Once upon a time the only mainstream representation of Irish culture and society you could see on the TV was John Ford’s The Quiet Man, an idyllic, if perhaps to modern eyes occasionally problematic, representation of de Valera’s peasant Catholic Ireland. Now there is Irish stuff all over the place. Sweary drug addled Belfast Taigs Kneecap are on Amazon; fans of small town Free State miserabilism can feel morose to Small Things Like These with Cillian Murphy and for anyone in search of a sub-titled police procedural with big woolly jumpers and names like Mac Eachmharcaigh, Caoimhe and Ó Súilleabháin, Crá is now on the BBC iPlayer. The Daily Heil says it is “brilliant”, but don’t let that put you off.

It is set in the bog lands of Donegal, probably the coldest, wettest, most windswept part of the country. It is also one of the most beautiful and the series makes full use of the landscape. It’s likely to generate a fair bit of tourist traffic, though Donegal was traditionally where Belfast Fenians went to avoid the 12^th of July. Another reason lots of them went is that there is still quite a thriving Irish speaking community there and learners of the language attend residential schools.

About 95% of the dialogue is in Irish, English being mainly used for swear words. This community isn’t the bunch of cheery, sinless peasants of the old Irish self-image. Rape, abortion, domestic violence are never far from the surface and just about everyone has a horrible secret. It’s a harsh mirror of the reality of village and rural life.

There are some surprising heroes and villains. The Garda officer who is scuttling off to join the RUC is a definite wrong ‘un, while one of her subordinates is the Father Dougal of the policing world, albeit a Father Dougal who has kinky sex in the police station and commits a sackable offence every ten minutes. The unexpected hero is the dissident Republican who has a copy of the 1916 Proclamation above his bed and only ever wears a vest and tracksuit. John Ford at least gave his IRA man a very dapper trench coat.

Sabine Ó Súilleabháin was a German woman who married a local man and in the first episode her body is found in a bog fifteen years after her disappearance. This dramatic device does raise ideas of the bog bodies which have been found in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe in the pre-Christian period. In the final episode a central character is punished in an ancient manner too, perhaps as a way of asserting that these old customs are still present in people’s minds.

The budget for Crá is visibly smaller than those of the Scandinavian dramas to which it invites comparison and the houses are a great deal less stylish than you will find in Denmark and Sweden. Also, the only “restaurant” we see is one of those atrocious chip and kebab shops that are often your only option in much of Ireland. That should be enough to quash any notion you might have of moving there. However, the six forty five minute episodes make for good winter evening viewing and are a chance to see Irish as a living language being used in everyday life.

And here is a great bit of music recorded in Donegal for no other reason than I love it.