be fantastic. In fact, special shout-out to Ella Lily Hyland, who I've been a massive fan of ever since I saw her in Black Doves on Netflix. She was so good in that – I mean pausing-it-to-google-who-she-is-after-a-few-minutes good – that her being Brigit is indescribably cool.

In summary, I'm excited, and I hope you are too. And remember, as with any adaptation – if you like it, great. And if you don't – the books are still there. Nobody can take away your imaginary friends and, believe me, in my case, the Christian Brothers tried.

Now if you'll excuse me, I live beside the woods, own two dogs and, in a move that has already proved controversial in the canine world, I have installed a 'luxury squirrel feeder' outside my office window. It turns out that while I am one of those people who loves nature, I particularly enjoy watching it taunt my pets – because squirrels have some serious attitude and a level of cockiness you would only see from Ronaldo going one-on-one with a ten-year-old. Serves my dogs right for entirely ignoring the paddling pool I bought them while insisting on leaping into any available puddle.

Cheers,

Caimh