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Set in an unnamed South Dublin town, Sauce was a show about two of the town’s residents: Mella (Ciara Elizabeth Smith), a pathological liar and Maura (Camille Lucy Ross), a well-heeled kleptomaniac married to a personal finance lawyer . On the face of it, Dublin (or the rest of the country for that matter) hardly need yet more cultural coverage of South Dublin. The region’s notorious treatment of vowels (à la largesse) continues to spread with contagious rampage across county boundaries. Further, our national broadcaster’s air-waves heave with the lethargy of them too. Neither, does stuffy South Dublin seem like an obvious, or even possible inspiration to mordant biting wit–Ross O’Carroll Kelly’s proliferous production, one would presume, has dried Dublin Bay to a blister.
Not so. Sauce found new ways to subvert, making something fresh out of the unspeakable, and true out of the common. Smith and Ross’ favoured toolpiece was impersonation–saving grace of daily comedy–which by them was turned into an unstoppable whirlwind force. Like celestial (if foulmouthed) comets, they whipped through eternal and contemporary types–the diet coach, the miserish uncle, the prying shop assistant, the compassionate burger-flipper. Switches in persona were conveyed by dance twists at the speed and assertion of a Nutri-bullet trip switch. Dialogue spoke truth to power “She looks rich, like she either knows a horse or knows someone who owns one.” As well as giving power to the worst of contemporary habits “I told him I was out doing good deeds. I wasn’t. I was in the park watching porn.” Ultimately though, it wasn’t the gross habits of our two protagonists that was put on trial. They were actually framed as the last bastions of life and the foundations of friendship, against the extramarital immorality of a certain kind of smug South Dublin male.
Thus, South Dublin, it turns out, is capable of depth. Move over stories about star-crossed lovers move over. We want more of these despicable rejects. Their view is truer.
