[dropcap]C[/dropcap]ompetition is in the air. Fair City can no longer claim to be Ireland’s sole soap drama, as its potential rival Red Rock, launched by TV3, hit TV screens in early January. The show focuses on a Garda Station in Dublin, following the lives of the Gardaí as well as two feuding families, the Kielys and the Hennessys. Cast member Andrea Irvine, who has appeared in dramas such as BBC Two’s Line of Duty, describes how creating and acting in this type of drama is a departure from the norm. “It’s quite a new experience for me […] We started off and we had eight scripts maximum and a very very general outline of potentially where our story was going to head. So you just have to jump in and you don’t really know what’s coming up until you receive the script. You’re sort of finding out about your character all the time. It’s initially quite daunting but actually really exciting… you’ve just got to go on the journey, see what happens.”

Irvine’s character is Angela Tyrell, a Garda Sergeant who indeed seems to have quite a journey ahead of her. “[Tyrell’s] the longest serving member of the station,” Irvine explains. “So she would have a very good authority in the station, very responsible, very capable, very committed to her work […] She’s one of the ones that you’d like to have around if anything went wrong. She knows her job and she does it well. But her commitment to it is causing conflict at home.” Her character will be part of what Irvine hopes is a more nuanced portrayal of Gardaí in Irish television. “I suppose the portrait of the Gardaí would aim to be a complex one. It’s that complexity that will be interesting and strong rather than painting an overly positive picture or making them look like eejits, which quite a lot of Irish dramas have done.” Not all the Gardaí featured in the show will be as upstanding as Tyrell, however, although Irvine adds that while the issue of Garda corruption will be present, “I don’t think [corruption] is ever going to be explored under the title of that, if you know what I mean. It’s going to come up through people’s personal lives and how they interact rather than being a statement theme.”

Red Rock, like Fair City, is also set in a fictional part of Dublin. The intention in doing so was to make the setting relatable without making it accessible only to Dubliners. “It’s a fictional context but one that can be easily related to a potentially real situation. But it’s not naming anywhere because nor do you want to make it about that. You don’t want that level of […] literally lifting it from the streets. You want to create the kind of place that makes people go, ‘oh yeah, that resonates with me’, or ‘my local Garda station’.” The issue of relatability can often be left to one side in soaps, considering the tendency to create sensational or catastrophic plotlines. But Irvine asserts that the show should try to stay relevant its audience. “I think in terms of making the context believable, you’ve got to have that recognisable factor that people might encounter in their own lives.”

This idea of real life but not quite real life is interesting in considering just why soaps are so appealing. Their ongoing popularity certainly can’t be denied with no end in sight for most established soaps – they still make up huge chunks of television schedules, particularly daytime TV, they regularly take in huge audience shares and are broadcast with greater frequency than many other types of drama. Perhaps it is this blending of reality with unreality that has helped build up today’s soap opera culture. Soaps allow you to watch something that purports to be real but in actuality, it’s the over the top storytelling, complete with cliffhangers and devious characters, that urges you to see what’s next.

Before Red Rock aired, however, there was some questions over how closely it would resemble another Dublin based drama: Love/Hate. Such musings were further fueled by the casting of actress Denise McCormack in both shows. Irvine thinks, however, that the focuses of the two are quite distinct. “There’s a lot more of the domestic aspect of what goes on in life and those kinds of stories rather than the extremes of gangland life,” she explains. “[Red Rock] actually takes you into people’s homes… It’s not a big exploration of one aspect. It’s looking at all the different types of people who might go through a Garda station. They aren’t all hardened criminals, in fact many of them aren’t […] You kind of see that all humanity passes through. And some of it is a bit absurd, a bit funny, a bit silly. And some of it’s very difficult and challenging and problematic.”

Two seasons of Red Rock have already been commissioned, and this year will see two episodes broadcast a week over 40 weeks. Enormous sums of money have also been invested in the show (an estimated €7 million), suggesting that TV3 is anticipating a big response. The expense aside, embarking on this project has not been without serious risks however; Red Rock will now have to rival Emmerdale, which has moved from TV3 to UTV, as well as Coronation Street in the ratings battle. In light of this, does Irvine see the show becoming a staple of Irish television? “That would be the desire. But we’ll just have to see. Everyone seems apprehensive –  optimistic, but taking nothing for granted in terms of how Irish audiences are going to respond to it. We’re all hoping desperately that they like it and they’ll tune in. I don’t think there’s anything like it on Irish television at all. I hope that we’re doing it well enough for them to invest in it and keep coming back to it.” With Red Rock still in its opening weeks, we’ll have to wait and see.

Red Rock airs on TV3 on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8.30 pm.